Google Hangouts (Classic) vs. Lumen Next-Gen Voice

Had I completed this review a couple years ago, I would have given a rating of 9 or 10 as Hangouts (Classic) is an excellent product. However, now that Google Chat has succeeded Hangouts, I would not recommend that any new users begin using it where other more modern options are available. Android users who want an internet based instant messaging that also supports calling and video calling could benefit from using Hangouts (Classic) as Google Chat requires the user to also have Google Meet installed to make video calls and there is no voice only calling option.

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CenturyLink SIP is an acceptable solution if you have an on-prem PBX (ShoreTel, Mitel, etc) that accepts SIP. I have found a better solution is to run two different carriers through SD-WAN (such as Bigleaf or Velocloud MSR) and use a provider like BCMOne (formerly NexVortex) to manage the SIP.

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• Google Hangouts (Classic) is embedded within Gmail's scheduler, so setting up the link is as quick as a click of the button. It's a one-step process.
• Google Hangouts (Classic) is user-friendly and [has] features to share screens easily.
• Google Hangouts (Classic) is much easier to use than its competitors.
• Google Hangouts (Classic) have [a] good connection time and there are few glitches.

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• Reliable service
• Supports wide range of key features
• They do have high levels of support where you can receive real answers

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• I would like to see improved video support, so that saved videos can be sent back and forth via Hangouts more easily, without having to start a separate meet chat
• More pronounced notifications of messages would be helpful; pop up notifications are good, but once there is one, additional messages do not pop up
• Custom muting times would be great, so that if I am in a 90 minute Zoom meeting, I can set it for that time; right now, it is 1 hour or 2 hours. Easy to forget.

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• Lumen-Centurylink has suffered from many noticeable outages in the last few years - this is a blow to their reputation that they still have to recover from.
• Lumen-CenturyLink does not peer well enough with OTHER carriers - they depend on their own network to give you SIP, which means less true redundancy.
• Lumen-CenturyLink needs a better customer portal/interface to handle failover, see the real-time status, etc.

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The tool is almost self-implemented. It is likely to be available in every pc or mobile device a user or potential user might have, and all you need to do is adding the company's account and you are done. Once you are setted up, you have almost all actual communication methods available in one tool

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Google Hangouts works great and does not require a lot of work to troubleshoot. Everything is simple and easy to use. Google provides all of the tools that one requires to utilize Google Hangouts and any information can be found in the built-in help tools. There is also a forum for users to report issues and typically, Google responds well and will try to work out any issues.

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SIP service support is definitely improving. A few years ago I would have rated them a 2. Now a 7. But, Lumen still needs a better portal experience to report and see a real-time status. Also to manage SIP failover functions in a WYSIWIG/GUI interface. When Lumen's network breaks in a larger outage, there are long hold times and support is not good.

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Google is the white cotton socks of the conferencing world. It’s a great ad-hoc tool, but not too much more. If you are not looking to spend money or operate completely on WiFi (without data charges), it’s a great free option as well. The benefit of being free and open is also the liability. It doesn’t have a great integration story with other corporate tools, but [it doesn’t have to] if you aren’t looking for that. All in all, it’s as helpful and ubiquitous as a public payphone…without the pay…and with a video capability.

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CenturyLink [Enterprise Voice SIP] was the incumbent, so switching providers, particularly for our HQ was an overwhelming task for our small team. We did migrate from the legacy CenturyLink voice product EIPT to the new Voice Complete solution as well as upgrade our US and UK circuits along with a hardware upgrade of the managed PE routers in each location. We also decided to implement RingCentral in one of our very small international branches but the lack of features is problematic. We still have T1 service in our other international branches but are looking to go full cloud SaaS PBX there, likely through Microsoft Teams, which we already use for messaging. There are some complexities, as we can't port our numbers directly yet and need to set up an additional CUBE router for SIP. Eventually we hope to get to fully SaaS via Teams.

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• I believe it was part of the google suite that was purchased. It was worth the cost as it was cheaper. I believe it is now free, but also becoming deprecated. It is much better to use Teams, Discord, Telegram, etc. Google does not provide enough support or features to make using hangouts worth it these days.

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• Faster learning
• Increased numbers of calls
• Organization of calls

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