Low-Cost Corporate Communications using VoIP

Voice over IP (VoIP) is emerging as one of the most powerful technologies revolutionizing the telecom industry. Most of us are fairly comfortable with using VoIP for personal use, courtesy free telephony services from Skype, Yahoo Voice, MSN Messenger, Google Talk, and Gizmo5. Apart from free PC-to-PC services, VoIP has also contributed towards low cost international PC-to-Phone and Phone-to-Phone services (Vonage, VBuzzer, SIPTalk, Rangatel, BroadTalk, etc).

As mentioned earlier, these services are extremely popular among individual users for personal use. However, they are not being rapidly embraced as an effective cost cutting strategy to reduce corporate communication expenses. One of the barriers in its adoption as a corporate solution is the perceived complexity associated with setting up a PBX (Private Branch Exchange). Establishing and maintaining traditional PSTN PBX systems are not within the realm of IT competencies. It involves expensive hardware and specialized (out-sourced) telecom services. However, open-source PBX systems such as Asterisk have made it extremely easy for systems admins at any level to setup and manage a PBX. Asterisk is an open source software PBX, created by Digium, Inc. and has a continuously growing user and developer base. It can run on any server hardware that is capable of supporting Linux or UNIX platform.  Asterisk can seamlessly replace your existing PSTN PBX while extending your communication network into the VoIP domain. Further, to make things even more easier, open source software systems like Elastix and TrixBox have embedded Asterisk within their environment, added several value added services, and provided a one-click installation for the entire integrated PBX software. Being open source, all these systems are FREE.

Businesses having multisite international offices or those incurring frequent international communication must give a serious thought to this form of virtually-FREE communication infrastructure.

VoIP Architecture

Using the above simple architecture, the following calling patterns can be achieved with minimal costs:

1.       Calls within the same office (same country)

·         Since all the extensions within the same office connect to a single PBX server, calls made among them are FREE

2.       Calls from an office in one country to an office in another country

·         Since both office have an IP-based PBX and communicate over the Internet (using SIP protocol), calls between the two office are FREE (irrespective of their geographic location)

3.       Calls from an office to landline/mobile of the same country

·         This is a local call, hence local charges apply

4.       Calls from an office in one country to landline/mobile of another country having an office

·         The call is connected from source IP-PBX to the destination IP-PBX over the Internet (FREE), and from destination PBX to the landline/mobile is made as a local call. Hence the cost is that of a local call in the destination country

5.       International calls from an office to any other country (where there is no corporate office)

·         The IP-PBX of each office can be connected to global VoIP provider that can offer international calls at extremely cheap prices

To summarize, a majority of businesses suffer from high international telecommunication expenses. Considering the current economic situation it is paramount for organizations to look for ways to reduce this expense. VoIP coupled with a robust, reliable, and FREE commercial-grade PBX such as Astreisk can certainly help in achieving this objective.