Internet Telephony

Voice Over Internet Protocol (voip) in the Australian Marketplace

There is a growing awareness of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) on the Australian market of late, and understandably so. VoIP has the potential to revolutionize how we communicate. Much of the hype was about VoIP residential rather than business communications VoIP. It is crucial to understand that major differences exist between the residential and the degree of business VoIP solutions. Based on service quality residential VoIP can have disastrous effects for companies, including loss of sound quality of phone calls and downtime when your company’s ability to communicate fully cut in May. Integrating a VoIP solution quality companies cost a lot of efficiency and benefits for Australian Small to Medium Businesses (SMEs). The most obvious benefits of a quality enterprise VoIP solution is cuts call and line rental fees, however, there are many other significant economic benefits for SMEs of all sizes to achieve: * Increase productivity by integrating VoIP with the desktop computer and allows features such as Click2Dial from Outlook * Increased capacity of business metrics detailed reports on patterns of incoming and outgoing * Greatly improved and centralized attendant and reception capabilities that allow visibility of all extensions of staff in a consolidated view, simplifying transfers to extensions and voicemail * Awareness of the location of an individual as “available”, “busy” or “out of the office until 2 pm” * Increase the efficiency of the convergence of voice and data networks (running both voice and data over a network) To decide how best to integrate VoIP with your voice infrastructure and existing data, you must have a clear understanding of your business drivers and results that you want to achieve. VoIP Gateways Ideal time to consider introducing a VoIP solution in an office move, or during periods of strong growth. An ideal entry-level companies that want to enjoy the benefits of VoIP is to connect their phone system to PSTN via a VoIP gateway. A VoIP gateway device is a simple piece of equipment that allows basic integration of VoIP with traditional telephone system, often without having to physically change any configuration. Pacific Internet’s VoIP gateway is connected via a service company’s broadband quality and send calls to external sites (whether local, national, mobile, international or other voice service over IP) through the VoIP network and a traditional phone line at the destination. It is Pacific Internet that maintains connectivity to the traditional telephone line. This scenario allows seamless integration between the two networks (PSTN and VoIP) and traditional telephone systems to co-exist with a VoIP solution. The advantage of a gradual migration to a VoIP solution is that it lets you enjoy some immediate benefits of VoIP without the initial cost of replacing all your existing voice infrastructure. Connecting to traditional voice networks via the VoIP A number of scenarios are available to connect your telephone system via traditional PSTN to VoIP, the most common are: * The complete replacement of traditional analog or digital lines for all inbound and outbound calls, providing standard geographic Direct Inward Dial (DID) numbers to be allocated to VoIP service, for example, 02 9999 9999 Sydney 07 3333 3333 for Brisbane 02 4900 0000 for Newcastle * Partial replacement of traditional analog lines or digital for all outgoing calls * The installation of additional lines to support VoIP calls overflow during regular or unexpected peaks in traffic of outgoing calls * Extra lines to call only specific, designated prefixes. For example, make all outgoing calls to mobiles via VoIP. Each of these scenarios can be configured to operate automatically or require manual selection of the user with most phone systems. For example, if VoIP is being installed solely to make all outgoing calls to mobiles then the phone system can be implemented via Least Cost Routing (LCR) automatically use a VoIP line when someone calls a mobile. An important consideration when integrating your telephone system with VoIP is very well understand the behavior of appellate courts. As consideration are elements such as: * How many simultaneous incoming calls the company is receiving? * How many simultaneous outbound calls can now be taken? * How much spare PSTN ports (port or trunk) does the phone system have? * The spare PSTN ports for analogue or digital (ISDN)? PSTN Ports * If there is currently insufficient spare, the system can be profitable phone upgraded with additional maps to provide adequate port capacity? Once you have a good understanding of your behavior and the current call phone system, you can accurately determine the number of VoIP lines are required and the requirements resulting from this activity will place on the broadband quality. You must consider the 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. The integration of VoIP with an existing network of business data and telephone system requires a lot of careful planning and it is essential that this step should not be overlooked, however, it is an ideal way to test a VoIP solution and immediately begin to enjoy a part of the cost effectiveness and the benefits that VoIP can offer.