VoIP literacy in INDIA

Though the Indian corporate houses have seen an IT boom and are now witnessing a downturn, they are still not that focussed on unified communication, which can help them in cost cutting effectively. Only exceptions have been the call centres who have welcomed VoIP with both hands for very obvious reasons like low cost international calls and least cost routing. But still not many I.T. departments are gearing up for this IP phone revolution.
There have been forums, webinars, blogs as well as dedicated websites spread all over the internet that preach about Unified Communication but the government interventions in the name of protecting the level playing field has somehow never helped the VoIP industry to grow the way it should have been. VoIP not only allows you to have cheap calling rates but it also provides you with customizable and intelligent services which will help the businesses to grow faster. Not only the established businesses have an advantage but one can also start using the VoIP applications.
There are many cases that I have come across in more than 10 years of my experience in this industry, where non-technical people have come up with graet ideas like creating a voip call shop or virtual voip calling to earn great bucks. But unfortunately all these people are not from India. Thus I feel that its very essential for India to know the pros and cons of every techonolgy otherwise it would be a difficult challenge to bring concepts like NGN and mobile number portability to India. There has to be a unanimous acceptance for VoIP.

Voip call shop solution

There is one cybercafe in a tourist spot in Spain where people come for browsing. The Cafe-owner saw business opportunity to provide visitors facility to make VoIP calls. He thought of giving this facility to its users to call on very cheap rates.

As he is already having his SIP Provider so he wanted to integrate his 8 port billing meter to generate bills and charge the users according to their usage.So he got an IPPBX integrated with his SIP provider and billing system and later configured an analog telephony adapter(ATA) to connect regular analog phones for the visitors to place the VoIP calls. The billing was done after the call got over in the cafe itself over a billing machine which could record the bill status for four lines.

Later they also want to start virtual calling cards facility for their customers wherein they can make calls even from outside after leaving the cyber cafe. This is one of the very well thought applications of VoIP.

Sharing T1 between two branches

A multinational pharmaceutical company had been facing many problems because they had to separate their Marketing and Production department due to statutory reasons, but in order to minimize the cost they wanted that this should be done while retaining their existing phone numbers as they were already known to customers. They were having T1 lines which could carry 24 digitized voice channels. Those departments were having some selected users who had direct incoming numbers and the rest of users were reachable via Receptionist or IVR.

As they implemented an IPPBX, it allowed them to solve their problems and they also got many other features which further enhanced their productivity and reduced their OPEX.

Apart from the basic features there were some additional features like:-

1. Directory-Which allows users to search the phone numbers by names.
2. Click to call-facility for outlook
3. Time interval setting-Which means the calls get connected to home extensions of senior
management and after office hours will be diverted to IVR.
4. Dial Plan-To decide that how the incoming calls can be routed when someone is calling from
outside.

Virtual VoIP Calling service

One of my friends in Nepal took a very well thought initiative for the local people of his city who were unaware of the cheaper calling rates that VoIP provides. On account of a poor computer penetration and less familiarity with the internet, its not possible for the people to keep in touch with their relatives abroad. The only solution is making ISD calls. So he came up with this idea wherein International calling cards will be provided to the people.

The people will make calls to a local phone at his centre which will further get routed to USA, UK, Australia etc. through an IPPBX. At present he owns three local phone lines which are connected to the server. The caller first makes a local call to his centre. After his caller ID gets authenticated, he is asked to enter the international number. Thus the call gets routed overseas through a SIP provider. There are many advantages of this system to the caller

1. No need to enter any Password.
2. Only Caller ID authentication is required.
3. Caller needs just the calling card.
4. No need of computer or net connectivity.
5. Balance amount in the calling card can be checked over the same local call by just entering a specific number.

All this integration was done remotely in a time of less than 5 days. Very soon he wants to integrate a Mobile Line through Bluetooth with the ippbx.

Unified Branch Communication

Committing to client satisfaction, meeting their requirements and guarding expenses are among the best methods any service provider can employ to succeed. Talking of one of our clients in Canada, all we needed was to understand their requirement and provide a unified branch communication to their geographically distributed business in Canada and New York.

Their business revolves around the efficient call-handling between their Sales, Support and Reseller Operations teams. They initially had 3 separate skype accounts for each team and in all 10 phone lines including Toll-Free and non Toll-Free numbers for their 2 offices in Canada and New York. Inspite of this, as the teams used to be busy in meetings on site they missed some crucial phone calls which went unanswered. Similarly the skype accounts if not logged in, again some opportunities were lost. To overcome this situation we provided them with a solution wherein the unanswered calls would get diverted to the receptionist or agents present in the offices and would go to the voice mail or IVRS after the office hours.

Thus with an IPPBX and a set of IP phones they were provided with:
1.Uniform experience for their callers
2.Call recording facility
3.Geographical connectivity
4.Reduced opportunity loss

All the buzz about Unified Communication in the field of VoIP, is increasing day by day. And the above case study is an example of how everyone today wants a completely integrated communication channel.

Least Cost Routing

“Least Cost Routing”(LCR) is the process to reduce the cost on all outbound calls and provide customers with cheap telephone calls. Usually, in a corporate environment, high volume of calls is made. LCR allows the telephone system to automatically route the long distance call to the most economical telephony carrier / network thus reducing the employee's effort in making calls.

Least Cost Routing chooses the cheapest service provider based on a set of criteria, mostly the dialed number and the time of day. Depending upon the programming, the LCR would either move down to the second most efficient service if the first one is not accessible or it would send a ‘busy’ signal to the user.All this is extremely flexible without changing your existing telephone system or your telephone number. Thus LCR provides you with a complete package of following advantages:

> Cost cutting
> Effortless handling of outbound calls
> Efficient management of heavy data traffic
> Retaining your original telephone number
> Uncompromised quality of service.

Thus LCR being the most highlighted feature of our products at Bicnet Infoservices we introduce to you BICSERVER which brings to you a unique computer telephony system that integrates 4th generation PC based Internet Protocol based PBX with traditional analog, digital and GSM lines with a standard USB 2.0 interface. It helps you in gaining:

> Lower Phone Bills
> Integrated Communications
> More Productivity
> Business Monitoring
> High Scalability


We intend to continue a discussion regarding the new and upcoming terminologies and applications of technology whether it is Voip, IPPBX or any thing related to unified communications.