VOIP
So, voice-over-ip or VOIP is becoming more popular. It is a technology that transmits phone calls over the internet instead of the traditional "analog" phone network. It has been popularized by companies like Skype and Vonage, however, it can be used in business as well as for home. Advantages can be cost savings and dramatic flexibility. Disadvantages can be call quality and reliability. But implemented properly, the flexibility is really hard to beat and good call quality can be achieved. We recently converted our firm from traditional analog phones to a voip solution. For our experiences, caveats, and opinions, read the full text article.
When we added a new office in Irvine a few months ago, we decided to upgrade our telephone system as well. We needed additional flexibility, and the ability to have people in different physical locations all tied in to the same phone system. Even though we suspected call quality may be an issue if not properly implemented, we decided to make the jump to voip. After all, we are a technology company. Our initial implementation was not good, call quality was poor. In fact, some of you may have even experienced difficulty when trying to call us. Sorry about that. However, after refining the initial implementation, I think we have finally achieved a very workable voip system.
The Business Challenge
Our business is growing, rapidly. Our growth results in employees being located in different cities, states and even countries. Specifically, we have people in Seal Beach, Irvine, Sacramento, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Australia. We needed a phone system that could be very flexible. In addition, I wanted control over the "programming" of the call routing. For example, I wanted to be able to route calls to a specific extension to a cell number at will, and I did not want to have to call a phone company to do the programming. In addition, with our technicians often in the field, we needed a way to have voice messages emailed to their cell phones. Finally, we needed a way to have multiple phones ring simultaneously. The solution we implemented provides all of the above, at a reasonable cost. Technically speaking, the solution is an internal IP-PBX (Switchvox), a SIP provider (Cbeyond), IP phones (Polycom), a T1 line, and a VPN connection (Sonicwall).
Call Routing
Let's walk through a typical inbound phone call. A client dials our main line 562-430-5716. Two phones in our Seal Beach office ring at the same time. When the receptionist picks up the call, she has the ability to transfer the caller to any internal extension, and the phone system will route the call appropriately, regardless of the extension's details. For example the extension could be a physical Polycom phone located in Las Vegas, a soft-phone in Sacramento, a cell phone of a technician, or a support phone queue. If the call is transferred to the support queue, multiple phones ring in our Irvine office. If a tech does not answer the queue, the caller is routed to an extension that receives a voice message, and that voice message is instantly emailed to all of our tech's cell phones as an email attachment.
Technical Challenges
There are two key technical challenges to VOIP: call quality and call reliability. Call Quality is how the call sounds while you are talking on the phone. Is it choppy? Is there an echo? Call Reliability is the trustworthiness of the call connection and call transfers. To be sure, we faced the same technical challenges as others. We were able to address all of these issues and now call quality is comparable to analog lines and call reliability is excellent. Here is a brief overview of how we addressed these issues.
Codec. A "codec" is an algorithm that converts the sound of your voice into the digital data that is transmitted over the internet. There are many codecs. Some are more efficient than others. After upgrading our codec to G729, our call quality was dramatically improved due to this codec's particularly efficient algorithm.
QoS. QoS is Quality of Service, and it is a technology that enables your router to prioritize voice data over other data. That way, voice data traffic goes through fast. After upgrading to QoS, our call quality was improved.
VPN. VPN is Virtual Private Networking, and enables a secure connection between two offices. Once we established a VPN between Seal Beach and Irvine, our call reliability was dramatically improved.
After properly configuring all major components of the VOIP system, I am pleased to say I like this technology. It took us a while to get everything dialed in, and there were times of extreme frustration, but now that it is installed and working well, we like it.
Conclusion
The item I love most about VOIP is the flexibility it provides when connecting resources outside our main headquarters. The cost savings was not the driving factor for us. The ability to get calls to the people that can help, in real time, across various cities and states, was our motivation. We can now continue our growth regardless of geographic market or employee location. This is huge for us as a technology consulting firm with distributed resources.