Last week I took the CCNA Voice course with CommSupport in London, a Cisco course designed to bridge the gap for network folks looking to get into voice over IP, without plunging them into the relatively deep end of the CCVP world. I’d never really looked too far into the voice world before but have always been interested, so it was a good opportunity to step into it.
I’d also never trained with CommSupport before, so that was pretty daunting too, I had no idea what to expect. Why they would be any different from any company might have you thinking, which is a reasonable thing to be thinking. There is one fairly major distinction that CommSupport has from other training companies – price. I was paying for this course myself, so was desperate to find the best value I could. CommSupport seemed to fit the bill, offering a real-world instructor, a dedicated stack of Cisco kit per student and a very competitive price.
I have to admit that I was wondering “how can they be offering this for so little, where’s the catch?” Other training providers offer the CCNA at anything from £1500 upwards. CommSupport are currently offering it for £295 (plus VAT of 15%). The CCNA Voice I liked the sound of was being advertised for £495. Again this course is offered by other providers from at least £1000 upwards, typically at least £1200. In fact CommSupport were offering any of the CCNA specialisms (Voice, Wireless, Security) for £495, or two for £595. This was too good to miss for me, so I took the plunge and signed up, having done a little research on the company and spoken to them on the phone.
And I don’t regret it at all. It was exactly as it said on the tin. Joe Spoto, founder of CommSupport and our instructor on this course, has clearly been out in the real world. He can relate the course material to all manner of real world scenarios to make it easier to swallow. He knows his stuff and he’s built a great thing with CommSupport. If I’m honest, having watched the CBT nuggets videos, Joe’s course structure did seem to closely match this, but then hey – it is the same material, so that isn’t a huge surprise.
Day one of the course was entirely theory, with the history of voice communications, how PBX and Key systems work, how VoIP interacts with the PSTN, encoding theory, quantization and all that jazz. Even though all theory based, I found it interesting (but then I am a massive nerd).
Day two we got our hands on the kit and started making phones ring. Day two into day three was all about different configurations, learning the different elements of setting up the Unified Communications Manager Express function of the router, digit manipulation, call routing, remote site connectivity, all good stuff.
The last day is a look at Unity Express – the voicemail (and a fair bit more) system. You look at how this works, the various flavours, configuring and making it work. After that there is a little mop up review and you are all done.
During the course Joe does little break/fix sessions. If you’ve finished a lab, he’ll come and break your setup and then you have to work out what he did and put it right again, which was different from anything else I’ve experienced before and a nice addition.
The goal of the CCNA Voice course is to equip students to be able to install and manage a small VoIP deployment of up to 240 users and connect it to the PSTN. I definitely now feel that this is well within my grasp so I am grateful for the course, and it comes highly recommended from me.
I’ve also booked my exam for this course for Saturday, so fingers crossed I know it as well as I think I do!
About the company and their pricing…. Joe told us that he grew fed up with the notion that IT training has to be expensive, and so decided to do something about it. He founded CommSupport in his garden shed which he fitted out with all the kit he needed, and as soon as he grew big enough moved into offices in London. He now also has offices in Birmingham and Manchester. The format has been so successful that other companies are sprouting up copying it trying to compete with CommSupport. The full story is on the CommSupport website. Hopefully this will lead to the major players in the training world lowering their prices, and create a competitive market. There are thousands of willing trainees out there who just can’t afford to get trained. Maybe that will start to change.
What you get with other training providers is a little bit of polish, which you won’t get with CommSupport – you bring your own laptop and buy your own lunch, provide your own notebook and materials etc. But really that’s about it. I think most people would sacrifice a free lunch and the use of the training company’s PC is if saved them a few hundred quid, especially if like me they were paying for it themselves.
