Originally Posted by Sunny Day

Several years ago, I worked for a small company that lived and died by their phones. Cable hadn't gotten into the phone market, but VOIP was the new hot thing.

We used AT&T hardwired phones, an answering service and one employee was the designated employee of the week who took home the on-call cellphone, even if they had a personal cellphone. We ran a 24-hour Winter business, but all went home to catch a few hours sleep each night. The answering serviced would take night calls and if deemed important enough enough, would call the on-call. The on-call would call the customer, tell them, trucks were on the way (truth was they were in bed also). Next morning, we'd scramble to get every night phone order and all overnight faxes going. Biggest item was, customers at 2 a.m. just need reassurance something was going to be done, not just a voice mail that might not be returned for days.

Our home office was a few blocks away. The idiot owner hated everybody in our office and was determined to replace us all. Part of it was, everybody in the home office was dumb. When I mentioned satellite Internet for one of our rural offices, the bookkeeper, said "how will they get wires to the satellite?"

Anyway, the owner wanted to get VOIP with the setup through Birch, a smaller phone company. The General Manager, went off. Especially when he found out a feature was the owner couldn't listen in on any conversation without us knowing. Worse, was our sporadic Internet service. If we couldn't get phones calls, we lost business. AT&T never was down. Then the stupid rep from Birch said we didn't need an answering service, as our voice mail system would keep trying extensions or cellphones until it got a live person. The general Manager finally told the Birch guy to get THE FUCK OUT, TAKE YOUR VOIP AND DON'T COME BACK. It was that crappy.
The G.M. was a very soft-spoken guy. Bought us pop several times a day and lunch at least once a week in the Summer and almost daily in the Winter. (Our work hours were few in the Summer) 7x as many hours as we could stay awake in the Winter. If he thought VOIP was crap, it was.

Granted there have been improvements, but if your power goes out, VOIP goes out. Power goes out, AT&T still works. So how dependent on your phones are you? Chat the breeze once in awhile, get VOIP. Delivering road salt to highway departments you are under contract to in a raging snowstorm, you better be damn sure your phone will work.
Or you won't need phones the next Winter.