Here's a reader question that came in to the VoIP Community that I'm sharing on the blog as well.

Hi Ken,

I just joined your group today, and am impressed with not only your web site, but the information available on it.  I have to admit, VOIP is all new to me and I’m trying to find out as much info as I can.  To give you a little background, I am a manager at an ophthalmology, optometry practice.  We have 11 doctors and 11 offices, spread out over a very large section of western and central Pennsylvania.  

We’ve been looking into VOIP.  We’ve contracted with a company to give us a ‘blueprint’ of what would be needed in order to facilitate this in all of our offices.  They have assured me that we can do this in steps, without having to bring all of our offices on board at once.  Our IT consultant had some concerns about the connectivity in the smaller satellite offices.  The connection in each office varies due to location of some of the offices (some are in very rural sections of PA).  One office has wireless, some have DSL, and some have Broadband.  They keep assuring me that this will not cause a problem, but I’m concerned they are looking more at having all the offices connected at one time, which we are not ready to commit to doing at this point.  Our plan was to have our two main offices (one of which we are building a new facility for, hence the desire for us to make a decision on VOIP) and bring the smaller offices on board individually.  I’m concerned that we are going to encounter problems with connectivity that may force us into converting those offices more quickly than we had planned.

I also feel that I haven’t received a definite answer on the problems we could expect to encounter if for some reason our connection should go down, or we have a loss of power.

Again, as I’ve said, this is all new to me, but it’s something I at least want to have a bit of an understanding of so I can ask the right questions.  I don’t want to be in a situation where we have spent a large amount of money and didn’t get what had hoped.  Thanks for any help you can offer.

You're right to be concerned about the connectivity question for your remote locations, although typically DSL and cable connections can hande VoIP without any tangible degration in service. You don't describe the wireless connection, but most should work ok. I'd say the key here will be to test thoroughly before relying solely on VoIP over each of these connections. In particular, if the wireless is a satellite connection (like DirectPC), you could experience some problematic latency issues. The delay in satellite communications often makes it untenable for VoIP.

You've contracted a company to provide a blueprint, but it isn't clear if they're going to be engaged in the implementation work. The most critical success factors will be:

• Network readiness assessment - Document and understand exactly what you have in terms of network performance at each location.
• Understanding and setting user expectations. Don't leave your remote offices in the dark. Engage them fully and early to ensure they're satisfied with what they get.
• Test thoroughly - Don't try to flash cut all your sites. Lay out a methodical cutover strategy and bring the remotes online one by one. Test each to make sure things are working and don't skip testing. A good approach might be to organize by access technology if you can. I'd suggest do the cable sites first, then DSL, and cut the wireless site over last. You'll benefit from the experience gained on the others.

And if you would, we'd love to hear your story afterwards. Success, failue, pain, and lessons learned. I know many readers could benefit from that.


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