IVR Issue

[smccloud]

I have been helping my brother-in-law with his business phone system and they wanted an IVR enabled. Easy to do, right?

Well, not so much in the end. Their setup is as follows.

CenturyLink SIP trunk <-> POTS line <-> HT813 <-> Incredible PBX 2020.

Everything works great unless the IVR is enabled. When enabled, if someone calls in the calls do not disconnect when they hang up and all calls end up going to their CenturyLink voicemail instead of the voicemail on Incredible PBX. We had tried to talk to CenturyLink about going to a straight SIP trunk to their PBX and that went nowhere since they couldn't understand why someone would want to do that.

Am I better off just recommending they port their number to another SIP provider like VOIP.ms or ClearlyIP? If so, what is the recommendation for a provider for a small business?

 

[Halea]

I don't know much about CenturyLink SIP trunks, but if it's a standard VOIP SIP trunk why do you need to go through a conversion to POTS? Is it VOIP that ends on an analog jack of the ISP modem like with Optimum?
As for LNP, there are many very good origination providers out there. I prefer barebones, so I use BulkVS both for my personal setup and business.

 

[smccloud]

I don't know much about CenturyLink SIP trunks, but if it's a standard VOIP SIP trunk why do you need to go through a conversion to POTS? Is it VOIP that ends on an analog jack of the ISP modem like with Optimum?
As for LNP, there are many very good origination providers out there. I prefer barebones, so I use BulkVS both for my personal setup and business.

It's not a standard SIP trunk, they will not let any device other than theirs connect to it. i.e. vendor lock-in. I will tell them we may need to look into a new phone provider. As of right now, the IVR has been disabled.

 

[Eliad]

it is a bit weird. For troubleshooting did you try to connect another POTS line to HT813 ? It might be something going on with HT813 setup and not with Centurylink digital phone line.
Of course another option is to port the number to a SIP provider and then you wont have to deal with HT813 setup at all. To begin with you could just sign up with a VOIP provider, get a new DID and do some experimenting and then forward Centurylink phone number to the new VOIP DID, when satisfied you can port CenturyLink number to the new VOIP provider.

 

[smccloud]

it is a bit weird. For troubleshooting did you try to connect another POTS line to HT813 ? It might be something going on with HT813 setup and not with Centurylink digital phone line.
Of course another option is to port the number to a SIP provider and then you wont have to deal with HT813 setup at all. To begin with you could just sign up with a VOIP provider, get a new DID and do some experimenting, when satisfied you can port CenturyLink number to the new VOIP provider.

Sadly,

I do not have another POTS line to connect to the HT813. I do also have to figure out how to get their security system to be able to call out using the PBX.

 

[Eliad]

Sadly,

I do not have another POTS line to connect to the HT813. I do also have to figure out how to get their security system to be able to call out using the PBX.

Then sign up with a VOIP provider. VOIP.MS is quite easy to do this and then get a DID from them. Register the new VOIP trunk in your PBX. Test this and see if it work well. Then have CenturyLink phone number forwarded to the new VOIP DID and see if this works. This experiment will cost you less than $5.
BULKVS last time when I checked did not let you sign up using a public email address.