Future of VoIP Industry

Aug 5, 2015 | All About VoIP

With the internet becoming one of the most used facets of business today, VoIP has gained a huge foothold in the world of Internet. While there are always improvements to be made in all systems, and we see this with the evolution of Windows products, and Apples iTunes, voice is not to be left behind.

While the protocol for voice will not change much, it has become more secure, and with each passing day there are more and more applications written to enable extra functionality out of your VoIP systems.

Dig Deep with CDR:- From CDR (call detail recording) which can be as simple as utilizing the existing database the server uses, to creating and using an entirely different database, and importing data. Adding graphics, and a sleek interface to the data, this can be a simple tool to deploy with powerful data that can show the times of your highest call volume all the way down to what countries called you, or who is calling which country and when.

Extension Managers:- Extension managers give you more flexibility and ease in managing user extensions and can even allow you to associate specific users with specific extensions, and allow them levels of access to all or specific extensions.

IVR Trees :- IVR Trees have been in use since before VoIP, but with VoIP, we are able to do so much more with IVR Trees, as well as music on hold, or even a simple message or advertisement for callers sitting on hold, or in a queue waiting on their call to be answered. Now, while we can do all these things to an IVR, the power is not actually behind your VoIP system, but the server it runs on, and as we progress the market for applications to interface with VoIP systems increases, and your choices grow.

Just as when Apple decidedly changed the music industry with the release of the ipod, and expanded with the iphone, the movement within the VoIP industry, while not as high profile as Apple or Windows events, is always changing and evolving, and the room to create your own custom system from what we like to describe as modules is almost never ending

As more and more companies choose to utilize VoIP, the demand for utilizing aspects of the system like Voicemail to email, and faxes to PDF, will increase the demand for more robust software and reporting tools for business to track the ways in which the system is utilized, and I can foresee the future where portions may even be monetized into salable ad space to help generate revenue for the companies that use the system.

While SIP trunk providers are limited due to the finite numbers available, service providers and the offerings will continue to grow, offering companies who do not want to install, run and manage their own voice servers, all the services wrapped into a bundle right along with the DID’s for the company. The vast amount of data that can be gathered via VoIP, will be of great value to all companies in making marketing or financial decisions, and due to that the growth in how that data is gathered and displayed is going to provide a huge growth in the IT field as a whole, from programmers and developers to hosted solution providers and techs at all levels.

Limitations of VoIP!

Aug 4, 2015 | All About VoIP

VoIP is much discussed technology around. We hear everyone talk about benefits and opportunities with VoIP. But one thing which is not much discussed is :-

Does VoIP have any limitations? If yes then What kind of limitations?

There really are few limitations, VOIP is one of the most flexible phone systems out there. Your only going to limit yourself based on the money you want to spend, and how deep you want to dive into configuring your own system.

Probably the biggest obstacle you will run into is your internet connection, and if you utilize it for data and your SIP trunk, you can run into latency issues, however this is not something directly related to VOIP. This would be more of a 3^rd party type issue, and if you are aware of what you will need when it comes to the connectivity side, you should not have any issues.

On the VOIP side, there are so many flavors and distributions as well as providers, the possibilities are almost endless. While choosing a hosted solution, you will have limits on how many conference rooms you might be able to have, you may not have the option to forward voicemail to email, your IVR tree may be limited, but again, for more money, you can always remove those limitations.

When configuring your own VOIP system, and simply outsourcing the internet connection and SIP trunk, you can remove just about every limitation. Again, not all of them, but the ones that are left again, relate to hardware and money, as well as office footprint. Current systems can handle 100+ calls simultaneously, are you willing to spend the money on the switches and handsets to handle 100+ handsets? Can you have your ISP provide the needed bandwidth? Is there room in the office for all the equipment?

Typically we see between 40-50 handsets in a typical mid-size business. I currently have a customer with just shy of 50 handsets, spread throughout the United States, and 1 single server located in Chicago. The system is extremely flexible and proven solid and reliable. Not only will your own system handle the calls, IVR trees, and ring groups, voicemails, it can, and when configured, alert you to updates, provide reports on calls, times of calls, inbound/outbound calls, to what countries etc. You don’t have to wait on a invoice from a provider or request the information, all of that is contained within the system itself.

The other limitations you may actually have are more than likely software dependent. While I utilize open source PBX systems, running over a Linux operating system, there are proprietary systems out there, such as Cisco, and Microsoft. The fact is you will more than likely be utilizing support when using those types of systems, and not running or installing on your own, but, again, you will hit limitations imposed by the company your dealing with. And it is not that these are deal breaking limitations, but having spent the last year and a half administering phone systems, the limitations are in place to ensure quality service, and reliability, not to hinder use of the system. I should also point out, that when paying for this service, while you may have extra charges to increase conference rooms, or increase and IVR tree, or alert to voicemails via email, most will supply a far more user friendly detail records available in a web interface.

Choosing to use a provider, or to do it yourself, understand and realize, that this is not, as with anything going to have 100% up time. While your side, or the provider can remain up, there are so many other places for issues to arise as well. Switch’s, core routers in major data centers, the receiver of the calls you make, while these remain very scant in occurrence, they can happen, and it does not, and should not reflect negatively on VOIP systems. Today we are heavily reliant on the internet and network connectivity, and will always face challenges to keep the information flowing, but in the world of phone systems, VOIP and SIP trunks are flexible and reliable for all of today’s business!

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What is Codec?

May 20, 2015 | All About VoIP

A CODEC is an abbreviation for coder-decoder. Its a device that encodes or decodes a digital stream to transfer it over data network. Two basic operations of CODEC are:-

To convert an analog voice signal to its equivalent digital form for easy transmition.

Once the transmition is complete it converts the compressed digital signal back to its original analog form.

There are quiet a few audio CODEC’s available in the market. Some you will need to pay for and others are available for free. Each Codec uses certain network bandwidth and based on the computation determines the sound quality.

Table below lists the most commonly used Codecs in the VoIP telephony.

Legend for table:

CODEC – Industry name of the Codec
Bandwidth – lists the bitrate in kilobytes per second for each Codec.
MOS – Mean Opinion Score measures the perceived quality of audio after it has been compressed, transmitted, and decompressed by the particular codec.
Measured on the scale of 1 – 5. 5 being best
Description: Gives basic explanation about the Codec.

Asterisk DTMF issues

Apr 11, 2014 | All About VoIP

Its a common issue with asterisk as it sometimes wont pass dtmf properly. To solve the issue first we need to check the network have sufficient bandwidth, if bandwidth is sufficient then we need to add below parameters on all didforsale trunks. Note that if you are using G729 codec then inband wont work. First try with dtmfmode=auto, if it didn’t work then try with dtmfmode=inband.(For only ULAW) codec. If you are using g729, then force rfc2833 instead of inband.

Example

Hope this will solve the issue