VoIP disaster recovery

Our phones are important to us. They are important to every business but what happens when the network goes down? How do we get our calls?

One of the major “perceived” barriers to switching to VoIP is a total misconception, “If my broadband goes down, so will my phones and I can’t be without my phones.”

If the network your phones system is on goes down, whether it is VoIP, ISDN or analogue so will your phones but the important consideration is the disaster recovery.

BT ISDN Disaster Recovery

• Option 1: All ISDN calls can be stored on BTs Voicemail service
• Option 2: You can have an “Out of Service” Message put on your line
• Option 3: You can divert all calls to an alternative number (just one though)

Analogue / Feature Line disaster recovery

• You can have all calls diverted to an alternative number

Upstream VoIP Disaster recovery

• By default, all calls are diverted to voicemail if it is set up
• All calls can be diverted to another number. Crucially, every DDI can also be diverted to a specified number and this is set up when you set up the service.

The main differences

If your are using Upstream VoIP you control your phone system, disaster recovery is pre-configured and there is NO downtime. Before you even realise there is an issue all calls will divert to voicemail and the minute you realise there is a problem you can either log into your web-portal and activate the failover or call Upstream to action it.

If you have ISDN or analogue phones lines, you need to realise there is a problem, you need to get in touch with your service provider to activate voicemail or a call divert and when the service is fixed, normally it is left to you to realise and then cancel any diverts in place.

With Upstream VoIP, as soon as your network is restored, you dial 1424 from one of your phones and all Failover instructions for that location are cancelled.

In short – you are in control and your phone lines never truly “go down”.