This sounds trivial but for some reason it isn't.
We have FTTP with Andrews & Arnold; been with them for some years.
We also have a VOIP system with 5 Snom POE phones. One of these 5 is
at my house.
Everything is on fixed IPs.
For the 4 phones, A&A assign four IPs. This is some sort of "managed
PBX" which they implement on their servers. Everybody I talk to laughs
at having four IPs for four phones :)
A 5th IP is used for our LAN. The router is a Draytek 2960 with
pass-through for the four phones, port 5060.
The system has mostly worked but with frequent weird behaviour. For a
long time, call transfers would fail. A&A tracked this down to timing problems on inter-server handovers. More recently, we have the whole
"ring group" ringing but when the call is answered the other phones
keep ringing, until somebody goes round them all and picks them up and
puts them back down.
If we had a lot of incoming calls, the system would be unworkable, so
I don't understand how they get away with this. They supplied all the
phones too.
At home I have a "landline" with an old Panasonic 3x8 PBX and have the
number with Voipfone.co.uk and a -u50 Grandstream box. That works
perfectly. I have enquired with Voipfone about the business stuff but
they never replied so probably not interested.
But clearly "going analog" with a similar setup, and four old style
phones and an old PBX, would work great. For 30 years we had a Siemens
ISDN phone system which was 100.000% reliable. But then how would one
set up the 5th phone at my house which is on the same ring group?
A&A is a good ISP but they have a serious "attitude issue" whereby the customer is a bit stupid. I think this is the result of many years of everybody in Usenet saying they are the best UK ISP for business, and
it has gone to their heads :) Well I certainly would not use say
Vodafone (OK for a phone but a script monkey call centre in India,
like most) but I find Voipfone OK for my home FTTP (they do FTTP as
well as basic VOIP).
I am all ears for any recommendations :)
On Wed 07/01/2026 12:19, Postman Pat wrote:
A&A is a good ISP but they have a serious "attitude issue" whereby the
customer is a bit stupid. I think this is the result of many years of
everybody in Usenet saying they are the best UK ISP for business, and
it has gone to their heads :) Well I certainly would not use say
I am all ears for any recommendations :)
Two in the same area:-
Zen Internet who are based in Rochdale. 01706 902000
FirstComEurope (started life as voip.co.uk) who are based in Bolton.
0333 023 7000
Sipgate, whilst not serving private users any more still do business
users and have several advantages over some others. 020 3393 3909
You can but ring and ask?
At home I have a "landline" with an old Panasonic 3x8 PBX and have the
number with Voipfone.co.uk and a -u50 Grandstream box. That works
perfectly. I have enquired with Voipfone about the business stuff but
they never replied so probably not interested.
But clearly "going analog" with a similar setup, and four old style
phones and an old PBX, would work great. For 30 years we had a Siemens
ISDN phone system which was 100.000% reliable. But then how would one
set up the 5th phone at my house which is on the same ring group?
A&A is a good ISP but they have a serious "attitude issue" whereby the customer is a bit stupid. I think this is the result of many years of everybody in Usenet saying they are the best UK ISP for business, and
it has gone to their heads :) Well I certainly would not use say
Vodafone (OK for a phone but a script monkey call centre in India,
like most) but I find Voipfone OK for my home FTTP (they do FTTP as
well as basic VOIP).
I am all ears for any recommendations :)
A&A is a good ISP but they have a serious "attitude issue" whereby the customer is a bit stupid. I think this is the result of many years of everybody in Usenet saying they are the best UK ISP for business, and
it has gone to their heads :)
On 07/01/2026 12:19, Postman Pat wrote:
A&A is a good ISP but they have a serious "attitude issue" whereby the customer is a bit stupid. I think this is the result of many years of everybody in Usenet saying they are the best UK ISP for business, and
it has gone to their heads :)
FWIW I would tend to agree with this. I have recently started to use A&A
as a VOIP provider, having finally migrated to FTTP. The people on the
sales & support lines seem competent but almost smug; you can imagine
them rolling their eyes, either at the other businesses whose
incompetence they have to deal with, or the clueless (not really)
customer on the line.
I am certainly not saying 'don't use them', but they could do with
paying attention to their bedside manner IMO
jkn <jkn+nin@nicorp.co.uk> wrote:
On 07/01/2026 12:19, Postman Pat wrote:
A&A is a good ISP but they have a serious "attitude issue" whereby the
customer is a bit stupid. I think this is the result of many years of
everybody in Usenet saying they are the best UK ISP for business, and
it has gone to their heads :)
FWIW I would tend to agree with this. I have recently started to use A&A
as a VOIP provider, having finally migrated to FTTP. The people on the
sales & support lines seem competent but almost smug; you can imagine
them rolling their eyes, either at the other businesses whose
incompetence they have to deal with, or the clueless (not really)
customer on the line.
I am certainly not saying 'don't use them', but they could do with
paying attention to their bedside manner IMO
I've never had to talk to them, but I also got that impression reading their CEO's blog. Particularly with respect to dispute resolution, the attitude
of 'we're right, why do we need to pay a pesky dispute resolution service?' seems too common:
https://www.revk.uk/search?q=dispute
Then there was the cunning scheme they came up with to work around Ofcom's rules about number porting, and why porting out A&A-owned numbers might be tricky:
https://www.revk.uk/2014/03/the-new-number-tax.html
Although I can understand a certain weariness when they have to deal with BT all day long, so in those instances maybe they are indeed always right...
(and the above does suggest Ofcom come with similar levels of craziness)
Theo
If one used a dedicated VOIP PBX at the office, how would one
implement the extra one phone at a different location?
On Tue 13/01/2026 15:07, Postman Pat wrote:
If one used a dedicated VOIP PBX at the office, how would one
implement the extra one phone at a different location?
The remote voip phone sits on the broadband at its location and is >programmed to connect to the PBX external address.
One of the times when a static external address is really useful.
Thankfully most SPs of this type of connection can and do offer such.
Woody <harrogate3@ntlworld.com> wrote:
On Tue 13/01/2026 15:07, Postman Pat wrote:
If one used a dedicated VOIP PBX at the office, how would one
implement the extra one phone at a different location?
The remote voip phone sits on the broadband at its location and is
programmed to connect to the PBX external address.
One of the times when a static external address is really useful.
Thankfully most SPs of this type of connection can and do offer such.
What about security? A friend with VOIP got hacked and lost about -u10 > :)
| Sysop: | Amessyroom |
|---|---|
| Location: | Fayetteville, NC |
| Users: | 54 |
| Nodes: | 6 (1 / 5) |
| Uptime: | 22:46:58 |
| Calls: | 742 |
| Files: | 1,218 |
| D/L today: |
6 files (8,794K bytes) |
| Messages: | 186,546 |
| Posted today: | 1 |