<Simon.Astbury@googlemail.com> wrote in message
news:1177340836.707087.144800@l77g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...[color=blue]
> Does anyone have any stats on how much money they have saved by
> installing skype for a small or medium sized companies?
> There was an article in the guardian
> [url]http://observer.guardian.co.uk/cash/story/0,,2062580,00.html[/url]
> which stated that a home user had saved 60% - "We are probably making
> a 60 per cent saving on total phone bills,'
> This is a substantial saving and i am interested in knowing if anyone
> has had the same saving for businesses?[/color]

I would not basis cheaper calls for business based on skype, for the
following reasons

1- While costs are lower than BT, they are not super cheap, you may get
better with a least cost routing supplier on existing system.
2- if your looking at a VOIP route there are others that are cheaper
3- With Skype you are looking at softphone use probably, users will get fed
up of taking calls on one phone and making on different system
4- Its locked into one provider

I like skype and it maybe useful for smaller one man band companies on the
move, but it is limited, I do think having skype is usefull for incoming
skype calls
as a marketing "call us free" and showing you forward thinking, but not
great as a means to save money.

If you are looking VOIP for a business, a far better system would be to use
SIP based providers and use an IP PBX, This would allow you to
use a range of providers, and select via rules which one to use destination
X. software like TrixBox, an example product (free and open source) allow
much poweful business uses as well, such as CRM with click to call
functions, automatic recording, voicemail and lots more. If you buy hardware
you can connect your existing phone lines in,.

I use trixbox myself as homeuser, I have I have a VOIP number in, with one
provider, and use several other providers to make calls to europe at dirt
cheapprices.
If your looking for business voip probably the cheapest is voicetrading.com.

The downside to VOIP is while you may save in call costs you may need to
invest in better Internet connection to have lots of users using VOIP at
once