Managed Voice & Collaboration

What if I need new phone numbers or more phone numbers when switching voice providers?

No problem. We can request new or additional numbers for your system as part of our audit and onboarding process. We make sure that your new system fits your business needs.

How long does porting phone numbers to a new provider take?

Plan for it to take approximately 30 days if you are porting under 100 numbers and 45 days if you are porting 100+ numbers to a new provider.

Can I keep my phone numbers if I switch business phone systems?

Yes, we will port your numbers from your current provider to the new cloud provider. Once your numbers are ported, ESC will audit and advise you when each of your current voice services can be disconnected and canceled.

What could cause my cloud-based phone system to go down?

Ensuring business continuity is our primary goal when deploying cloud-based phone systems. However, there are a few scenarios that could lead to phone outages or disruptions:

• Power outages – Since the system relies on electricity and internet connectivity, losing power at your location can cause your phones to stop working on-site. 
• Internet circuit failures – If your internet connection goes down (Remember,  power outages can also affect your internet provider), your cloud-based phones will not have the necessary network access to make and receive calls.
• Natural disasters/storms—Events like hurricanes, floods, or other severe weather can disrupt power and the internet, leading to temporary phone outages on-site.

However, the benefit of a cloud-based system is that you can easily connect from your cell phone or another location with power and resume calls until power is restored to your office. Additionally, you can add backup power to help you mitigate onsite power outages.

The key is having a plan to address these scenarios, such as backup power, redundant internet circuits, and clear communication to employees about what to do when outages occur. 

As part of our site audit and onboarding, we recommend a business continuity plan to avoid or minimize many of these scenarios. Our team is available 24/7 to help with any problems.

How do I know if my firewall and network can support increased bandwidth and new cloud applications?

When your business is growing, whether that’s adding more employees, opening new locations, or adopting new cloud-based applications, it’s important to review your firewall and network infrastructure to ensure they can handle the increased demands.

Some key things to consider:

• Firewall capacity – Make sure your firewall is rated to handle the increased bandwidth. Firewalls running security services and applications can consume a significant amount of the available bandwidth and become a bottleneck if they are undersized.
• Switch and cabling capabilities – Even if you have fast internet, your internal network equipment may not be able to pass that bandwidth through to your computers and devices. Outdated switches and cabling can create a network bottleneck.
• Application requirements – New cloud apps and services often have specific networking needs around ports, protocols, and Quality of Service (QoS) that need to be properly configured on your firewall and network.

As part of our onboarding process, we conduct a full assessment of your network to identify potential constraints. This includes simulating voice and application traffic to stress test the system. 

If we find any issues, we’ll work with you to make the necessary upgrades, whether replacing an undersized firewall, upgrading network switches, or reconfiguring your firewall rules. 

The goal is to ensure your entire infrastructure is prepared to support your new cloud-based services without any performance degradation.

How much bandwidth is required for voice cloud/VoIP services, and how can I ensure my network can support it?

Voice calls require minimal bandwidth, but maintaining low latency is crucial for quality.

Bandwidth is typically not a major concern when transitioning to a cloud-based voice or VoIP phone system. A conservative estimate is that each phone call requires around 100 Kbps bandwidth.

For example, if you have 100 phones and expect 20% of your staff to be on calls simultaneously, that would equate to a bandwidth need of around 2 Mbps – a relatively small amount compared to most modern internet connections.

The more critical factor is ensuring low latency on your network. Voice communications are very sensitive to network latency, which can degrade call quality. 

As part of our onboarding process, we thoroughly test your network and simulate voice traffic to identify potential latency issues. Common causes include firewalls blocking necessary ports or network configurations that are not optimized for real-time voice data.

If we identify any latency problems, we’ll work with you to make the necessary adjustments, such as reconfiguring your firewall rules or recommending a higher-quality internet service provider. 

The goal is to ensure your network is properly prepared to support a high-quality voice-over IP experience.

How much downtime should I expect if I switch from on-premise to cloud-based phone systems?

We aim for minimal to no downtime during your transition.

While individual employees may experience a brief disruption of up to an hour to set up their new phones, there will be no true downtime where your primary business lines are unavailable.

We take a systematic approach to the migration to minimize disruption. First, we pre-configure and test the new cloud-based system in our lab environment. Then, we work closely with you to test the system on-site and ensure all phones are functional before the go-live date.

This is a significant improvement over the past ‘rip and replace’ approach, often requiring several hours or even a full day of downtime.

The key is our thorough planning and testing process, which ensures a smooth transition to the new cloud-based phone system with minimal impact on your day-to-day operations.