Voip

VoIP Supplier Sets Up Fixed Mobile Convergence Solution in U.K.

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 11:11:00 +0000

ADS Inbay has supplied EC1 New Deal for Communities (NDC) with a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) solution to replace the existing legacy system that was previously installed.

EC1 NDC has been funded by the government for the next years to bring about positive changes in underprivileged neighborhoods in the U.K. The fund amount is GBP (aka Pound Sterling) 52.9 million (about $105.5 million), and it has been awarded for the time period between April, 2001 and March 2011.

The program is set to target homes in the southern part of Islington, which edges City of London.

The system that the organization used earlier on was standard with desk phones. This system was installed in 2001, when it first moved into the old premises. The challenges with the older system were the difficulties faced in transferring calls and had no provision for number portability and scalability.

As this was counter-productive to what they were hoping to achieve, EC1 NDC needed a system where the employees could shift locations, while retaining their original extension. This was a necessary requirement as the workforce consisted of a mixture of staff, including home workers, temporary staff, and also staff hired on project basis. Majority of their work was carried out by mobile, and the system was proving to be complex, as the staff had to be called using differing numbers each time.

The organization needed an economical solution, which, at the same time, could fulfill its requirements adequately. Additionally there was also a need for a flexible solution which could interface well with mobiles. The supplier EC1 NDC chose was ADS Inbay, a Voicenet Solutions (News - Alert) Centre of Excellence. It supplied a solution which suited all the constraints and requirements of the organization, allowing it to operate with optimum efficiency, with the support of the telecom system.

The new system is called VNi Mobile, and a demonstration was given to EC1 NDC, detailing all its features and functionality. The Fixed Mobile Convergence (News - Alert) (FMC) solution enables users to make and receive business calls on their mobile, in any WiFi area, over their business’s VoIP network. VNi Mobile works by using VoIP compatible GSM Nokia E61 and E65 via WiFi (News - Alert) access points over the Voicenet Solutions hosted VoIP network.

“The integrated system means our mobile users can make wifi calls from both the home and office enabling us to work at maximum capacity at either location,” said Danielle Roberts, Office Manager, EC1 NDC. “Not only do we expect substantial savings but we have an office phone system that gives us greater flexibility, working the way we want.”

Shireen Dee is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Shireen’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Comprehensive data flow and VoIP management

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:22:00 +0000

Packet Island released an enterprise-lite version of PacketSmart, the proven carrier-class VoIP-Data lifecycle management solution. The PacketSmart Enterprise-Lite Platform comes with software pre-installed on a Dell server and a set of five 4"x5" micro-appliances. The micro-appliances function as sniffers and double up as VoIP call generators for assessment purposes.

This solution is targeted to IT administrators of small and mid-sized companies deploying VoIP for a handful of branch offices using mixed network topologies and multiple ISP WANs. IT administrators can use the solution to perform the following functions:

Pre-assess data networks for VoIP readiness
Verify LAN/WAN QoS design based on TOS or Diffserv
Monitor live VoIP calls (SIP-based) on a 24x7 basis
Troubleshoot VoIP signaling issues
Remote packet capture with Ethereal/Wireshark compatibility
Monitor Top-10 data flows on a 24x7 basis
Generate a variety of on-demand reports to summarize SLAs

Traditional SNMP-based solutions are great at monitoring servers and network devices, but fall short when managing converged media. As VoIP adoption hits the mainstream, what enterprises need is a comprehensive product that can help them manage the lifecycle of their converged media networks that go beyond SNMP monitoring.

What's Next for VoIP Media Gateways?

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:42:00 +0000

Since the introduction of VoIP back in the mid 1990s, VoIP Media Gateways have been deployed to make the transition between VoIP and PSTN networks. After exploring this seemingly mature technology I discovered that the VoIP media gateways of tomorrow are not your Grampa’s gateway. While cost remains at the top of the product selection criteria, more and more functionality is being poured into the media gateway’s hardware and software features.

The standard gateway features list used to include things like voice, video, and fax decompression, call routing, signaling control, and packetization. More recently, we now see added features such as integrated SS7 inside the gateway and “any-to-any” signaling.

The Dialogic (News - Alert) IMG 1010 Integrated Media Gateway includes integrated SS7 ISUP signaling which can be mapped to SIP, SIP-T or H.323 to meet a carrier’s requirements for SS7 connectivity into a VoIP network. The IMG 1010 can terminate SS7 ISUP A-links or F-links, and supports a full DS3 of bearer traffic (CICs). This is all provided in cost effective 1U, single box solution, which can reduce capital and operational expenses for carriers.

The IMG 1010 is able to translate between multiple signaling protocols when meeting a carrier’s media gateway needs. Supported signaling includes SS7 ISUP, ISDN PRI and CAS for circuit networks and SIP, SIP-T and H.323 for IP networks. Signaling conversion can take place between TDM-IP, IP-IP or TDM-TDM network configurations.

“The Dialogic IMG Integrated Media Gateway product family provides an excellent value proposition for carriers who are building converged VoIP networks due to its robust suite of signaling options,” says James Rafferty (News - Alert), Product Line Director for Integrated Media Gateways at Dialogic Corporation. “The IMG 1010 is installed at over 50 carriers for a variety of applications which include Wholesale VoIP, Retail VoIP and enhanced services. The IMG 1004 has recently been introduced and offers a low-density gateway solution for carriers that need to support small POPs or for Call Center applications.”

“Carriers have selected the IMG 1010 based on factors that include integrated SS7 ISUP signaling, any-to-any network connectivity and IP-IP transcoding,” Rafferty says. “The compact 1U size of the IMG products is well-suited for racking and stacking multiple IMGs. A network can be configured using Dialogic’s server-based Gate Control Element Management System.”

Final Score
We will continue to see enhanced services inside future VoIP Media Gateways that will offer Carriers faster time-to-revenue at a lower cost of ownership. It is clear that the Dialogic IMG is setting the pace.
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VoIP Peering — Not Such a Big Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 08:39:00 +0000

VoIP peering — there’s a lot of talk, but relatively little action. That’s probably okay, as VoIP peering is a telephony concept. In the world of Internet applications, we care about things like communities, endpoints and mashups. But to understand the real issues, we first need to resolve some confusing terminology and discuss some economics.

VoIP Peering vs. IP Peering
The term “peering” by itself refers to IP peering — the voluntary interconnection of two Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging their customer’s IP traffic. Operator A wants his customers to be able to reach Operator B’s (News - Alert) customers so they strike up a deal to exchange traffic, just for those customers, usually not for other Internet addresses. This differs from “IP Transit” where A pays B to deliver A’s customer’s traffic to any or all Internet addresses.

IP peering is about layer 3 packets — nothing specific to telephony. Peering between ISPs is almost completely unregulated and most peering arrangements are subject to non-disclosure agreements, so information on the industry must be derived indirectly, for example, by examining Internet backbone router tables. Nonetheless, the market seems to work extremely well. In 12 years of commercial Internet experience, no backbone monopolists have emerged and new backbones (both public and private) continue to be built.

VoIP peering (or voice peering) is a newer term. It refers to the direct exchange of VoIP telephony traffic without PSTN involvement (or translation). VoIP peering is all about telephony addresses (phone numbers or SIP URIs). In the PSTN, this is called “interconnection” and it’s usually regulated, with mandated settlement rates.

Economics and Network Effects
A network is only valuable when it connects you to what you want, thus network value depends upon network scale — the more members, the more valuable the network. And when two networks interconnect, the smaller network derives the most benefit as its customers get proportionately more reach. Barring regulation, if payments are made, the smaller network typically pays the larger for connectivity.

Of course the first interconnection any new VoIP provider needs is connection to the biggest network in the world, the PSTN. Except for regulatory loopholes, this has real cost, as the PSTN is large (many interconnection points) and subject to complex, per-country rules.

Once you have PSTN connectivity, the decision to do voice peering with another VoIP provider depends entirely on cost. Do my subscribers make enough calls to subscribers of the other VoIP provider to justify the expense of setting up interconnection? In most cases the answer is no. Any one VoIP service provider is so small that it’s hard to justify the interconnect expense.

But suppose both VoIP services actually did more than PSTN voice telephony? Wouldn’t that justify VoIP peering? Maybe. . .

Digital POTS vs. IP Communications
Today there are two very different kinds of VoIP players. Arbitrage services, like Vonage, AT&T CallVantage and, more recently, the cable companies, use VoIP technology to produce a PSTN experience at lower cost - think of this as digital POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service).

IP communications services leverage IP to provide new capabilities, like instant messaging, wideband audio and video. Skype is a leader here, but AOL (News - Alert), Yahoo, Google, MSN and many others are in play.

Doesn’t it make sense for two services like Skype and Google (News - Alert) Talk to interconnect? Both services provide better than telephony voice quality through the use of wideband coders (at least on Skype-to-Skype or Google-to-Google calls). Interoperation between Skype and Google Talk could allow better audio on such calls.

But the Internet is not the PSTN; new rules apply.

IP Communication is Different
Most IP endpoints are intelligent devices. The Internet’s end-to-end design principle encourages this. Today, most are PCs, but even mobile phones and other mobile Internet devices incorporate relatively powerful processors. Furthermore, Moore’s law ensures a stream of ever-more intelligent devices.

IP communications involve relatively sophisticated applications running on connected devices (PCs, mobile phones, etc.), which themselves are platforms. As a result, it’s feasible to run two or more IP communications applications at the same time. Certainly that’s the case with PCs, where it’s not unusual for a teen to use three different instant messenger programs at once and be active on MySpace (News - Alert), Facebook and the like.

These are separate networks. They don’t peer, but equivalent functionality happens at the edge. Each user runs client software for each of the communities they participate in. Thus all their contacts are visible and reachable, despite the lack of peering relationships between the services.

Enabling Mashups More Important than Peering?
Today, the competitive edge for Internet applications is how open they are for third parties to extend and incorporate in mashups. When Facebook opened up to third parties earlier this year, numerous third party extensions appeared and membership soared. This is what counts.

VoIP peering is for digital POTS. IP Communications providers need to focus on open APIs and enabling mashups.
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noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:23:00 +0000

Cost effective, flexibility and mobility are some of the major criteria which people seek to avail in the telecommunication arena. One can avail the facilities of VoIP to enjoy long distance and international calls at very cheap rates. In fact, the technology is developing at a very fast face which in turn offers various cost effective solutions for almost every type of problem. With this VoIP technology, one can enjoy the voice calls by using the high speed internet connection instead of an analog phone line. One can make local, national and international calls at ease without any concern for the affordability factor.

Some of the VoIP services operates over a special VoIP phone or a computer while there are some which would efficiently allow the users to use their landline phone which should be connected to the VoIP adapter. These services work on the principle of converting the user's voice into digital signal which would travel through the internet. As a matter of fact, if the caller is using a frequently used phone number, the signal gets converted to the telephone signal before reaching the destination. As such, one can enjoy making calls directly from his or her computer, landline phone or a specific VoIP phone. Moreover, there are certain points of interest such as airport, Internet cafes and parks etc which would easily connect you to the internet and help you to access the VoIP service wirelessly.

To avail high speed internet connection a DSL or a cable modem, or local area network is required. Now, if you want to avail this unique services on your computer, some specific software and a good microphone are quite necessary. By using this amazing VoIP technology, one can enjoy talking with more than one person simultaneously. Moreover, the 24 x 7 customer care service offered by the technology would give you ultimate freedom to crosscheck all your queries regarding any issue. You can also share certain pictures, videos and text apart from talking to friends and beloved ones through the VoIP calls.

Find Solutions for Enterprises, SMBs & Service Providers at the INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference and EXPO West, September 16-18, 2008. Los Angeles, California.

The efficient VoIP phone uses the Internet connection. With these phones, you can comfortably save a considerable amount at the end of the month. In fact these services would offer you exciting extra features such as call forwarding, call waiting, call diverting etc at ease.

For more information, visit: one of the best VoIP provider.
http://www.icallglobe.com
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Rebtel, easyGroup to Offer Mobile VoIP in United Kingdom

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:21:00 +0000

Rebtel (News - Alert) and easyGroup Offer Mobile VoIP Services to UK Consumers

Encouraged by a new brand licensing agreement with easyGroup, Rebtel officials said today that they’ll increase the company’s presence in the United Kingdom and reach new markets for their mobile VoIP services.

Rebtel-powered services for low-cost international phone calls from any mobile phone now will be sold and marketed on easyGroup’s Web site, company officials say.

The companies have not disclosed the terms of the brand license agreement. According to Rebtel, mobile VoIP services offered by easyMobile are compatible with any mobile phone without modification. The services are quick to set-up, and work with consumers’ existing contracts with their U.K. operators.

Anthony Robb-John, managing director of easyGroup IP, said that making international calls using traditional mobile phone operators is no longer the most cost-effective and efficient way to stay in touch. He said that mobile VoIP works is easy to use and there is a big market for this kind of service to and from the United Kingdom.

“Sir Stelios and easyGroup are our kind of partners,” said Hjalmar Winbladh, co-founder and chief executive officer of Stockholm, Sweden-based Rebtel. He said that they want to make a difference in people’s lives and offer services for the many, not the few.

“They take on the big boys in the market and treasure relentless innovation. And most importantly they’re open and honest. Those are all values that Rebtel was built on,” Winbladh said.

Rebtel officials say that there are at least 5.5 million British-born people living abroad, and more than 1 million non-British European Union citizens living in the United Kingdom. The company says that in London alone, one in three people were born abroad, and at least another 10,000 foreign-born citizens are settling in the nation’s capital city each month.

Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Anuradha’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users. Today’s featured white paper is Fixed Service Strategies for Mobile Network Operators, brought to you by Comverse (News - Alert).

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VoIP Supply To Offer Free Shipping on Sangoma Cards

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:20:00 +0000

VoIP Supply today announced a new promotion whereby they will be offering free shipping on a large portion of their Sangoma product portfolio.

The list of Sangoma products which are available with free ground shipping includes the following cards:

A101
A101D
A102
A102D
A104
A104D
A108
A108D

These cards are all part of Sangoma’s family of Advanced Flexible Telecommunications (AFT) hardware product line, available in either PCI or PCI Express formats.

The A101 supports up to 2.048 Mbps of full duplex data through-put or up to 30 voice calls over a single T1, E1, or J1 line.

The A102 provides two ports of optimized voice and data over T1, E1, and JI. The card supports up to 60 voice calls or 4.096 Mbps of full-duplex data throughput over two T1, E1, or J1 lines.

The A104 doubles up the 102, supporting up to 120 voice calls or 8.192 Mbps of full-duplex data throughput over four T1, E1, or J1 lines.

Lastly, the A108 octal card, which provides up to 16.4Mbps of full duplex data throughput or 240 voice calls over eight T1 and or E1 lines.

All AFT cards offer optional availability of Octasic’s (News - Alert) DSP hardware and certified algorithms for echo cancellation and Voice Quality Enhancement (VQE) functions.

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Going Green With VoIP Phone Systems

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:16:00 +0000

One of the hottest trends in tech these days has to do with “going green.” The move is definitely on when it comes to reducing an employee’s need to commute or travel for business through applications such as conferencing and the ability — and corporate buy-in — to let increasing numbers of employees work from home.

FreedomVOICE Systems, the Encinitas, CA (News - Alert)-based provider of hosted PBX services sees their customers increasingly taking advantage of their FreedomIQ solution to play their part in the green movement.

According to FreedomVOICE Systems company officials, “Taking advantage of hosted PBX (News - Alert) systems, such as our FreedomIQ offering is one way that businesses are able to “go green.” Businesses are increasingly willing to let their employees work from home, so they do not contribute to pollution by driving back and forth to the office, and not having to supply so much air conditioning at work, etc... One of the ways that Freedom IQ is helping businesses go green is by enabling employees to work remotely.”

And it’s easy to set up an employee to work remotely. “Employees can simply take a VoIP phone home and plug it in to their Internet connection and work from home,” representatives said.

Of course employers still have some concerns about letting workers out of their sight. Enabling business owners to monitor their employees and effectively manage them remotely is critical.

According to company officials, “Businesses want to allow their employees to work from home, but at the same time they can’t do that unless they can fully see what’s going on and fully manage and understand what their employees are doing from their home office. With FreedomIQ, we’ve built in special management tools that allow business owners to see exactly when an employee is logged into his phone, exactly how many inbound calls he is taking, how long those calls are lasting, how many outgoing calls he is making, and so on. Using our call record feature, you can monitor the actual recordings of all the calls that the employee is making.”

“We also have a lot of online reports that give you the ability to let your employees work from home, but still see exactly what’s going on,” they added.

FreedomVOICE also discussed an interesting survey that they conducted on Monster.com. “We recently ran a study on Monster, where we submitted an ad for a customer service position, offering the ability to work from home, and monitored how many respondents we got and how qualified they were. We also submitted another ad for the same position, only we stated that this job required employees to come into an office.

“We found we got 10x more applicants for the position that allowed employees to work from home, rather than the position that required them to come into the office. We found we had a better selection; we had many more people to choose from, and we also found that they were much more qualified. And, they were asking for less money! We feel that had a lot to do with the fact that the applicants knew that they would be working from home, so they weren’t expecting as much pay.

“The other aspect is that we’re in San Diego, which is considered an expensive place to live. We found we received a lot of respondents from all over the United States, so you didn’t have to pay as much for someone working in the Midwest, say as you would have to pay for someone living in San Diego.”

A recent white paper from FreedomVOICE entitled Growing A Small Business — The Benefits of Hosted PBX & Telecommuting discusses the many benefits of deploying a virtual office solution, including the green benefits such a solution delivers.

Below are several excerpts from the white paper that are relevant to the discussion of going green:

A report by the Environmental Defense Fund estimates the average U.S. office
worker uses 10,000 pages of printed paper each year. The Organization for
Economic Co-operation and Development says this pulp and paper industry is the
single largest consumer of water for industrial purposes and the third largest
industrial polluter in terms of greenhouse gases. The U.S. Department of Energy
reports that personal motor vehicles account for 13% of all greenhouse gas
emissions – much of which is spent crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic to
and from the office. Small businesses and the environment both stand to benefit
by eliminating dependency on a premises PBX and finding an alternative to a
highly-centralized workforce.

By telecommuting, an employee contributes
little to no office expense or wasted resources. Less office space is required,
meaning lower land consumption and energy savings in lighting, heating, or
cooling an office. Telecommuting cuts down on the number of redundant
workstations, printers, copiers, and fax machines that need to be purchased,
powered, and maintained. The General Service Administration estimates a single
telecommuter can save a business as much as $5,000 per year in reduced office
operation costs alone.

Telecommuting is a practice that promotes
environmental health. Remote workers consume considerably less printed paper and
expensive toner cartridges than their office-dwelling counterparts, since most
office memos or typed documents are necessarily transmitted electronically
instead of in hard copy. By taking cars off of the road, telecommuting is also a
powerful way to ease traffic congestion, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and
stave off global warming. According to a study commissioned by the Consumer
Electronics Association, telecommuters reduce gas consumption by 840 million
gallons per year, resulting in the prevention of 14 million tons of CO2
emissions.

To view the full version of the FreedomVOICE Whitepaper, Growing A Small Business — The Benefits of Hosted PBX & Telecommuting,
click here.
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Digium Fills In VoIP Lineup with SMB Model

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:14:00 +0000

VoIP phone service provider Digium released a new IP PBX appliance targeted at companies with up to 150 employees.

The new Switchvox AA300 fits in between the AA60, which targets small businesses with 30 users or fewer, and the AA350, designed for up to 400 users. The new product sits in the middle "not only in capacity," according to Tristan Degenhardt, product line director for Digium's Switchvox roster. "but the physical size of the appliance is in between the two as well. The AA60 is tiny, little box designed to wall mount, appropriate for a small business with not a lot of room; the AA 350 is a full-depth 3U rackmountable machine; and the AA300 can also be rackmounted. It too is 3U high, but it’s half-depth, and can be deployed on a desktop rather easily.”

Digium's Switchvox line are built on the open source Asterisk telephony software. "In the SMB space there's a large concern about price," Degenhardt said. "Because it's Asterisk we can offer functionality other PBX vendors can't. When you're an SMB, the stuff you can afford doesn't do very much."

Pricing for the AA300 with SMB 3.5 software begins at $4,240.
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Report Finds 7.8 Million Business VoIP Lines by 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:10:00 +0000

P&F believes the market for “Business VoIP Lines” will reach a total of 7.8 million lines deployed by 2012.

According to the firm, “We predict that AT&T, Verizon and Qwest will capture the biggest share of large enterprises as VoIP customers, but will face competition in the SMB space from a variety of new entrants.”

For more info check our Pike & Fischer’s Web site.

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Compressed web phone calls are easy to bug

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:07:00 +0000

Plans to compress internet (VoIP) phone calls so they use less bandwidth could make them vulnerable to eavesdropping. Most networks are currently safe, but many service providers are due to implement the flawed compression technology.

The new compression technique, called variable bitrate compression produces different size packets of data for different sounds.

That happens because the sampling rate is kept high for long complex sounds like "ow", but cut down for simple consonants like "c". This variable method saves on bandwidth, while maintaining sound quality.

VoIP streams are encrypted to prevent eavesdropping. However, a team from John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, US, has shown that simply measuring the size of packets without decoding them can identify whole words and phrases with a high rate of accuracy.

VoIP systems accessed via a computer like Skype have become popular in recent years, and internet-based phone systems are increasingly appearing in homes and offices too to connect conventional telephones.

Matching packets
Only a few services currently employ the vulnerable compression method, but more networks had hoped to include it in future VoIP upgrades, says Charles Wright, a member of the John Hopkins team. "We hope we have caught this threat before it becomes too serious."

Eavesdropping software the team has developed cannot yet decode an entire conversation, but it can search for chosen phrases within the encrypted data. This could still allow a criminal to find important financial information conveyed in the call, says Fabian Monrose, another team member.

The software breaks down a typed phrase to be listened for into its constituent sounds using a phonetic dictionary. A version of the phrase is then pasted together from audio clips of phonemes taken from a library of example conversations, before finally being made into a stream of VoIP-style packets.

That gives an idea of what the phrase would look like in a real VoIP stream. When a close match is found in a real call, the software alerts the eavesdropper.

Jargon catcher
In tests on example conversations, the software correctly identified phrases with an average accuracy of about 50%. But that jumped to 90% for longer, more complicated words.

Wright thinks these phrases may be the most important. "I think the attack is much more of a threat to calls with some sort of professional jargon where you have lots of big words that string together to make long, relatively predictable phrases," he says. "Informal conversational speech would be tougher because it's so much more random."

Philip Zimmermann, the founder of the Zfone VoIP security project, says the compression schemes lesson no longer seem like a good idea.

"I'd suggest looking for other alternatives," he says. Networks could solve the problem by padding out the data packets to an equal length, he adds, although this would reduce the extent of the compression.

A paper on the Johns Hopkins team's work was presented at the 2008 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, in Oakland, California, US, last month.

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Veraz Intros Upgrade Program for Verso's VoIP Softswitch Customers

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:03:00 +0000

Veraz Networks (News - Alert) has launched an upgrade program for service providers currently using Verso’s Vclear (Clarent) VoIP softswitch. Through this program, service providers can quickly and easily upgrade their network with either the Veraz ControlSwitch or the iMN Multimedia Delivery Platform. Both these Platforms are backed by a comprehensive portfolio of e-learning courses, classroom training, and Veraz’ global professional services and support organization.

Veraz’s ControlSwitch, an advanced softswitch solution, is a field-proven VoIP and Web services platform in use in more than 50 countries today. By leveraging the modularity of the ControlSwitch architecture, businesses can design a customized solution for specific network needs. Companies who want to increase revenue per subscriber can add additional capacity and enhanced services in specific geographic areas on an as-needed basis.

The iMN Multimedia Delivery Platform delivers VoIP subscriber services, Web applications and TDM and IP network peering services in a compact, carrier-grade, NEBs compliant platform. The solution is powered by the same advanced technology as the ControlSwitch.

According to Veraz Networks, both these Platforms can be integrated with a suite of value-added extensions. These include a complete prepaid billing application, the Veraz Network-adaptive Border Controller, which provides access and peering VoIP security, the I-Gate 4000 media gateway platforms, and the verazVirtu softclient.

Amit Chawla, Veraz EVP, global business units, noted in a statement that in today’s market, service providers need vendors and platforms that will grow with them. He added that the ControlSwitch and iMN continue to be enhanced with innovative new capabilities that enable service providers to grow their revenue generating IP services.

Veraz Networks, Inc., is a provider of application, control, and bandwidth optimization products that enable the evolution to the Multimedia Generation Network (MGN). Earlier this month, Veraz released the I-Gate 4000 Session Bandwidth Optimizer (SBO) that is built on the award-winning I-Gate 4000 platform and utilizes RTP multiplexing technology.

The I-Gate 4000 SBO allows service providers to reduce the bandwidth required for voice over IP trunks by up to 67 percent while maintaining toll quality and high reliability.

Anuradha Shukla is a contributing editor for TMCnet, covering call centers, CRM and information technology. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Don't forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.
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Office Phone Systems Utilizing VoIP Technology Revitalizes Operation of Small Businesses

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:29:00 +0000

Small businesses must stay ahead off the technology curve to compete with bigger firms. To that end, an Internet based office phone system has many advantages.

For small businesses, one of the biggest challenges can be competing with the larger firms fighting for the same market. With limited resources and space, a small business must find economical and efficient ways to make up for their lack of size.

Traditionally, one of the biggest selling points for using a small enterprise is the relative ease with which the consumer can connect with the business, getting around the bureaucratic mess associated with larger offices. The easiest way to streamline a small enterprise and still stay connected to the consumer is through a creatively designed small business telephone system.

One of the newest and most exciting developments in office phone systems over the last ten years has been the creation and growth of the VoIP industry. VoIP or "Voice over Internet Protocol", is a revolutionary plug and play phone system that allows users to make phones calls over the Internet, either to other Voice over Internet Protocol users or users to traditional landlines. With the changes in technology, Voice over Internet Protocol offers an economical phone service at a sound quality level equal to or surpassing traditional landline services. There are many, many benefits of VoIP that make it the perfect fit for growing enterprises on the move.

While VoIP may sound daunting to those only familiar with the traditional landline system, the set-up of small business telephone system using VoIP is safe and easy. VoIP relies upon existing Internet connections that require no additional installation. Using the same system that you use to reach the Internet or access email, an enterprise can now make both long distance and local calls with relative ease. Even the enterprise already using a traditional landline phone system can make the switch to VoIP with little upgrades that will use their existing phone lines to connect to the on-line calling system.

Another benefit of using Voice over Internet Protocol in your office phone system is the ease of upgrades. While more complex traditional systems might require an extensive remodel of the office layout and the actual phone lines themselves, a Voice over Internet Protocol upgrade can be as simple and easy as a software update. Likewise, with the ease of upgrades, VoIP is better suited to deal with the changing needs of businesses.

As technology changes, the small enterprises will be on the cusp of these developments as they happen. Any day now, a piece of technology could come along revolutionize how offices function in the same way that the fax machine or computer changed businesses of the past. Unlike larger corporations, the small business using a VoIP phone system will be able to change their entire phone system with relatively little downtime, adapting to whatever new technology is developed.

Likewise, since VoIP uses the Internet already, it is far easier to integrate other technologies into phone calls without having to create a complex and convoluted hodgepodge of technologies. Your Voice over Internet Protocol provider can help integrate a service like video conference calling directly into your new small business telephone system.

By consulting an experienced office phone system expert, you can weigh the costs of different packages and decide which system will best suit your needs for today and the years to come.

All About Broadband Phones for Helpful Voip Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:24:00 +0000

If you are considering cheap phone service with a good voice quality and have many advanced features technology try Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), the best value for telephone service. The voip broadband phone can be utilized to replace the analog phone line or it can be used as a second phone. The most significant use of VOIP service is to make long distance and internationals calls at very cheap rates.

Broadband phone is the amazing technology to day that give many benefits for their users.. Broadband phone actually uses voice over internet protocol (VoIP) to carry phone calls through the internet. This is an alternative way to transmit the call to the traditional telephony network.

How Does it Work?

Exactly, VOIP allows you to make phone calls through your internet connection, it works by converting a phone signal into ‘packets’ of information that are sent down an internet connection, and then converted back into an ordinary phone signal at the other end. A hardware broadband telephone uses an adapter. You connect this hardware to the router on your network or to your PC directly. Another option is software. The broadband software is a program that makes broadband calls.

For all VOIP, a broadband connection is essential. Most phones will take up around 64k for sending your voice, and 64k for receiving the other voice, so a 128k broadband is the absolute minimum requirement to ensure no gaps in call quality.

Advantages of Voip Broadband Phone Services :

1. Save money
Using VoIP Broadphone phone is a cheaper option if you make a lot of long distance and international calls. All calls between people using the same service provider are free regardless of location. Branch offices to head office communication be free cost, if we use this service. By using a VOIP system, you can save large amounts of money, its better choice than traditional phone.

2. Voip Features
Many features that support telecommunication user:
- call waiting
- caller ID
- three-way calling
- call forwarding
- last number redial
- speed dial
- voicemail

3. User Mobility
When traveling, you can take the VoIP adapter with you and instantly turn a phone anywhere in the world into your local phone. This will require a high speed internet connection. It’s flexible tool so your communication can moveable.

4.Easier Call Directing
A major advantage of VOIP phones is that they allow a call to be directed to a phone, not a location. If for example, you travel between two broadband equipped offices (or even abroad), you could take the phone with you, and have all your calls go direct to you in either office, whilst an internal call from your VOIP system would still be free! This offers many of the benefits of mobile phones, but for far less cost.

How to choose a Broadband Phone ?
Essentially, there are two kinds of VoIP (Broadband Phone) applications to consider, either hardware or software based. If you choose the software solution, you’ll have to have your computer urned on in order to both make and receive telephone calls, but the only equipment you’ll need is a microphone and speakers connected to your computer.

If you choose the hardware solution instead, you’ll be using a converter box called an ATA that will be attached to your high-speed internet connection. Your telephone can then be plugged into the ATA. The converter box takes the analog signal from your phone and converts it to a digital signal to be sent over the internet in data packets, which are then reassembled on the other end of the telephone connection. By using a hardware VoIP (Broadband Phone) solution, you computer does not have to be on in order for you to make and receive telephone calls, although your Internet connection will have to be active. Many VoIP (Broadband Phone) service providers are including the ATA at very low cost or even for free in some cases.

Are there any disadvantages with a VoIP (Broadband Phone) solution?

Although most VoIP (Broadband Phone) service providers have Emergency 911 there are still a few that do not. To be sure, the biggest disadvantage that skeptics will throw at you is what happens when your power goes out at home or you lose your Broadband Internet connection. You see VoIP (Broadband Phone) relies on having a broadband connection so if that goes down so does your Internet phone service. However, in the days when most of us have a cell phone of some sort, even if it is just "pay as you go", is this really a big issue? Another option that many people go for is to have a cheap regular local phone service to use just on those rare occasions when you lose your power or broadband connection.

Finally the best choice for your telecommunication that we suggest is
"voip broadband phone".

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Small Business Telephone System with VoIP

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:20:00 +0000

Moving your small business telephone system over to VoIP requires some pre-planning and consultation with an Internet provider. However, by insuring that you have the proper bandwidth, switches, and media gateway, your move to VoIP can be done quickly.

If you are changing your small business telephone system from a traditional dedicated fixed landline to the newer VoIP technology, there are some things you need to have in place to change successfully.

1. Internet Connection

To route your calls over the Internet instead of over the existing telephone fixed landlines, you need to have a powerful Internet connection and equipment to connect and communicate with.

If your small business is using a DSL or cable modem for your Internet connectivity, you need to research the bandwidth needed for of VoIP communications (Voice over Internet Protocol).

If you are one of 1-2 employees, then DSL or cable should work fine to meet your needs. DSL and cable modems are not ideal for VoIP, but they do work acceptably well for a very small office of just one or two people.

If your office grows to more than 2 users, your small business telephone system needs to grow also. It is time to consider a more robust Internet connection.

The standard DSL and cable modems offer you a quicker download than upload speed. This generally works fine for general computer usage, but it won't work so well for voice communication.

So, you will need to make sure that your Internet connection can support both the upload and download speeds that you need to have clear and consistent voice communication.

2. How Much Bandwidth?

The industry standard is enough bandwidth for about 1/3 rd of your employees to be on the telephone at the same time ... so if you have 30 lines, you should then have enough bandwidth for 10 to be used at any one time. With a business of this size, your small business telephone system will usually require a T1 connection to the Internet.

One of the best things you can do is to work with a provider who can support both your VoIP and Internet connection needs. This will insure that you have the bandwidth necessary to get both your calls and data needs taken care of.

3. Hub vs. Switch

In addition to bandwidth to the Internet, internally you should be using switches on your network rather than hubs. While hubs are fine for electronic data transmission, the transmission of voice over your network necessitates the need for switches to be used.

4. Media Gateways

If you already have a small business telephone system in place, such as a small PBX system, you can purchase a device called a "media gateway" to connect your existing phone system to the Internet without having to replace all of your phones and equipment.

This will save you money from the equipment that would have to be replaced to upgrade to VoIP services.

Moving your small business telephone system over to VoIP requires some pre-planning and consultation with an Internet provider. An experienced provider can offer the equipment and the know-how to make your move to VoIP quickly and without any inconvenience for your employees.

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A Brief Introduction to VoIP

noreply@blogger.com (Adsense Professional) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:17:00 +0000

a very basic level it is the idea of using a data network to transfer voice between two points. Although voip has become a buzz word in recent years has it origins as far back as the early 1970s. The pioneering work of Danny Cohen at the University of Southern California.

VoIP stand for Voice-over-Internet protocol. At a very basic level it is the idea of using a data network to transfer voice between two points. Although voip has become a buzz word in recent years has it origins as far back as the early 1970s. The pioneering work of Danny Cohen at the University of Southern California first tested the Network Voice Protocol (NVP) in December 1973.

Although voip seems to imply that it can only carry voice across the network the reality is that voip can be used to communicate voice, data and video across the network if the software and hardware is in place.

Voip works by taking the voice and sampling it. Most of us have recorded our voice to a digital device be it a computer, a mobile phone or a digital dictaphone. You can even get applications for iPODs to record your voice. The voice samples are converted into data and then stored on the device to be played back at a later date. Voip works in the same way, taking the voice, sampling it and converting it into binary data. The different is that data isn’t stored locally but the samples are transferred them via the network to the recipient at the other end.

In order for the data to flow smoothly from one point to the other the samples are compressed with a CODEC and sliced into packets or smaller samples. These packets are then pulsed across the network and reassembled at the other end, decompressed and played backed. The whole process is so quick that the users do not notice the process taking place. If the process does become slowed down then jitter can take place. The voice or video then becomes choppy or glitch ridden. In order to over come the problem a fast Ethernet network dedicated to voip improves the flow of data.

There are two major types of equipment used for voip transmissions. The first is the soft phone, this is a system that utilizes a computer with the addition of a microphone and either headphones or speakers. The computer has software installed that acts as the gateway to the network providing the sampling, CODECS and the steaming of the data.

The vast majority of Skype customers use the soft phone route when accessing the service. Although Skype does provide handsets these are still pseudo soft phones as Skype cannot be used with voip analogue telephone adapters (ATAs) and therefore they are restricted to the Skype network.

The other devices for using a voip network are unsurprisingly called hard phones. These are stand alone devices that look like a regular phone but instead of a phone jack they have an internet cable that can be plugged directly into the network.

The advantages for a business in installing a converged voip network are that by using a single network for all communication the maintenance and deployment costs are keep controlled. In order to set up a voip network you will need to find a secure voip provider who will be able to install and run a fast Ethernet network.

There are various Ethernet solutions and Ethernet connections in the market place. Interoute have the largest single pan-European network for voip provision and work for a variety of European governments in providing their voip services.
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