1. What are the business benefits of IP telephony?
2. What about call quality?
3. Will my VoIP phone work if the power fails?
4. Why pay for a leased line when cheaper ADSL broadband line will do?
5. Is it necessary to retain some traditional ISDN or PSTN connectivity?
6. Why should I consider IP telephony now?
7. Can a legacy PBX be adapted for internet connectivity?
8. Should I be worried about VoIP security?
9. May our existing ADSL line be retained?
10. How does business grade IP telephony differ from residential VoIP?
11. What are the enterprise-level feature-sets found on an IP PBX?
12. Does the IP PBX system use an industry standard protocol?
13. My business is tied into long term telephony contracts so should I be considering IP telephony now?

1. What are the business benefits of IP telephony?

The answer to this question is lengthy so we have dedicated a page of our website to the Benefits of VoIP.

However, below is a list of what we consider to be the top 5 benefits:

Cost savings. IP telephony allows substantial cost savings in terms of call charges but also in terms of personnel skill sets and resources – freeing up your personnel and consolidating IT and telephony departments. Existing personnel are able to work smarter: for example a three-site company may only require one, as opposed to three, receptionists. Cost savings also come in the form of reduced office overheads (i.e.: office rental, business rates) by encouraging hot deskign and effective home working and the take-up of cost effective regional offices.

‘Enterprise-grade telephony’. Features are now available to SMEs that were only previously available to large enterprise businesses, e.g.: incoming call pop-ups, integration with CRM systems, click-to-dial from applications such as Outlook, inbound call centres and automated attendants.

Increased flexibility & productivity. A business may be multi-sited, have home workers and a large proportion of roaming personnel – but all of whom will appear to be in a single office environment. All personnel can be connected to an IP phone system with a VoIP-enabled phone and suitable internet access. There is greater flexibility for personnel to work from home which in turn promotes staff retention and their associated skills. Key staff may benefit from increased continuity during, for example, maternity / paternity leave and symbiotic working practices are possible that simply were not possible before, e.g.: a commitment to child care during the day from 3.00-5.30pm is balanced by being receiving sales calls between 5.30-8.00pm.

‘Greener’. IP telephony fits with flexible working practices. It promotes fully-functional home working. The integration of the telephony and computer networks means less physical wiring, as there’s no need for ‘phones-only’ cabling. Also, all but the most basic IP phones offer call conferencing for multiple caller instances, ensuring a reduction in time and money for travel.

Simplicity & Scalability. Ease of configuration: intuitive, secure permissions-based, check box graphical user interface and secure managed off-site access by the telephony provider (where required). Resilience and business continuity is increased. Internet telephone lines (i.e.: SIP trunks) may be immediately re-assigned to a new geographic location in the event of disaster. IP PBX’s can inter-connect with traditional PBX systems. This is particularly important for companies tied into long term equipment or service contracts as they are still able to benefit from VoIP.

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2. What about call quality?

Business reputation relies on the interface shown to clients. If there is an echo or poor speech quality the client quickly understands the nature of the organisation they are dealing with. The quality of VoIP calls is dependent upon a number of factors.

IP telephone calls travel through many devices and the journey can be a complex one but in concept: a call first travels over the corporate LAN (i.e.: inside your organisation). In doing so, the voice data packets travel through IP telephones, switches, routers, modems and then travel through the WAN / internet to an internet service provider (ISP) and an internet telephony service provider (ITSP).

Should there be a delay or interruption in the flow of speech – jitter or latency for example – call quality will be affected.

Here at 500 we have the right partners in place and an intricate knowledge of this journey to ensure business grade IP telephony is maintained. Configuration and adaptation of the LAN, where required, to ensure capabililty for delivering quality for voice calls is commonly overlooked in the industry: in contrast, many providers focus solely on their product feature sets.

With proper and considered implementation VoIP quality may be indistinguishable from a traditional telephony service and is capable of being superior.
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3. Will my VoIP phone work if the power fails?

The vast majority of IP telephones make use of PoE (power over Ethernet) and therefore as long as PoE switches and modems / routers are powered via UPS (uninterruptable power supply) units, the service will be maintained for the period the battery life or until as such time as the mains power is restored.
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4. Why pay for a leased line when cheaper ADSL broadband line will do?

Common ADSL (or SDSL) broadband lines may cost far less than the cost of a leased line and yet provide a similar bandwidth, so why pay the extra cost? A leased line may offer a service level agreement (SLA) of four hours whereas an xDSL line may be greater than twenty hours for service to be reinstated. In addition, there is the issue of contention ratios to consider: some xDSL lines are shared between up to fifty other companies and / or residential use whereas leased lines are dedicated, one-to-one, for your company’s use. In addition, leased lines are capable of voice / data segregation. Here at 500 we’ll help you assess what delivery network provides the required quality and best suits your company’s needs.
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5. Is it necessary to retain some traditional ISDN or PSTN connectivity?

The more robust the service level agreement on the internet connection the less requirement there may be for fail-over to PSTN / ISDN. We often advocate that a proportion of any existing PSTN / ISDN connectivity is retained so that calls may be re-routed seamlessly via traditional infrastructure. With the exception of (free) site-to-site calls we often recommend that incoming calls are received via traditional infrastructure for a number of reasons.
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6. Why should I consider IP telephony now?

In our view it is only since late 2006 / early 2007 that the industry has matured sufficiently to provide business grade IP products and services that have the required resilience.

Internet telephony service providers (ITSP’s) that are capable of prioritising voice over data; such services are robust and tested and have appropriate automatic fail-over resilience.

The ubiquitous roll out of high-quality low-cost service level agreed leased and digital subscriber lines (xDSL) that provide high speed, symmetric upstream and downstream bandwidths.

Reliable and proven IP PBX’s that utilise industry-standard non-proprietary protocols (i.e.: SIP) that are robust, reliable and proven, have high functionality and are simple to configure.
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7. Can a legacy PBX be adapted for internet connectivity?

Yes. There may be circumstances when routing calls through a legacy PBX may be a suitable solution and implementations can be managed by ‘parallel running’ both legacy and IP telephony systems. However we would always advocate the implementation of an IP PBX to replace any existing legacy equipment (primarily for reasons of cost alone).
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8. Should I be worried about VoIP security?

Yes. Security should be a concern for any right-thinking business and we would recommend that this forms one of the primary questions a prospective client should ask any business grade IP telephony provider.

Here at 500 we are convinced that due to the number of insecure VoIP implementations being currently rolled out the subject of security will become progressively more topical.

We do not believe that a service may be considered to be business grade unless robust security is in place. Our implementations are designed such that no voice traffic will touch the public internet between a customer site and the ITSP; this may be achieved either via VPN technology or via the inherent security offered by leased lines.

It should be remembered that traditional telephony may suffer from similar security concerns as IP traffic – unless implemented correctly. We recommend that your technical department become familiar with the particular issues associated with IP telephony and that any potential providers are questioned accordingly; for further information visit the VoIP Security Alliance.
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9. May our existing ADSL line be retained?

If an ADSL connection is of the right type and can provide business grade quality of service, yes.

Here at 500 we only utilise monitored broadband with fixed service level agreements, often including a guarantee (SLA) on a minimum number internet calls. Such lines may be tested and swiftly analysed should a client flag a concern.
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10. How does business grade IP telephony differ from residential VoIP?

The answer to this question lies primarily in the provisioning.

Firstly, the telephony provider should take an holistic approach to ensure quality of service (QoS) through the LAN through to the ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Provider).

In addition, robust service level agreements (SLA’s) should be in place to guarantee benchmarks in service and analytical tools that may be operated remotely should be present for fault finding / diagnosis.

Finally, professional installation, intuitive and tailored training should take place with adequate post-sales management and follow-up including a responsive ticket-based support system.
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11. What are the enterprise-level feature-sets found on an IP PBX?

In excess of 200 features are present on the systems we recommend. A summarised featured set is below:

• Automatic call distribution and hunt groups
• Auto-attendant
• Advanced call handling
• Operator stations
• Voicemail
• Call detail records and reporting
• Computer telephony integration (e.g.: Outlook, CRM systems, screen pop-ups)
• Call queuing
• Skills-based routing
• Call recording
• Call monitoring
• Instant messaging
• Music on hold
• Presence
• Inbound call centres

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12. Does the IP PBX system use an industry standard protocol?

SIP (session initiation protocol) is the industry standard protocol for instantiating IP telephone calls. Systems that utilise it therefore benefit the diverse telephony equipment from a wide range of manufacturers and suppliers. In itself this is not always an issue but it is rare to find every type of phone from one single manufacturer – not everyone can specialise, for example, in WiFi phones or conference room phones.

Many suppliers of IP telephone systems use proprietary (not SIP) on the LAN which tie users into purchasing only their own branded products. It is true to say that systems that do use their own proprietary protocol for such ‘local’ calling must convert that call to SIP in order to make use of ITSP SIP trunking services.

As SIP is an open standard, like the commonly used internet protocol upon which it resides, this ensures its universal development and acceptance (with companies like Nokia and Blackberry and almost all IP phone manufacturers offering it as standard. Generally speaking, there is better security when adopting a standard as the industry refines security on a pro-active and on-going basis.
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13. My business is tied into long term telephony contracts so should I be considering IP telephony now?

Unlike other inferior systems, our premises-based IP PBX’s can ‘tie line’ into legacy PBX’s making use of your existing lines and tariffs so you don’t necessarily have to rule out considering IP telephony whilst you’re tied into long term lease. Please do contact us or call us on 0845 0000 500 for further details and if this applies to you – and do make sure you ask this question of any other providers you may be considering using.
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