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Lumen Next-Gen Voice Reviews & Insights

Score7.7 out of 10

11 Reviews and Ratings

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Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Lumen Next-Generation SIP Voice Services are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Business Problems Solved

Multiple clients have used Lumen/CenturyLink for SIP handoff, and their experiences have been mostly positive with occasional interruptions and downtime. The use of SIP offers resiliency and failover, providing advantages over traditional PRI and voice trunks. The voice quality is dependent on the ISP/carrier, such as Lumen/CenturyLink, which has provided good and reliable service. While using Lumen/CenturyLink may incur costs and delays compared to other competitors offering similar services, Zach, the account representative, has been helpful in ensuring the best value for the clients.

One key use case of CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP Services is its organization-wide implementation as part of a distributed platform sold as a service. It is utilized for inbound and outbound voice PSTN services at the US-based HQ. The solution needed to be reliable, cost-effective, low maintenance, and support high availability. CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP has proven to be very reliable and more affordable compared to other phone companies. It offers the flexibility of modern VoIP services with old school telecom grade reliability. The service is used across the entire organization, delivering services to the corporate office and other locations via a hybrid VOIP phone system. This setup allows for handling calls without the need for standard copper phone lines or costly hosted services. Additionally, international calls can be made without incurring extra long-distance charges.

Lumen Next-Gen Voice Reviews

7 Reviews

Worth the price!

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP was very reliable for the time that I used it. Compared to other phone companies it is definitely the more affordable option. It can imitate any other phone service at half the cost with just as many functions. It served very well for the time that I used it.

Pros

  • Reliable
  • Long Lasting
  • Affordable

Cons

  • Call dropping
  • Pretty difficult to navigate customer service
  • No free trials

Likelihood to Recommend

My company mainly consists of inbound and outbound calls. Having a system like CenturyLink Enterprise can offer a lot of flexibility. Since we have many employees it helps that the system is easy to navigate. Most platforms do not include shortcuts or quicker routes like Century Link Enterprise does.
Verified User
Employee in Legal (5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Lumen Next-Gen Voice
2 years of experience

Best value for your buck

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

They have provided good, reliable service. We have incurred costs and delays in using their service vs different competitors that offer the same service. Zach is our account rep and he has been awesome and always makes sure we are getting the best bang for our buck. We find it super helpful that we are able to make international calls without extra long-distance charges.

Pros

  • Customer service
  • Open to changes
  • Streamline support

Cons

  • The wait times on queue
  • Have an online support chat agent
  • Auto pay

Likelihood to Recommend

We have many business partners all around the world and communication is a huge thing for us. we use to jump on calls thru a cellphone provider but the service will be awful since it was super far away. As soon as we upgraded to CenturyLink, the issues are now fixed we no longer need to worry about hearing feedback on the phone.
Edgard Ocampo
IT system Admin in Information Technology at Arachnid 360 (51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Lumen Next-Gen Voice
2 years of experience

CenturyLink SIP - getting better, but still room for improvement

Rating: 6 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have multiple clients using Lumen/CenturyLink for SIP handoff. The experience is mostly positive, but there have been interruptions/downtime. I believe there are better providers/solutions out there if you are willing to spend a bit more.

The benefits of SIP are resiliency and failover that traditional PRI and traditional voice trunks don't offer. The disadvantages are that the voice quality is dependent on the ISP/carrier for quality. In this case, Lumen/CenturyLink.

Pros

  • Failover.
  • SIP handoff for SIP based on prem PBX like Mitel, ShoreTel, etc.
  • Lumen-CenturyLink is improving in communication, organization, and reliability.

Cons

  • 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.

Likelihood to Recommend

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.
Scott Sundby
CTO (Chief Technical Officer) in Information Technology at Digital323 (11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Lumen Next-Gen Voice
3 years of experience

Lumen provides great services and features if you can survive the implementation process and cost

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use CenturyLink [Enterprise] Voice SIP services for our US-based HQ for inbound and outbound voice PSTN services. We needed a solution that would be reliable, cost-effective, low maintenance, have good support, support HA, and have the potential to be deployed in other branch locations if necessary one day.

Pros

  • Reliable
  • Low maintenance

Cons

  • Initially complicated
  • Took a long time to implement

Likelihood to Recommend

[CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP is] good for environments that require tried and true SIP services, where high-quality voice is a requirement, and backed by a large, global company, with global footprint. CenturyLink voice is also well-suited to environments that want to use MPLS to interconnect their offices, as the same voice circuits can be used for data as well; however, the circuits are relatively expensive, even as far as MPLS goes, and watch out for Lumen's "fees" that often aren't included when you see their quote. Also beware if you require a rapid turn-up or have a very small or inexperienced staff, as MPLS with BGP deployments are great once they're up and running, but can be complex to design and implement.
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Lumen Next-Gen Voice
2 years of experience

Level3, CenturyLink, and now Lumen

Rating: 6 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP Services is used by the whole organization and is part of our distributed platform that we sell as a service. We have worked with them and used this service for almost the entire history of the company.

Pros

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

Cons

  • Compared to their competition, their portal is impossible to use
  • Any needed changes feel like moving a mountain
  • Although they do have qualified support people, getting in touch with them or getting anything done is very difficult

Likelihood to Recommend

This is somewhat tricky to answer. They are many aggregate providers that as a large portion of their business, resell Lumen. Somewhat ironically they do a much better job at supporting and selling the Lumen service than Lumen itself.
Craig Nichols
Devops Engineer in Engineering at Jive Communications, Inc (1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
Lumen Next-Gen Voice
8 years of experience

Solid, tier-1 grade VoIP service for enterprise on-prem telephony.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Old school telecom grade reliability, but with the flexibility of modern VoIP services.

Pros

  • Reliable.
  • Scaleable.
  • Good support.

Cons

  • Portal management could be better.
  • Reporting is somewhat archaic.

Likelihood to Recommend

CL's SIP product is well suited to traditional enterprise customers who have med to large on-prem telephony deployments, and need to migrate from legacy TDM circuits, or are combining multiple deployments into one central solution.
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
Vetted Review
Lumen Next-Gen Voice
5 years of experience

Decent service with flexibility

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We currently use CenturyLink Enterprise Voice SIP Services across our entire organization. Services are being delivered to our Corporate office then distributed amongst our different locations via a Hybrid VOIP phone system. This assists us in handling calls across our entire organization without the need for standard copper phone lines at each location or costly Hosted services.

Pros

  • Response time to service outages
  • Customer portal has several self service options

Cons

  • Sales staff is not very responsive

Likelihood to Recommend

The service is well suited to a larger organization that requires multiple call paths or the flexibility to add or remove call paths regularly without the need for physical installation of copper lines. SIP Service is probably too costly for a smaller organization without the need for multiple lines.
Verified User
Manager in Corporate (51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Lumen Next-Gen Voice
3 years of experience