VoIP Network: How everything works together.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) been around for quite a while but has been slow to catch on. Now, VoIP has finally come of age.

History

The first Internet voice products were designed to allow two people who were already logged into the Internet to talk, via their computer, with each other. All you needed was a microphone and speakers. A headset was better. The first attempts were limited to one-way conversations (“Fine, Jerry, but what does your mom say? Over.”). It was like using an old walkie-talkie from the WWII era.

As computer sound cards improved, full-duplex conversations became possible, but you were still limited to friends who were on the Internet. Also, the quality was sometimes even poorer than POTS (“Plain Old Telephone Service” or PSTN “public switched telephone network” to use industry terminology). Bandwidth was sometimes shared between your conversation and your son’s homework. Just to make matters worse, bandwidth was not very large. So your son’s download of a file could effectively mess up your conversation or stop it altogether.

Today’s VoIP has come a long way from these humble beginnings. Modern routers often have Quality of Service (QOS) capabilities that give priority to voice and video so your son’s download might have to take a few seconds longer, but your conversation will continue without interruption. Also, many homes and businesses now have much wider “pipes” for their Internet connection. DSL connections are easily increased to 1.5 Mbps for just a few dollars more than the old 256K service. Cable companies now offer Internet “speeds up to 6 Mbps” (but the catch is the “up to” language). And fixed wireless providers often offer speeds well above DSL’s capabilities.

Several companies have been created to capitalize on the new technologies, the most visible being Vonage and, more recently, Skype. These outfits offer good quality telephone service to residences and SOHO (small office / home office) businesses where special features are not important. Most of the major telephone companies have heard the hoof beats of the coming stampede and are offering VoIP service as a defensive measure to keep from losing their customer base to the less expensive alternative.

The main new feature of these offerings is a Network Operations Center that hooks into the mainstream telephone network. The provider purchases long distance time in bulk and passes the savings on to their customers by offering unlimited or cheap “per minute” rates within their country and often some neighboring countries. In the United States, plans usually offer all of the U.S. and Canada. The new services further save money (and pass the savings along) by treating every call as a long-distance call, thus eliminating the need for an expensive accounting system that keeps track of “local” vs “long distance” toll areas. Telcos hide the cost of “local calling” within the basic rates they charge anyway.

However, until recently larger businesses that needed more sophisticated phone systems have had to stick with POTS and expensive PBX switchboards, or “roll their own” VoIP system with the attendant costs in equipment, software and sycophants to worship the new system and wipe the drool off its chin. Most Fortune 500 companies, such as Boeing, have chosen this path with excellent, though expensive, results. In spite of the expenses, however, they still realize savings over their old POTS systems.

Now a new breed of provider has come to the rescue of the middle and small business community with “hosted” IPBX (Internet PBX) offerings. The new providers have done all the “heavy lifting” by combining hardware, software, sycophants, and a call center. Their PBX systems are loaded with features and their service quality is excellent, often superior to POTS.

There are several outstanding companies that offer hosted VoIP for businesses and offer a large variety of “bells and whistles.” Each product has most of the common features you’d expect, plus some extras that vary from offering to offering. When a new feature becomes popular enough, all of the companies scramble to include it in their product. For the purpose of this article, we will focus on Pandora’s Worksmart^TM product, which has most of the features offered in the industry.

Concepts

Dashboard A web-based control panel, accessible through a browser, that allows an administrator to modify details of the IP phone system. Individuals also have a dashboard that allows them to modify their personal routing plans, check on voice mail, designate a “disaster” number, and change personal identification information.

DID Direct Inward Dialing. This is nothing more than a “phone number.” You don’t need a DID to dial a call to another telephone. You do need a DID for other people to dial your phone. With POTS, you need a DID for each “line” coming into your building. When the “lines” are all in use, no one else can make or receive a call. With VoIP, even with just one DID, there is no limit to the number of calls that can be going on other than bandwidth (see “Requirements” below). You’ll pay a small monthly fee for each DID or toll-free number.

PBX A glorified telephone switchboard, often automated, for routing incoming calls within an organization.

Soft Phone A software “telephone” loaded onto a computer. Add a headset and it will provide many of the features of a normal telephone. Voice quality often suffers with this method. However, it’s a great way to take a phone with you if you have to lug around a laptop anyway. Also good for getting your “feet wet” before you invest in IP handsets.

What Type of Business Can Benefit from Hosted VoIP?

Organizations with Multiple Offices

One Managed PBX for the Entire Organization

You have the flexibility to look like one organization with a single point of entry or you can offer multiple entry points.

You may maintain one DID telephone number for your entire organization, yet handle hundreds of calls at once. Or you can offer local phone numbers to your customers -- even if you don't have a physical office in that area.

Phone numbers can be added and dropped with just a few mouse clicks on your administrator's dashboard as long as your provider has DID numbers available in the area you are targeting.

Let one "800" number serve your entire company.

Toll-Free Within the Organization

Received calls can be routed anywhere you have an agent with an Internet connection, even if the agent is on another continent.

Intra-company calls are also toll-free. An employee in Guam can dial the extension of another employee in London and talk or collaborate for as long as necessary without worrying about the cost.

Call Queuing

You control the depth of the queue. If the queue exceeds your limit, calls go directly to voice mail.

Virtual Meetings Using Collaboration Tools

Employees can collaborate without having to travel using secure voice, instant messaging, whiteboard tools, file sharing, peek at each other's computer screens, allow another person to control your computer for training, and video.

Set up conferences using the collaboration tools.

Road Warriors

Use a "Soft" Phone (or take a desk phone with you)

Plug into your hotel's high-speed Internet connection, and you may as well be at the office. Your extension number remains the same. All your calling functions work the same, no changes thanks to the versatility of VoIP.

For short trips, just add a headset to your laptop case and you have all you need. If you plan to be at one place for an extended period, you can take your desk phone and set up your temporary remote office with no hassle.

If you still have a phone sitting on your office desk, just change your personal routing plan to ring your "traveling" phone instead. The change takes about 10 seconds on your personal dashboard.

Since voice messages are stored in a central location, you can access them from anywhere, even with your cellular phone. Or have them automatically emailed to you as a .wav attachment.

Do you step out of the office a lot on local business?

Instead of constantly changing your routing plan, set it up to ring your desk phone first, then hop to your cellular phone, then your home phone, before going to voice mail. This is called "find me, follow me." Or you can tell it to ring all the telephones at once.

With a different routing plan, you can route missed calls to an appropriate group to be handled by an associate.

Office to Hotel Toll-Free

Once an incoming telephone call is within the IPBX, you can route it anywhere within the system with no toll charges.

Interoffice calls are toll-free no matter where you travel, as long as you can obtain high-speed Internet service.

Virtual Meetings

Road Warriors can collaborate while on the road using the same secure tools that are available in the office (see the explanation above).

Run your Office Desktop Computer while on the road

Leave your computer running at the office, enable remote via your "messenger" software, log out of your office "messenger" (it will leave a piece of code in memory) and you can operate your office computer from your notebook computer anywhere. Great if you forgot to bring a file with you (or if company rules forbid it).

Don't worry about security. Your link is well encrypted.

Telecommuters

People who work from home, either full or part time, have all the features available to the Road Warrior or a remote office. After all, their home office is just another “office location” as far as the VoIP equipment is concerned. The only difference is the home worker doesn’t take up a desk or parking space at “the office” along with the attendant expenses. And there are more donuts for the rest of the employees.

Call Centers

Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) is the primary tool used by call centers. It does what the label suggests--routes calls based upon some logical scheme, without human intervention.

Flexible Routing Plans

Create routing plans based upon skill level, time of day, or geography. Route calls to whomever has had the least number of calls that day or by the "round robin" method.

Flexible Phone Numbers

You can route a separate DID phone number directly to an ACD group.

Phone numbers can be added and dropped with just a few mouse clicks on your administrator's dashboard.

Call Queuing

You control the depth of the queue. If the queue exceeds your limit, calls go directly to voice mail.

Music on hold or play special messages such as your latest specials.

Call recording

Automatically play a message that the call may be recorded for review or training purposes.

Record calls by setting an option. Some IP handsets can be programmed to record calls with the push of a button.

CRM

You can often integrate your IP PBX with a CRM (Customer Relations Manager) product such as SalesForce.

Administrative Oversight

Administrators can view calls on hold, agents logged into the ACD group, and active calls.

Instant information as to who's calling, how long on hold, how long the active call has lasted, and which queue a call is part of.

Historical information includes call statistics by agent or by ACD group. Administrators can drill down to the individual call.

Setting up a New Office

As long as you’re going to wire the office for a computer network, you may as well save on installation costs and use that network to host your VoIP telephone system. A huge savings over stringing telephone cables throughout the building and fooling with another wiring closet.

A lot will depend upon your bandwidth requirements.

Who Should NOT Bother With VoIP?

If you only have a few phones, all in one office, no need for a PBX (or you have one that you’re happy with), and your idea of call routing is to put the call on hold and yell to another person in the office, “Jake, it’s for you on line 2,” then you may be happy with what you’ve got. The few dollars you may save with VoIP might not be worth the small investment in new handsets, PBX education, and time.

If your long distance charges are eating you alive, it may be time to shop for a new long distance provider, rather than switch over to VoIP just for the long-distance savings. The long distance business is very competitive and you should be able to find a provider that will save you quite a few shekels. The Internet is a great place to find competitive providers. Look for a site that has done most of the work for you and lists a number of competing low-cost providers.

Features You Can Expect To See

Some features will be basic to all plans while others will cost extra, if they are available from the service provider. We’ve already mentioned a few, but here they are again with a plethora of others.

1. The usual things such as: Do not disturb, caller ID, call waiting, call rejection plans, call forwarding, 3-way calling, redial, speed dialing (often a function of the handset), ID blocking for outbound calls, etc.
2. Software as a Service. The provider hosts the IPBX software and keeps it up to date. If you have a large office and want to run a local “edge” server to keep in-office extension-to-extension calls from taking up Internet bandwidth, you may have to purchase a software package from the provider. Also, desktop software is provided for a “soft” phone and to support other services, such as collaboration.
3. Instant Move, Adds, Change and Deletes. Your designated administrator(s) can make instant changes to extensions. They can change the name on an extension as people come and go, as well as adding new or deleting existing extensions. This creates the enviable ability to add a new temporary “seat” to accommodate a “rent a body,”, then stop the charges for that seat immediately when no longer needed. In addition, the administrator can change the capabilities and level of service for an extension (seat) as needed. For instance, if an employee is switched over to your call center to handle an extra load, the administrator can add those more expensive capabilities to his extension, then switch the employee back to a lower-cost plan when the call center load returns to normal.
4. Web-based management. A “dashboard” used to control and modify the phone system. The administrator dashboard can change just about anything except a few items that are reserved for individuals and a couple of “fixed” items such as billing plans for services and such.
5. 911 emergency calling. One minor nuisance is the need to enter your physical address into the system for each extension. Since your termination to the POTS may be in another state or province, emergency operators have no way of knowing where you are if you call. If you move your handset to another location, don’t forget to update this information.
6. 411 information. Some VoIP providers offer this service for free, others charge. Here’s a dirty little secret. Don’t tell anyone: you can get free “information” by calling 800-373-3411 (800-FREE411) from any phone. www.free411.com. It’s supported by advertising. It’s automated so speak carefully. If it can’t understand, there is operator backup.
7. An Internet PBX with the following features:

A. Auto/Live Attendant. The PBX can be programmed to ring a particular extension to have an “operator” answer calls or you can set up an electronic operator to help route callers to the appropriate extension or information repository. Naturally, these options can be time- and date-dependent. For instance, during business hours, callers will get a live operator. After hours and on holidays, callers will be routed to an electronic attendant. The electronic attendant is highly configurable and can handle calls based upon time and date as well.

B. Customizable Greetings. You may record and upload your own greetings (or have them professionally done). The greetings/instructions can reside in several areas. For instance: A caller’s first greeting may thank them for calling XYZ company and give them options (“Enter 1 for sales, 2 for support, etc.”). Groups can also have custom greetings such as “We are experiencing an outage in most of Arizona. if that is not your problem, please wait for the next operator.”Greetings can be time/date dependent (“We’re closed. Please leave a message.”)

C. Local and remote extension dialing. Since everything runs over the Internet (unless you have an “edge” server), each extension is “local” no matter where in the world it’s physically located.

D. Call Park, Pickup and Transfer. Call parking and pickup is analogous to what you see in a supermarket when your checker answers the phone, puts it on hold, then announces over the intercom, “Bakery, line 2.” With the proper handset, the intercom system can reside within your phone system.Transfer is an operator function that can be done by anyone as long as they program their desktop phone to handle the function. Tell the caller you are transferring him, put the caller on hold, then you have the choice of transferring “blind” or calling the target extension, talking to the other employee, and then transferring the call (or do a 3-way conference).

E. Company Directory. A list of extension numbers by employee. The caller is prompted to dial a code (such as “#”). The caller can access the list by name, partial name, or sit through the entire directory.

F. Voicemail can be accessed via phone, web, or be sent as an email attachment. Voicemail is available for individuals, work groups, departments, or for “the company” or organization.

G. Find Me/Follow Me. Individuals can program their extension to ring various devices all at once or in sequence. This routing can be time- and date-dependent and can be changed quickly via the dashboard. For instance, during business hours your desktop phone could ring for 20 seconds, then if not answered, your cell phone AND your home phone could ring simultaneously for another 20 seconds. If no one answers, the call is routed to your voice mail. After hours, the routing could be “call blasted” to your cellular and home phone, or you could just be unavailable (call goes directly to voice mail).

H. Call blasting. This can be done for a department as well as individuals. Every phone rings until someone picks up the call or it times out.

8. Worldwide calling. Providers often purchase international minutes in bulk and resell the time to subscribers for excellent prices. In fact, several of the major VoIP providers started out as discount “long-distance” carriers (there were over 1000 long-distance carriers a decade ago). Other carriers make a “sweetheart deal” by guaranteeing a minimum amount of traffic with a discount carrier then mark the price up a small percent; the result is still a good deal for their customers.

9. Toll-free inbound calls (800). Most VoIP providers offer a toll-free plan. Prices and plans vary, often involving a monthly charge plus a per-minute charge. Hint: Shop around the discount long-distance market. You may be able to do better than your VoIP company’s plan depending upon your inbound call patterns and volumes. You don’t need to use the third-party outbound service (in fact, you may not be able to); you’re after their inbound toll-free rates. They only need a DID to “point” the 800 number to and it can be the same DID you use for all your other inbound calls.

10. Number Porting. By law, your phone company has to allow you to keep your active phone number (DID) if you switch services. You pay a small charge on your monthly bill for this privilege. Some VoIP providers will port your number for free or a small fee. Others charge a higher fee, especially for an 800 number (another reason to shop the discount long-distance market). This can take several weeks to happen because the phone company is in no big hurry to provide the service and probably doesn’t have an automated way of doing it. While you are waiting, you can set up your IPBX under another DID from the VoIP company’s number pool, test drive the system, then forward your existing phone service to the temporary VoIP DID. When your old DID finally arrives, your VoIP provider may swap out your temporary number automatically.

11. Outbound Calling. All outbound calls are long-distance in the VoIP world. While you probably won’t be charged for inbound calls, you will be charged for outbound calls, either directly on a per-minute basis or by paying higher rates for your service. The average office worker spends around 500 minutes per month on outbound calls (around 24 minutes per business day). If your VoIP provider offers an “all you can eat” plan (usually not available to call centers for obvious reasons), it will probably allow some padding to protect them from major callers. Typically, they may mark the cost up by as much as 33%. If you use a lot of minutes (a large number of employees or an active call center) and want to drive your costs down, some VoIP providers will sell you time in bulk at a discount. Most of these plans require you to use the time within the month.

12. Fax send and receive. This is a tough one for providers since VoIP is essentially a digital standard and facsimile devices are analog. Many providers have opted to resell third-party fax services rather than go to the considerable trouble of setting up their own facsimile converters. With these services, you can create a fax on your computer and send it without ever printing a piece of paper. A scanner would be very handy for capturing stuff that is on paper and needs to be included. Received faxes are digitized and delivered as a picture, often a “tiff” image. Another way is to purchase an ATA (basically a digital/analog phone converter) and run a fax machine through it.

13. Free Inter-office calls. Calling another extension within your organization is free. Even if the offices are on different continents. You can call other subscribers who subscribe to the same service (not available with all VoIP services), but you need more than just their DID and extension, because charges start as soon as you hit the POTS system. If you call someone else who has the same service provider, it may be worth your time to find out how this is done without the DID.

14. Collaboration Tools. Worksmart™ offers these services. I haven’t seen them on any other VoIP plan, but they may be available somewhere. They are available in other forms and services.

A. Private Instant Messaging Network (IM). Unlike AOL, Yahoo!, and others, this network is encrypted and doesn’t leave huge security holes in your firewall. The service will interact with those two and MSN’s service, but you take your chances when you do so. You can trade messages with another individual, or you can set up an IM conference. The IM function also has the ability to send attachments, such as files, back and forth. IM messages are archived.

B. Desktop Sharing. You can allow another person to see all or a controlled portion of your computer screen. Great for training.

C. Remote Control. You can allow another person to take control of your computer. This is an excellent way to do remote training or for a network administrator to do remote desktop setups without traveling to every desk in the company. Great for disbursed organizations.

D. Whiteboard. Set up a common whiteboard on your computers for conferences or 1-on-1 collaboration. Drawing tools included.

E. Voice Conferencing. You normally have to subscribe to a conferencing service to get this capability. Now, you just pay a small per-minute call charge for each participant.

F. Video Conferencing. Same as Voice Conferencing, but you get to see each other (or whatever the cameras are pointed at). Same low per-minute rate.

15. Automatic Call Distribution (ACD). If you run a call center, especially a service center, this is your bread and butter. You are not limited to one service center. You can set up as many “groups” as your operation requires. For instance, you many have one group devoted to software game support and another for business software support, with yet another devoted to sales (a “boiler room” or a passive department).Some plans charge you extra if your “free” inbound calls exceed your outbound calls by a large factor (such as 70/30). If you run a boiler room, this may be a factor in your calculations when deciding if a particular plan makes economic sense. The charge is usually quite small, but could make a difference if your “local” outbound traffic is quite large.

16. Logic-Based Routing. You can set up your ACD groups based upon skills, time, geographic location, and/or load. For instance, a simple “load” based routing plan would be to send the next inbound call to the operator who has fielded the fewest calls over a specified period of time. Or you could set up a “round robin” plan where each operator takes the next call in turn (assuming the operator is available). Skills-based routing may be a matter of queuing a call to your freshman operator group, then allowing the freshman to bump the call up to a more experienced group if s/he can’t handle the problem.

17. Queuing. You set the queue rules along with the routing rules. A call may “time out” of a queue and be sent to voice mail, or may be bumped to another group. The caller can be given the option of waiting or leaving a voice message. The system can even tell the caller how much time s/he may be on hold based upon current call volumes and the average time being spent on each call. But whatever you do, please don’t start off your message with, “Your call is very important to us.” The caller knows that is a lie, because if s/he were really important, you’d hire enough operators to answer the call quickly rather than put her on hold for a half hour.

A. Music on Hold. You can play music while the caller waits, or record some advertisements and play them, like “specials of the day.”

B. Call Recording. Set up the group’s rules so the caller hears a warning message before being connected to an operator. Recording can be automatic for all calls, or you can program a “soft” key on the operator’s phone to allow the operator to initiate recording for legal backup when closing a sale.

C. Real-Time Reporting and Monitoring. A large number of statistics are constantly available to the call center manager. Average call times, queue times, operator loads, which operators are logged in. Active calls, waiting calls, etc. Your operators don’t have to be in the same room for you to judge their performance. They could be scattered in regional offices or be working from home. This is a great way to achieve 24-hhour coverage while allowing your operators to work “during the day;” just run 3 shifts located around the world.

18. Automatic online Bill Generation. Call statistics and charges are collected automatically and posted to your account at least daily.

19. Call Detail Records. You can check current or past charge details online. You can also review non-charged calls. Who made or received a call, from what number, when? Auditors love this feature.

Requirements

Depending upon the size of your office, you may need very little or you might have to beef up your capabilities.

An active call uses about 45 Kbps of bandwidth on your Internet connection as well as your internal network. If you have at least minimum DSL (256 Kbps), you can probably handle a couple of simultaneous calls in addition to your computer Internet needs. As your call needs grow, your bandwidth requirements will also increase.

IP telephones can range from $100 to $800 depending upon the features you want. Snom makes a nice basic handset that sells for around $130. Some phones will run on POE (power over Ethernet) that allows them to be located wherever an Ethernet drop is available, even if power is not. POE does require you to inject compatible power into your Ethernet cables at a convenient location.

ATAs. If you don’t want many features available at a desk, you can purchase an “ATA” which is an analog to VoIP adaptor. This will allow you to connect a POTS handset or facsimile machine to your network. Some features will work (such as caller ID and functions that don’t require specialized buttons) if the handset has the capabilities. ATAs run in the $70 to $100 range.

Small Offices (less than 10 seats at a location). Since not everyone is on the phone at the same time, you can probably get by with an inexpensive router that has QOS capabilities, an average Ethernet internal network (10/100) and a 500 Mbps Internet connection (more would be nice). The only up front outlay would be for telephone handsets.

Large Offices (above 10 seats at a single location). Your supplier will probably want to do a network survey to make sure your equipment can handle the load and route calls correctly. Older switches often ignore QOS requirements or won’t be able to handle the increased load correctly. If you have a very old network, you may not have enough internal bandwidth once phone service is added to the net. There will probably be a charge for this service, but the information gained will be worth every penny.

You may wish to install an edge server to keep your external bandwidth requirements down. The server will intercept and route calls within your network without using the Internet.

For fairly large offices, a dedicated T1 line may be required to assure voice quality. There are a number of options here, including fixed wireless service, that may be less expensive than a T1 loop, especially if you aren’t in the same neighborhood as your Telco’s switch.

Your supplier may recommend a front-end appliance to handle QOS problems and lift the burden from your switches (if you ask too much of a switch, it will slow your throughput down).

If your present network is already loaded, you may want to install a separate network to handle the phone system. This is not a common situation, but it does happen.

Savings

The largest savings are realized up front. If you are replacing an old PBX or antiquated switchboard, or if you’re getting your first PBX, the savings are huge. Exact figures vary and depend upon your existing computer network, but a 100-seat office can expect savings somewhere in the 85% range. The savings rate could be higher for smaller offices.

Typical “on-going” savings run in the neighborhood of 30%.

Players

Everyone and his grandmother seems to be getting into the residential VoIP market. However, the high up-front investment and complexity of feature-rich business systems seem to be keeping that field small. Most residential outfits offer a “business” package which is nothing more than their residential package with a higher price.

The following lists are by no means complete and the players change almost daily.

Residential hosts include:

AT&T

· ITP

· Lingo

· Many Cable TV companies

· Most Telcos (“Baby Bells”)

· Opex

· Packet 8

· Skype

· Sun Rocket

· Via Talk

· Voice Pulse

· VoIP Your Life

· Vonage

Business feature-rich IPBX-enabled hosts include:

· Comm Partners* - Usually carries the agent’s private label:

· InReach (VoiceReach)

· OnShore

· Opex Communications

· TotalCom

· Voipia Networks

· Pandora’s Worksmart*

· Some Telcos

*Only sells through agents (partners)

Allan Kalar is the Director of Technical Services for Viking Waters (www.vikingwaters.com). Viking Waters is a North American reseller of Pandora’s Worksmart™ VoIP service and Al is their main contact for sales and support of that product.

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