Making the move to VoIP

By James Spenseley
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THE TECHNOLOGY IS EXCITING, customers are clamouring and the product actually delivers real business benefits, above basic call savings.

With a number of providers in the market, resellers and end customers alike have a number of choices when it comes to selecting a business partner to enable them to enter the VoIP marketplace.

With that in mind, I’d like to take a moment to discuss what resellers should consider in a wholesale VoIP provider partner.

Before thinking about signing with a provider, there are a few key questions they should ask of any potential partner:
• Do they offer national or only a
state-based network?
• Do they in fact operate their own network?
• Do they offer quality of service?
• Do they have their own PSTN interconnects?
• Can they allocate numbers and where?
• What technical expertise do they offer?
• Can they provide finance for equipment?
• Will the VoIP carrier service complement the quality of our VoIP hardware and software systems?
• Can the VoIP carrier meeting the business needs of today – and tomorrow?

Network coverage
Whether your potential partner has a state-based or national network with points of presence (POPs) in each capital city is one of the most important questions you should ask.

Having a national network means that you can connect directly to customers without having that traffic traverse the public Internet or avoid the requirement to purchase expensive circuits cross-country.

For example, a customer in Adelaide using ISPhone’s service can connect directly to our carrier grade next-generation network, allowing the voice calls to terminate in Adelaide from Adelaide without everything tromboning via Sydney. What does this mean? Better call quality and greater reliability.

Quality of service
VoIP doesn’t have to be about poor quality, cheap calls. Because ISPhone manages its own national network it can control quality and provide a better than PSTN, and equal to ISDN, grade service. It’s also more cost effective for end-users to terminate as they don’t have to purchase Internet capacity or interstate circuits to connect to us. ISPhone in fact offers its own DSL products for customer connections. Latency is less of an issue due to there being no need for the call to be routed interstate, and security is
much higher as the call never leaves the provider’s network.

Having a carrier-grade network also means the network is not the limiting factor in terms of call compression and quality. This provides greater levels of choice for customers, from low bandwidth highly compressed calls, to ISDN equivalent call clarity.

PSTN interconnects
Having direct PSTN, or bilateral interconnect with the major carriers is also a consideration. With this capability, a call to a number owned by an incumbent provider terminates directly from the VoIP network to the PSTN, there is no double legs of conversion or multiple parties involved. VoIP providers with a PSTN interconnect can be much more price competitive, and you are dealing with a Tier1 carrier, not a customer of a Tier 1 carrier. As with anything, the less people involved, the more reliable the service. ISPhone is a pure VoIP provider and is the first to have direct PSTN interconnects with the major telcos.

Number allocation
The ability to provide number ranges to end-users is also a consideration as
end-users will often want related numbers for their branch offices, franchises etc. Some major carriers can only issue numbers in capital cities, and in almost all cases VoIP providers have to receive their phone numbers from a Tier 1 carrier. ISPhone can allocate their own numbers in 98.5 percent of the country. This means you won’t have annoying delays waiting for your VoIP provider to request numbers from their carrier, and when you have a requirement for a phone number in Bourke it’ll save you running around trying to find a solution to win the deal.

Technical expertise
While residential services are relatively simple to install and set up, business-grade VoIP deployments can be complex. Resellers should look to a partner who has the technical expertise to back you up. ISPhone’s senior technical staff have more than 25 collective years experience running some of the country’s largest IP and voice networks.

Financing
The ability to offer financing for both resellers and their customers is an important feature to help offset the cost of transitioning to VoIP. ISPhone offers such a service through strategic partnerships with global players such as Cisco Capital and can turn around applications within 24 hours.

Complementary features
It does not make sense to outlay capital costs on voice if the end result is sub-standard. A business-grade DSL VoIP network will complement most VoIP systems. It will feature guaranteed availability, to what is known in industry terms as the six 9s — 99.9999 percent of time around the clock. And an integrated deployment with all the hardware, software and network services complementing one another will provide greater reliability and less maintenance in the long run. The system will also be more adaptable for upgrades and modifications without major cost outlays.

Meeting current and future needs
A starting point for all VoIP systems is being able to seamlessly connect to customers, suppliers and staff wherever they are located. People working away from their desks should be able to access voice and messaging systems via a desk phone, PC, laptop, mobile, and PDA.
They should also be able to contact colleagues on short-code extensions, transfer calls, and access their voicemail. A VoIP deployment needs to be able to accommodate the needs of workers wherever they are located. q

“VoIP doesn’t have to be about poor quality, cheap calls.”

“Resellers should look to a partner who has the technical expertise to back you up.”

James Spenceley:Chief technology officer ISPhone