Answering Machine Options

Hi,

I am considering triggering the jump from FTTC to FTTP and am struggling to get my head around whether it would be better to have an answering machine on the DECT base station or on the ATA, e.g the Gigaset N300A.

We have Panasonic DECT phones with built in answering machine on the base station at the moment, but have a real issue with the volume not being loud enough so thinking of changing the DECT handsets anyway, hence the question.

Can't really answer your question directly. It's going to depend on the characteristics of individual bits of kit, and I've never used (eg) the N300A.

We have VoIP (with Voipfone) and Panasonic DECT phones with answering machine connected via a cheapo ATA box. We had the Panasonic phones previously when using PSTN, we like them so wanted to keep them with VoIP. It all works, & we have no problems with volume.

Voipfone do "free" voicemail. I tried this, but it's more faff to get messages than just pressing a button on the phone, plus we use the answerphone to screen calls and pick up if it's a genuine call, which you can't do easily with voicemail. But this might be an option if your VoIP provider has a reasonable voicemail service.

You don't need FTTP to experiment. I played with VoIP over FTTC (30Mb) for a year before going "live", with no issues.

I would use the voicemail service offered by your VoIP provider, and get the messages as email attachments that you can pick up from anywhere.

This. I also prefer to have a VOIP service that I can use/access from anywhere too.

So whilst it's good being able to pickup the VMs, even better if you can call them back on your 'landline' if you don't want to use mobile number for whatever reason.

Handy when you're on the other side of the world.

Everyone has a different preference for local or provider based voicemail - advantages and disadvantages of both. With provider you can access from anywhere, but if you spend most time at teh base location then the local one such as an N300A is ideal - one or two presses rather than dialling in.

I use both and will say te recording an dvoice quality on the N300A is excellent - plus you can have three separate answer machines.

You can setup voip with an Indy provider to give you the best of both worlds - a “fixed” install at home and then a roaming/mobile accessible service. Typically just need to be able to maintain multiple SIP logins to the same account to make it seamless.

But you can only have voicemail in one place or the other ... on the provider's server or your own machine.

Sure. If the voicemails are in the cloud (or otherwise accessible globally) then you can access from anywhere. Keeping them locally is quite restrictive.

Typically can be setup to shoot an email with the VM as an attachment so you can listen/access the message offline.

I don't think there's a one size fits all solution. I'm retired and at home much of the time, so keeping messages locally makes sense for me. If I were away a lot, then I'd probably prefer a cloud-based service to access from wherever. Although it is possible to dial in to my Panasonic answerphone and retrieve messages remotely, unless I'm expecting something important I rarely bother.

If I ever go away for an extended period, I might switch off the Panasonic answerphone and use the VoIP voicemail. But this setup is fairly new for me, I'm still kicking the tyres and figuring out what works best.

Thanks everybody for your responses and for answering the question that I probably should have asked in the first place.

The question I actually asked was the pros and cons of having an answering machine on the phone base station or at the VOIP hub (e.g a Gigaset N300A).

I hadn't thought about using the VOIP provider service, so thank you for opening my eyes to that as another option.

I still haven't decided whether to get rid of our existing Panasonic DECT phones which do have a an answering machine in the base station, but I guess the N300A or similar gives me more options if I change the phones in the future.