Katrina LA asked:


There is increasing awareness of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in the Australian marketplace of late, and understandably so. VoIP has the potential to revolutionise the way we communicate.

Much of the hype has been around residential VoIP, rather than business VoIP communications. It is crucial to understand that major differences exist between residential and business grade VoIP solutions. Relying on a residential grade VoIP service can have disastrous effects for a business, including loss of sound quality in phone calls and down time where your business’ ability to communicate may be cut off entirely. The integration of a business grade VoIP solution has many cost and efficiency benefits for Australian Small to Medium Businesses (SMBs).

The most obvious advantages of a business-grade VoIP solution are the reductions in call and line rental costs, however, there are many other significant business advantages for SMBs of all sizes to realise:

* Increased productivity by integrating VoIP with the computer desktop and allowing features such as Click2Dial from Outlook

* Increased business metric capabilities from detailed reporting on inbound and outbound call patterns

* Vastly improved and centralised personal attendant and reception capabilities allowing visibility of all staff extensions in a consolidated view, simplifying transfers to extensions and voicemail

* Awareness of an individual’s location as ‘available’, ‘busy’ or ‘out of the office until 2pm’

* Increased efficiency from converging the voice and data networks (operating both voice and data on the one network)

To decide how best to integrate VoIP with your existing voice and data infrastructure you must have a clear understanding of your business drivers and the results you wish to achieve.

VoIP Gateways

Ideal times to consider the introduction of a VoIP solution are during an office relocation, or during times of high growth. An excellent entry level solution for businesses who wish to experience the benefits provided by VoIP is to connect their phone system to PSTN via a VoIP gateway device. A VoIP gateway device is a simple piece of hardware that allows the basic integration of VoIP with a traditional phone system, most often without having to physically change any configuration.

Pacific Internet’s VoIP gateway is connected via a business-grade broadband service and will send calls destined for external locations (whether local, national, mobiles, international or another VoIP service) across the VoIP network and into the traditional phone line at the destination point. It is Pacific Internet that maintains connectivity to the traditional phone line. This scenario allows for the seamless integration between the two networks (PSTN and VoIP) and a traditional phone system to co-exist with a VoIP solution. The advantage of a gradual migration to a total VoIP solution is that it allows you to immediately appreciate some of the benefits of VoIP, without the upfront cost of replacing your entire existing voice infrastructure.

Connecting to Traditional Voice Networks via VoIP

A number of scenarios are available to connect your phone system to the traditional PSTN via VoIP, the most common of which are:

* Full replacement of traditional analogue or digital lines for all inbound and outbound calls, providing for standard geographic Direct Inward Dial (DID) numbers to be allocated to the VoIP service, for example, 02 9999 9999 for Sydney, 07 3333 3333 for Brisbane, 02 4900 0000 for Newcastle

* Partial replacement of traditional analogue or digital lines for all outbound calls

* Installation of additional VoIP lines to sustain call overflow during unexpected or regular peaks in outbound calls traffic

* Additional lines for calling only specific, designated prefixes. For example, making all outbound calls to mobiles via VoIP.

Each of these scenarios can be configured to either work automatically or to require manual user selection with most phone systems. For example, if VoIP is being installed solely to make all outbound calls to mobiles then the phone system can be set-up via Least Cost Routing (LCR) to automatically use a VoIP line when an individual calls a mobile.

An important consideration when integrating your traditional telephone system with VoIP is to very clearly understand current calling behaviour. For consideration are items such as:

* How many simultaneous inbound calls does the business receive?

* How many simultaneous outbound calls does the business make?

* How many spare PSTN ports (or trunk ports) does the telephone system have?

* Are the spare PSTN ports for analogue lines or for digital (ISDN) lines?

* If there are currently insufficient spare PSTN ports, can the phone system be cost-effectively upgraded with additional cards to provide sufficient port capacity?

Once you have a clear understanding of your current call behaviour and phone system, you can accurately determine how many VoIP lines are required and the resulting demands this will place on business-grade broadband service. You must consider bandwidth requirements, segregation of voice from data, and Quality of Service (QoS).

As your VoIP provider, Pacific Internet, can make qualified recommendations on the best configuration to achieve your desired business benefits. Integrating VoIP with an existing business data network and phone system takes a significant amount of careful planning and it is crucial that this step not be overlooked, however, it is an ideal way to test a VoIP solution and immediately start to appreciate some of the cost and efficiency benefits that VoIP can provide.



Protect your VOIP network

Angela Hayden asked:


The essential part of any business is communication and this gap can lead to misunderstanding; so at the managerial level, communication is a challenging topic with difficulties and high costs, especially if the business is on outsourcing or have offices across the world. Well, considering the cost, functionality, reliability, scalability and security; the emergence of IP PBX has moved the organizations to avail the innumerable benefits associated with it, contrary to the past modes of communication. IP PBX solution offers the services which help to reduce the monthly telephony charges with more of voice quality feature; this service is offered by the Internet telephony.

To avail the services of cheaper telephony charges, users have to avail VoIP PBX systems on their Linux operating system and the handsets used are referred as SIP phone. The SIP or Session Initiation Protocol is a switching protocol to control the user’s telephone calls over the Internet. Thus, while using the IP PBX solutions, user's call between the subscribers of the same VoIP service providers completely stays on the network whereas calls from the non-subscribes are terminated to PSTN i.e. Public Switched Telephone Network. Well, user can not only use the services of IP PBX but he can also sell this solution to numberless business houses.

Many businesses are nowadays opting for virtual PBX solutions as they are simpler and easier to install and configure compared to traditional communication system. To implement PBX VoIP solutions, any business or company has to install the IP PBX in its headquarter and distribute the employees IP phone with the VoIP adapter. With this set-up users can make in-house and out-house calling routed through Internet at a substantial rate, moreover, user can add additional phone connections and extensions. Thus, before replacing the PSTN to IP PBX solutions with Internet telephony, a user must be thorough with the services and its usability.



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Kieron James asked:


What is Asterisk?

Asterisk is an open source PBX, or "Private Branch eXchange", but such a simple description barely does it justice. Asterisk is, in fact, the leading telephony engine and tool kit in the world - released under GPL or "General Public License", and therefore available for download free of charge - allowing flexible communications solutions be created by developers and integrators alike. Not only is the Asterisk software itself, free, but it runs on Linux BSD ("Berkeley Software Distribution", a.k.a. "Berkeley Unix") emulated Microsoft Windows and Macintosh OS X such that it can offer interoperability with almost all standards-based telephony equipment at relatively low cost.

How and Where is Asterisk Deployed?

Asterisk can be deployed as a gateway, as a feature or media server, or in a call centre where it can provide the backbone of a complete ACD or "Automated Call Distribution" system for example. Asterisk can provide a bridge between the existing PSTN ("Public Switched Telephone Network") and IP or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol") telephony which is rapidly becoming a mainstream service. Asterisk supports a wide range of telecommunications standards and protocols - H.323, SIP ("Session Initiation Protocol"), MGCP ("Media Gateway Control Protocol"), etc. - and its modular design means that it can convert from one to another with relative ease. In fact, a total of four APIs ("Applications Programming Interfaces") are defined as loadable modules so the Asterisk core itself, does not deal with call connection, codec translation and other functions that can be performed elsewhere.

In terms of features and functionality, Asterisk is streets ahead of many proprietary systems including those at the high end of the market. Conference bridging, IVR ("Interactive Voice Response"), auto attendant and voicemail capabilities are all included, as is Unified Messaging which allows voice, fax, SMS and email messages to be accessed via a single mailbox.

How is Asterisk Used by Telecoms Service Providers?

Telephone service providers can take advantage of Asterisk for the provision of feature servers, voicemail systems, prepaid calling solutions, etc., all of which are more flexible and less expensive than those provided by alternative means. Asterisk is deployed on millions of servers worldwide to manage VoIP telephony for consumers and businesses, for example and requires no additional hardware. In fact many VoIP service providers nowadays, not only support Asterisk, but are explicitly designing their own services to work with Asterisk. Incoming and outgoing calls can be handled by different VoIP or telecoms service providers if need be, which can be useful if one telephone service provider allows only incoming VoIP calls to avoid the provision of directory services, etc.. It may be of course that a telephone service provider boycotts VoIP altogether, but this need not necessarily preclude the use of VoIP; Asterisk can convert calls between TDM ("Time Division Multiplexing") and VoIP, and back again, as they leave or enter the carrier network. Asterisk also supports a range of hardware for the connection of existing digital and analogue telephony equipment.



VOIP Security made Easy

Michael Lemm asked:


Here's the question .... how can you convince your management that a VoIP solution will support your small business?

The best argument for VOIP is lower communication costs ... but it's not the only reason.

I would suggest using hybrid solutions. Where the bulk of communication, voice, and video are done through VOIP .... and emergency services "fall back" in case of Internet fail is done with minimal classical PSTN solutions.

When I say VOIP from now on I mean 90 % VOIP and some minimal PSTN add-ons.

Why VOIP?

1- Lower communication costs ....

While this is basically clear it still needs to be demonstrated. Assume you have a company that most of its calls are from "overseas" to the USA and vice versa.

You need to get the cost of all such calls currently on one side .... and then compute what would be the cost in case all Intercontinental calls went through a VOIP system.

Now you have the number of calls * local call quantity* local call cost.

You can compare the costs in both situations.

a. I would take the worst case scenario where none of the calls in either side ends in a VOIP end station like Packet8. To make the comparison complete you should add all static costs as well: equipment cost, support cost etc.

b. Simply compare the price of adding a 2MBPS PRI line to increasing your company's Internet connection BW by 2 MBPS. That will show a lot to VOIP's favor.

c. Long distance calls are severely affected by duration of the call. While local calls and VOIP goes into the PSTN, are much less affected by the duration. In some places in state calls are not charged individually but a monthly payment is done.

d. Equipment cost per end station is lower. While this is almost always true you need to prove that too by talking to a VOIP equipment provider, for example AVAYA, Cisco, NORTEL. And comparing the prices in both instances.

2. Adding new features to an existing PBX is messy most of the time .... while adding new features, capabilities and capacity is easy in VOIP.

3. A unified communication that has VOIP and IP running on the same enterprise infrastructure is easier to manage .... but of course needs more expertise.

4. You can have 'local' numbers anywhere a VOIP provider has a presence. Want to establish a presence in another state or country - start with a VOIP number in the new location that is answered by an existing office.

5. It allows you to virtualize your office. For example, a company provides after hours customer support by employing people to work from home in four time zones. VOIP allows the company's PABX to be extended cheaply and easily into their home ... even though they are in different countries and serviced by different telcos/ISPs.

6. Besides lower costs in contrast to PSTN, VoIP services provide better roaming, a possibility to quicker office relocation and total independence from local telephone companies (meaning that in theory you can buy VoIP services from any service provider on the globe). With VoIP services you can build a PBX which serves the same voice services to all employees around the globe thus making it possible to build virtual offices. You can also easily integrate voice, e-mail and presence services with VoIP technologies.

7. More advantages include .... Ubiquity through Unified Messaging, phone mobility, geographic growth through MPLS networks using centralized services, 50% less cabling in LAN, use a portable with VoIP Client plus headsets and digital/voip phones cease to be necessary, corporate voice can go through a data MPLS network, you can receive calls over the internet on your contact center.

Keep in mind that while trying to convince your company to favor a VOIP solution ... it is also important to be open and explain all the pros and cons, everything.

* Quality of voice is similar to regular PSTN solutions but not exactly the same as POTS. It might be undiscernibly but still some difference exists. How close the quality of VOIP depends on how well your company's infrastructure is ready for VOIP, how good an SLA (Service Level Agreement) you have with you Internet Service Provider.

* When the Internet is attacked intentionally or unintentionally all VOIP equipment, end points, VOIP phones will be affected. It is very rare that a PSTN system is brought down except when a catastrophe happens and everyone is trying to call everyone.

* Voip gained such a bad reputation over the last few years, as everyone still keeps talking about low call costs and free calls. VoIP is a reasonable cost installation but not Cheap at least if you use decent kit. If you try and do everything on the cheap then you get bad call quality etc and loads of hate mail from management.

There you go ... most everything you need to develop a strong argument for implementing a VoIP solution in your company. For additional assistance to work through all the specifics .... and find the most cost effective providers (hardware and services) .... I suggest using Business-Voip-Solution.com. Their help is NO COST to you .... another advantage.



Protect your VOIP network

Vikram Kumar asked:


Gone are the regular phone sets! With the busy lifestyle and the need to be always abreast with everything, the consideration of initiating a cheaper but reliable communication access is most possible these days. With the advent of Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP made communication, both long distance and local calls feasible, cheaper and faster. Interested to know more about the details how VoIP works? Then, make sure to read the latest VoIP news over the net including the available VoIP reviews via the sites that offer objectives reviews in the field of technology.

So with the VoIP news that would make you more interested in setting up VoIP services? If you’re hesitant to set up VoIP service, try considering the new VoIP reviews in the All the Talk site. But first, consider how VoIP works and see if this set up is just for you.

You’ll need to have a reliable broadband connection set up before you could take advantage of the VoIP services. Commonly known as the IP Telephony services, VoIP reviews indicate that this service actually carries signals as digital audio via the speech data compression process. And as early as 1973, VoIP news sprung all over the technology field. From then on to date, there were hundreds of VoIP reviews made making VoIP topic as one of the highly regarded topic in the web. So while essential VoIP news spread all over the world, further VoIP reviews made it clear that there are other facets of VoIP services that need to improve in the course of years. Aside from the functionality of service, the quality of voice transmission and VoIP’s capability to handle emergency calls compared to a regular mobile or landline phones are probed.

In addition to such concerns, VoIP news release in March posted at All the Talk site indicate how VoIP is greatly affected with the previous business recession, the reason being is the heightened cancellation of back to back VoIP services subscriptions. Although VoIP news indicate development and earnings in the VoIP world, All the Talk site reports on one VoIP reviews that there are further developments related to VoIP and its services.

For one, All the Talk reports how the recession affects the VoIP business moving forward. According to the VoIP News published on March 26, 2008, the falling revenue in the VoIP industry made it possible for the recession to take place. This is also true for many businesses holding the use of VoIP services. Yet, there’s a growing concern if the VoIP service is here to stay or not. With the recent VoIP news, it shows that recent developments related to VoIP services include the availability of VoIP to the mobile and landline numbers. In fact, VoIP testing capabilities include having the services set up with an iPhone, a powerful Apple device that’s highly sought after by consumers globally. Lastly, some of the recent news posted on the All the Talk indicates how VoIP evolved from being a mere Internet voice service to an innovative service eyeing for a refined and clarified voice sounding performance.



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Lecia Macryn Voice Services asked:


More and more businesses who use voicemail and voice prompts for their phone system including  pbx, auto attendant  and IVR system developers are realizing that their  telephone voicemail and voice prompt recordings play a large role in impressing customers and bolstering their image. Those businesses and voice prompt developers who want their company to reflect a professional image are utilizing professional voice talent such as Lecia Macryn Voice Services www.Macryn.com who specialize in recording custom voice prompts and voicemail greetings for all types of phone systems, cell phones, auto attendant, pbx systems, and IVR (Interactive Voice Response).

Professionally recorded voice greetings and prompts help clients feel they are associating with a stable, established company and make a positive impression.  Callers are more apt to place more confidence in a company or phone interaction where the phone presence is confident, clear and professional. 

Voice greetings and voice prompts can be sent via internet in any format or recorded into any phone, including mobile/cell phones.  Lecia Macryn Voice Services, www.Macryn.com  works with small and large businesses, ivr developers, customer satisfaction survey companies, auto attendant/pbx systems, and all types of telephony applications and projects.  Most recording requests can be delivered same day, if needed and a free sample audition is provided as well to ensure the voice recordings are what the client wants.

Lecia Macryn Voice Services has been providing recordings for clients worldwide since 1993 and can accommodate the small business owner who has just one basic voicemail recording ...to the most extensive voice prompt application entailing thousands of recordings,

Demos and more information is available at: www.Macryn.com or call Lecia Macryn Voice Services at (248) 288-2242.



VOIP Security made Easy

Armstrong C asked:


Virtual PBX systems are the advanced new-age telecommunication systems for business firms and offices. PBX systems are well known for their efficient management in routing calls in an automatic manner and are now an essential part of modern day business needs. By employing virtual PBX systems, business firms can save the money otherwise spent in buying and installing costly PBX equipments at their premises.

Feature-rich PBX System with Minimum Hassles

These virtual PBX systems work in the same manner as costlier PBX systems, but the entire system will be hosted by your remote PBX provider. Upon receiving calls, callers will be greeted with welcome messages. They are also provided with interactive menus for reaching the right employee in your office. The virtual PBX systems are also capable of diverting incoming calls to mobile phones and alternate telephone numbers of your office executives.

With options for supporting multiple extension numbers, the virtual PBX systems are ideal for both small and medium size business firms. These virtual PBX systems can be configured to automatically re-route unattended calls to other extensions within your office, thereby providing clients better customer care. The voicemail facilities in these PBX systems are helpful for users, particularly for those who are calling during off-business hours.

Virtual PBX System Enhances Your Business Image

Apart from managing regular telephonic conversations, virtual PBX systems provide facilities such as caller ID, fax, fax to email, voice to email, call screening, dial by name, dial by extension, and call transfer. Callers are also greeted with appropriate wishes depending on the time of their call; the system can also be used to play advertisements of your products and services to the callers.

Modern virtual PBX phone systems are also compatible with VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) protocols. For business firms, this means they can easily switch over to the medium of internet for receiving and sending calls. Thus with these state-of-the-art virtual PBX systems, your business firm can offer clients the  same facilities that are provided by Fortune 500 companies, with only minimal cost involved in the process.



Protect your VOIP network

Angela Hayden asked:


In the converging telecom industry, VoIP PBX system is defined as an innovative new product and service that act as a key element for long distance and international calling at minimal rate. IP PBX is an acronym used for Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchange. It facilitates telecommunication through IP data network. Communication through IP PBX system is through digital packet switching technique rather than a circuit switching technique of conventional telephone lines.

The system allows user to share and transfer the data, voice and video over a single IP network. While sending data through a single IP network increases an efficiency and productivity of communication. Well knowing more about basic architecture of an IP PBX, it includes IP PBX server, one or more SIP phones, VoIP phones and a gateway. Like any other proxy server, hosted PBX system works similar. First thing that a user of SIP or IP phones has to do is to get himself registered with the IP PBX server to make a call to another VoIP or SIP phone. The IP PBX server possesses the information about all SIP or IP addresses, so that they can establish a reliable connection. The process of routing call through PBX server is quite easy and simple as it will connect internal and external call through voice over ip service provider or a VoIP gateway.

The benefits that are attached to VoIP PBX over conventional PBX system are as follows;

1. Voice over IP is easier to install and configure

2. Low maintenance cost

3. Low operation cost

4. Easily handles number of additional phone lines

5. Cost efficiency

6. Facilitate hot desking, roaming, usability and manageability

To avail the benefit of cheaper Internet telephony, users have to avail VoIP PBX systems on their Linux operating. Moreover, modern virtual PBX offers a wider range of handsets and telephone service connection compared to traditional PBX system.



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