Business VoIP Comparison

We have been in business for over ten years. We keep it plain and simple for our customers: We meet your service expectations at a price you can afford.

Douglas Telecom's service gives you the same quality as you would expect from the legacy telephone carriers (such as AT&T, Qwest, Verizon etc.), but with more flexibility, friendly service, fast setup, incredible pricing and the features you want and need.

	Douglas Telecom, Inc.	"Baby" Bells
Unlimited Local Incoming	Yes.	Yes.
Unlimited Local Outgoing	Yes.	Yes.
Flat Rate Long Distance	Yes, $0.03/min for 48 States.	Yes, $0.06/min for 48 States.
Flat Rate Toll Free	Yes, $0.03/min for 48 States.	Yes, up to $0.07/min for 48 States.
Standard PBX Features (Call Hold, Call Transfer, 3-Way Conference, Ring Groups)	Yes, included with service at no additional charge.	Yes, with additional equipment costing up to $10,000.
Telephone Wiring	Telephones share existing high quality Ethernet/Cat-5 computer wiring. Wireless adapters are available for some models.	Wiring a small office for a telephone system costs upwards of $3,000.
Advanced PBX Features (Call Queues, Conference Rooms, Call Recording, Supervisor Listen-in, Staggered Ringing, Day/Night/Holiday Auto-attendant, Multi-layered Voicemail, Electronic Fax)	Yes, included with service. Additional usage charges may apply to some advanced features.	Yes, with additional equipment costing up to $25,000.
On-site PBX Equipment Maintenance	No.	Yes. There are a large number of service providers; typical contracts cost $300-$500 per year for a small office system.
Telephone Sets	Yes, from $115 per set.	Yes, from $150 per set.
On-site Power Outage	The auto-attendant and voicemail system will continue to work. You can temporarily re-route calls to cell phones and other outside numbers or take the telephone set to an alternate location with Internet.	You may have an option to disconnect the PBX telephone system and connect analog phones directly to the incoming telephone lines. Otherwise, all telephone service will be down unless you have a power generator.
On-site Internet Outage	The auto-attendant and voicemail system will continue to work. You can temporarily re-route calls to cell phones and other outside numbers or take the telephone set to an alternate location with Internet.	Telephone service not affected.
On-site PBX Equipment Failure	Not applicable; there is no on-site PBX equipment.	No telephone service until the equipment is fixed, unless you have an alternate PBX system that you can connect.
Service Provider Equipment Failure	Redundant quad clusters will switch your service to another server within 30 seconds.	Redundant servers will take over.
Mobility	Your telephone set is your office; connect it to the Internet anywhere and receive / place calls.	None.
911 Service	Yes.	Yes.

 

Douglas Telecom offers

Unlimited local calling
Unlimited incoming calls
Flat rate long distance at 3¢ per minute to 48 US States
Flat rate toll free at 3¢ per minute from 48 US States
Plus, you get the most-used features for free with the telephone service and a few specialized ones for only $2.50 per month
No call routing equipment to buy, just the phones (but you do need broadband Internet)

Traditional Telephone Companies (Baby Bells).

They used to be just AT&T until the Eighties, when the government broke them apart and created seven monopolies. By the end of the Nineties, the business telephone service provided by these companies coupled with good on-site PBX equipment pretty much became the standard against which competing technologies were measured. With this traditional setup, the customer pays for PBX telephone system equipment, telephone sets, wiring, installation, equipment maintenance and the telephone lines to which the equipment connects.

Providing telephone service was so profitable for these companies that newer startups like MCI and Sprint lobbied Congress to get into the business and soon grew to multi-billion dollar companies in a very short period of time.

Douglas Telecom's business telephone service is very similar in performance and quality to the traditional telcos, with a few notable differences:

Unlimited local calling.
Lower price with no startup costs.
Lower wiring costs, since digital VoIP telephone share the same wiring as your computer network (Ethernet / Cat-5).
Lower monthly costs due to new modern technology and phone pricing model
High reliability - It is worth noting public telephone network part of the old service model is very reliable, however, the customer's on-site PBX equipment is not, leading to high yearly maintenance costs and the potential for downtime due to equipment failure.
Mobility - Unlike the old systems, ours is self-contained. Just connect your phone to any broadband Internet connection and you are ready to go.

Other "Virtual PBX" and Hosted PBX Providers.

Riding the wave of interest in business VoIP technology, many recent alternative budget telecom companies have emerged. Unfortunately, to maximize profits, they often utilize gotcha service agreements, long-term contracts and gimmicky pricing to turn a profit and 'lock in' their customers.

Take care to read the fine print. On the surface their pricing model may appear similar to the traditional telcos, but there may be some surprises. They may charge per minute rates for all incoming calls, even on your local telephone numbers, and for the outgoing local calls as well. Some even charge for calls between extension. Also, ask them about reliability and redundancy; they may point out that their Internet connections are top notch, but what about their call processing equipment? With the traditional telcos, you know that you at least get reliable telephone service, though the on-site PBX equipment may be lacking in redundancy. With these providers, there is no redundancy. Period.

IP PBX and Similar.

The equipment cost is high and there is no redundancy. If your Internet connection goes down, you lose both your telephone service and auto-attendant and voicemail systems. The yearly maintenance for this type of system tends to be high, due to the complexity of the equipment.