The setup is straightforward. 

In terms of deployment, this is what we did: We had to wait until the contract with the previous company was done; we had a three-month window to close out that contract. RCN was here six months prior to the end of that contract, and they installed the fiber line from the trunk, under the city street, into the building. They left that for the next five months. About a month prior to the end of the previous contract, RCN showed up onsite with their Juniper switch and their core and made their connection.

On the day of the cutover, which we did on a weekend, they were here running throughout the facility, coding the phones, and prepping the system. From the moment they stepped in, on a Friday morning, to when the phones were dialing, which was midday that Friday, to when everything was configured exactly the way we wanted it for Monday, - for everything to be configured precisely the way we wanted it - took less than 48 hours, two business days.

The reason it was that way - the 48 hours - is because we're a university. We have a number of lines that either need to be forwarded, dialed forward, or have certain advanced settings. We had hunt groups that needed to be reprogrammed. There were a lot of things to do, but it was fairly quick. There were guys on the operational side when we called support, and there were guys onsite. And the RCN sales guy was coordinating a lot of it.

The planning that went into it was done months in advance. We started with once-a-month phone calls leading up to month-four, when we went to once every two weeks, and then we started having two or three phone calls a week, and then we executed. The RCN guys were good.

We had five of our staff involved in the deployment. We brought in extra people because we have units all over the place. We needed individuals to direct some of that traffic, we needed some to reset some of the handsets. There were four people from RCN, and we added an assistant and three or four others and it went smoothly and it cut over without a problem.

The initial setup went pretty smoothly. The guy who came and did the setup was just a little rushed. If we had a little more time for him to teach our users, rather than his handing me some YouTube videos and pamphlets to go through, that would have been great. But that's more of an individual than RCN as a whole. Their tier-2 business response, their helpdesk, has been great with any issues I've had.

The deployment took less than a day. They were pretty quick about it. All the phones were delivered a day before, so I was able to get the phones set up and placed at each desk. I wired everything myself. When they came in, it was just a matter of going to the patch panel and they installed a secondary modem for the VoIP line. Once that was up, they switched the lines from XO Communications - our old phone company. Once they switched over, it took about an hour. We did it first thing in the morning. Total downtime was about a half hour.

In terms of the staff required for deployment, it was just me.

With the setup, RCN really did a good job. We were getting a new office and we were renegotiating our existing service, because we were only using internet. We only had one month, and RCN was able to see the urgency, pool their resources, and put extra resources in place to put the fiber in the street, connect our location, and send engineers to set up services. They required some equipment updates around the area as well to accommodate our increased bandwidth. There was a dedicated project manager who handled the entire rollout for us. In terms of deployment, if I could give a 200 percent rating, I would give it.

It was very well done and coordinated by the RCN team.

When we signed the contract they assigned an account manager, and then it was just a matter of their getting the information from us: How our existing auto attendant was set up with our previous service provider, the user list, the extensions. Once I provided that information to them, it took about a week to build our portal, build our Auto Attendant, the routing and so forth. Then it was just a matter of scheduling when we wanted to go live. It was all based on when we were moving to the new office.

We had three offices. We were moving from one of them to a new one. The deployment had to work such that the day after we moved the deployment was done for all the offices. That way, when users arrived at the new office their phones were working. It was a coordinated process.

The initial setup was straightforward. RCN had a team come in. They had already started the migration of our numbers from AT&T to their system. When the team came in, they set up the phones, completed the migration, and we were up and running. We didn't have to do anything except move out of their way. They did a great job setting that up for us. I had no issues whatsoever. The setup for us was seamless.

The whole deployment, from the time that they started the migration was about three weeks, and that was because of our closing down for a week for Christmas. Some of that was waiting for AT&T and Vonage to release numbers to RCN.

Regarding our implementation strategy, we did a test line to see if it was going to be a right fit for us and it worked fine. We had five test cases and it worked great. After that, implementation was all at once. I did everyone at one time. I killed all my contracts with AT&T and Vonage and started the process of migrating all 70-some numbers. 

I then notified the team what was going to be coming. RCN said they were setting them up in groups of five. And it worked fine. They'd get a phone plugged in, get it connected, and within ten minutes each person was up. By the end of that morning, we were pretty much done. We had already provisioned the firewall with the information RCN provided for us for our data to flow through the firewall. It was so smooth. Competitors have been trying to get me to move but I'm worried that another change and migration would be rough.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. The team of installers was well prepared and the migration was completed as we had anticipated.

After the initial review of our system and installation of RCN's required fiber, the final install was completed in half a day. Overall, we probably invested a month in the upgrade.

Our implementation strategy was to over-prepare for the change in phone systems so there would be no loss of phone or internet service. Through proper preparation and some work being completed in stages, the cut-over was executed without any major issues.

The setup was somewhat complex because we were going from regular phone lines to digital, so there were all these different avenues we had to explore. But once we were set up and things were up and running, it was a fairly smooth transition. Our rep and the gentlemen who helped install Hosted Voice were very helpful.

Setup begins before they even come here with the phones. But the actual onsite setup took about half a day. It was quick.

The initial setup was really complex. We had some problems with distributing the calls when these phones were first installed. We went through a few different types of phones that we were using at reception. I don't fully understand why, but we had gotten used to using one phone and then, a few months later, we had to switch it to something else. It was not very straightforward when they were first installed.

We were having failed transfers with some of the phones for three or four months after they were first installed. I don't know if that's part of the normal install process.

I wasn't involved in the implementation strategy. We got these RCN phones when we moved and we just explained all of the functions that we liked and needed from our old ones that we wanted to keep for our new ones.

The setup was straightforward. They come in with a pretty large brigade and they set up all the phones next to your existing phones, if you're migrating over from one platform to another. Then they'll go by department. They'll disconnect everyone, they'll connect a new phone, make sure that phone is up and running and, once that's up and running, they go to the next department. They don't just replace the phones, put them in place and leave. They make sure it's there, it's working, and that there are no problems.

On implementation day, we were there for about eight hours going through a couple of bugs here and there. It was a full day.

Regarding an implementation strategy, we went through the guidelines of what RCN had recommended and what I told you just now, that's what they recommended. We said, "Okay, that sounds about right, we can do that."

The initial setup was very easy. They have really good technicians who helped us. It was super smooth. They had good project management. We had weekly phone calls. It was great.

They came onsite and the phones are pretty simple, so we didn't need a whole lot of training, and the training was onsite.

Including planning and having to do some rewiring and construction stuff - that's what took the longest - the deployment took about 30 days from start to finish.

Our implementation strategy required that we had to go live, switch from the old system to the new system, and not have any downtime. So we condensed the deployment as much as we could.

The initial setup was very straightforward. We had an old phone line and we also had DSL. They came in and we were able to switch everything over without any problems at all. They did it over about two days. They installed phones in all the companies. At the time, we had a fourth company, which has since closed its doors. So we had four entities running without a problem. They came through and set up each phone separately and then individually walked us through how to use the phone.

They shipped the phones in and, on the first day, they did the installations of the individual phones. Then, on the second day, they came back and did training.