Skype As An Office Phone System

We use Skype as our phone system at DataScaler.  It works surprisingly well.  Each person has a Plantronics CS50-USB wireless headset.   These high-quality headsets play well with Skype and allow us to wander away from the desk to take calls.  Using SkypeIn and SkypeOut, it's nearly indistinguishable from having a "real" phone.  We save a ton on long distance fees, phone lines, a PBX, and desk phones.  The headsets aren't cheap (~$180), but that's all you need.  A good desk phone will run at least that much if not 2-3x more.

At a previous company, we spent $60,000 on an Avaya PBX and phones for 40 people.  At a subsequent company, we spent $15,000 on an Asterisk-based system for a similar number of people.  We thought that was a killer deal.  Skype will cost us 1/100 of that and we don't need to pay for phone lines.

We also use the Skype Business Control Panel to allow me to centrally manage all the SkypeIn numbers and put SkypeOut credits in the individual accounts.  It works very well.  My only complaints are:

• The Skype website is hard to navigate.  It took me a long time to find what I needed to get started.
• I couldn't use a credit card to pay.  I wanted to buy a large block of SkypeIn numbers, so I needed to spend $200 or so.  In order to do this, I had to open a Moneybookers.com account, then transfer money into it, then transfer the money to Skype.  This process took several days and was a pain.  Apparently, they do this to reduce fraud.

We don't yet have true PBX functionality (dial by name, call transfers, etc.), but we intend to use a managed service on top of Skype to provide that.  More on that when we roll it out.