Long gone are the days when IP telephony was considered an unattainable dream for business. Previously this technology communication layouts at the enterprise could be afforded by large operators with multimillion-dollar capital. Today this is an ordinary technology that can be connected by all companies without exception, including representatives of small and medium-sized businesses.
The connection is made using the SIP protocol, ensuring fast data transfer and security. Each call center offering operator services uses the latest developments to improve the quality of services and reduce overall communication costs.
Advantages of Internet telephony
Usage new technology justified minimal costs and additional benefits, which are the main reason to switch to the new standard.
- Scaling. When using a classic PBX, there is a limitation on the number of numbers and communication points. When using an IP system, scaling up is possible by using new ports, which will not be a costly solution for the business.
- The versatility of technology. Connection can be made different ways, and the work can be done as personal computers, and on laptops.
- Saving. Using several operators will allow you to serve a large number of clients, generating additional income. When ordering several tariffs, the operator will provide favorable discounts.
With proper system design and equipment selection, there will be no distortion or metallic sounds during communication. It is also important to maintain the system so that telephone sales can be carried out at any time.
Comparison of classic telephony and IP systems
When using IP telephony, packets are compressed and transmitted over the global network to high speed, ensuring no interference or problems. This is also a cheaper option with obvious advantages:
- Classic telephone lines have excess capacity, while in modern telephony all packets are compressed.
- Everyone has an Internet connection, which reduces overall telephony design and installation costs.
- When making calls over a local network, there is no need to use an external PBX station.
The quality of communication is much better thanks to the constant use of new technologies and capabilities. Autoresponders, forwarding and the use of multiple numbers are created without any problems.
As it develops, IP telephony is gradually turning from an additional service into a kind of basic service, which will soon become one of the components of a unified multiservice technology.
From analogue to digital
As is known, telephone networks initially worked with analog signals. The sound, converted into an electrical signal, was transmitted through a copper wire. In order for one physical channel to serve several subscribers at once, frequency multiplexing was used: the bandwidth was divided into several subchannels using frequency filters. However, the more subchannels there are in one physical channel, the narrower the bandwidth of each of the subchannels, which causes certain problems due to which the quality of communication deteriorates: crosstalk occurs, parallel conversations suddenly cut out, etc.
These problems were solved by moving to time multiplexing and digital data transmission technology. In this case, the channels are separated not by frequency, but by time; a fixed time interval (time slot) is used to transmit the signal of each of them.
Further development of networks for digital data transmission made it possible to abandon time multiplexing in favor of packet switching with connection establishment. Packet switching, together with the initially inherent asynchrony of information transmission, made it possible to optimize the use of the bandwidth of physical channels. The use of the IP protocol, in turn, made it possible to transmit information through dynamic routing of packets without establishing a connection. Each individual packet is transmitted without creating a “direct channel” across network nodes that are available at any given time.
Advantages of IP telephony
Traditional telephony technology assumes that an individual subchannel with a fixed bandwidth of 64 Kbit/s is used to connect two subscribers. Each of the subchannels is used to communicate with one pair of subscribers. An important distinguishing feature of IP telephony is that the telecom operator uses non-dedicated subchannels for each pair of subscribers. Speech converted to digital signal, is compressed and broken into individual packets that are transmitted over the IP network.
Thanks to the use of modern compression algorithms sound signal, to transmit one conversation, a subchannel with a capacity of not 64, but only 12 Kbps is required. In addition, if there is a temporary absence of a useful signal in a conversation (that is, there is a pause), then the same subchannel can be used to transmit other data. It is the effective management of traffic of communication channels that allows IP telephony operators to offer long-distance and international communication services at significantly lower rates than operators using traditional telephony technologies.
IP telephony for end users
Important factors that attract end users to IP telephony are the ease of use of the service and affordable tariffs. The procedure for making a telephone call through an IP telephony operator to another city or abroad differs very little from the usual dialing of a number using “8”. Only one additional operation is added - a call to the telephone gateway of the IP telephony operator to enter the payment card number.
IP telephony provides the end user with a real opportunity to make long-distance and international calls at significantly lower costs than through a regular G8. Thus, a call to Western European countries using the service of not even the cheapest operator (for example, Zebra Telecom) will cost a little more than 3 rubles. per minute, while a minute of conversation with the same subscriber with access to an international line through local operator telephone communication will cost more than 15 rubles.
IP telephony also has a number of additional benefits. In particular, through IP telephony operators you can make long-distance and international calls from landline phones that have blocked access through “8”, which is sometimes very important for those who live in rented apartments. It should also be mentioned that payment cards for IP telephony operators are a very effective tool for controlling costs. The invoice for a call over the long-distance telephone network arrives after the conversation has taken place, and often the subscriber is unpleasantly surprised by the amount indicated on it, whereas when making a call through an IP telephony operator using a payment card, the subscriber is guaranteed not to spend an amount on the call that exceeds the face value of the card . In addition, in this case, payment for the used telecom operator services is made in advance, which allows you not to worry about timely payment of bills later.
IP telephony for organizations
If we consider the use of IP telephony in the corporate sector, then first of all it is worth noting that there are two different approaches to the implementation of this technology. One of them is a complete abandonment of traditional telephony; in this case, a local network is used as a channel to connect subscribers. The second approach, which is sometimes called evolutionary, involves, along with maintaining the traditional telephone infrastructure, installing new equipment, allowing you to expand the functionality of the enterprise’s telecommunications system.
It should be noted that for corporate users, IP telephony is not only an effective means of optimizing the costs of long-distance and international telephone calls, but also provides the opportunity to implement qualitatively new services based on IP telephony technologies.
With the evolutionary option of transition to IP telephony technologies, voice communication services can be implemented not only through public telephone networks, but also directly through the Internet. For implementation this decision special hardware device(IP phone) connected directly to the company’s local network. In addition to establishing regular voice communication, this solution allows you to organize conference calls, as well as send fragments of conversations by email. There is also an option for using IP telephony in the office, such as connecting a special module to the office PBX that separates calls. This module allows you to automatically make long-distance and international calls through an IP telephony operator, and local calls through the city telephone network.
Using multiservice IP networks, you can create such complex services as telephone call processing centers call centers, which are a software and hardware complex that allows automatic mode process a significant number of incoming telephone calls (for example, conduct statistical analysis during telephone voting), as well as implement the delivery of outgoing voice messages a large number of subscribers.
When building call centers, both traditional and IP telephony technologies (Computer-Telephony Integration) are used, which allows you to integrate information resources within a separate enterprise and provide quick access to databases and communication tools. The main area of application of call centers is ensuring automation of the work of various enterprise services and creating a single information space for the purpose of effective use of CRM and ERP systems.
IP telephony today
Technology development
In just a few years, IP telephony technologies have evolved significantly, and the solutions common today are significantly different from previous ones. On the one hand, this is due to the development of hardware solutions, in particular the emergence of powerful backbone and transit routers and powerful high-speed telecommunication channels. On the other hand, one cannot help but note the emergence of such qualitatively new technologies as dynamic routing taking into account quality of service (QoS) in multiservice IP networks and the resource reservation protocol for monitoring the quality of service of transit routers (RSVP). Currently, quality of service is one of the most pressing problems in IP telephony. For proper transmission of voice traffic, it is necessary to minimize time delays; the total delay in the IP telephony network should not exceed 50 ms. This factor is even more important than ensuring the delivery of all packets, since, thanks to the use of modern audio codecs and adaptive extrapolation, an IP telephony user is not always able to notice the deterioration in signal quality due to the loss of individual packets. In case of traffic delay, a very unpleasant effect of echo, “flanger”, etc. occurs.
Modern equipment for voice transmission over the IP protocol (VoIP) allows you to ensure priority for the transmission of voice traffic over the transmission of regular data, obtain acceptable quality of the audio signal with strong compression, effectively suppress echo and various noises.
At the end of the 90s of the last century, one of the serious problems of ensuring high quality audio signals was caused by the fact that public channels were used to transmit voice traffic. Today, telecommunications operators specializing in the provision of IP telephony services use only dedicated channels with priority for voice traffic over data traffic, which guarantees high quality speech transmission. In this case, several options for routing voice traffic are used for each of thousands of directions, and if any problems arise, the traffic is instantly redirected to other channels.
Development of the services market
If we talk about the telecommunications services market in Moscow and St. Petersburg, then currently IP telephony is most popular among private users. Telephone and universal telecommunications cards (which can be used to pay for IP telephony services and dial-up Internet access) have long been a part of the lives of many active consumers of communication services.
Although today most operators offer private customers only one service - long-distance and international communications, it should be noted that the largest telecom operators are gradually expanding the range of services provided. In particular, it became possible to use the services of domestic IP telephony operators in other countries through automatic international roaming. In some cases, operators provide their subscribers with the opportunity to use communication cards to pay for additional services such as entertainment and information channels, dating services, etc.
The pace of development of IP telephony technologies in the corporate sector is still much lower. And despite the obvious benefits of reducing the cost of long-distance and international telephone calls, many managers are in no hurry to implement IP telephony in their departments, not wanting to invest in the purchase of additional equipment and modernization of the existing telecommunications infrastructure. However, today the leading operators operating in the telecommunications services market offer corporate clients very simple services, the implementation of which does not require significant investments. One of these services is the so-called corporate PIN code. The organization is issued a PIN code that can be used by several employees (even simultaneously) both inside and outside the office. In this case, communication between the client organization’s employees and the IP telephony operator is carried out through the city telephone network. In order to improve ease of use, the technical service of the operator company can program the office PBX to automatically dial the operator's gateway number and identify users by PIN code or phone number.
A very popular service nowadays is a virtual PBX. Its essence lies in the fact that, via the Internet, the client’s phone is connected to the SoftPBX VoIP station installed on the operator’s technical site. The SoftPBX station acts as an office PBX, provides telephone communications within the organization, conference calls, call forwarding and servicing of all long-distance/international and local calls. Using SoftPBX, the “call to order” service can be implemented. By pressing just one button, a request is sent to the station, after which it begins to automatically dial the desired subscriber.
IP telephony can be an effective addition to CRM systems. For example, by automatically specific number incoming call the system can quickly provide the manager with information about the client, his contract and the history of interaction with the company. In addition, if necessary, you can record a telephone conversation, place this recording in a “personal file”, send it to another department of the company or to another employee, providing it with a text comment.
Prospects
As it develops, IP telephony is undergoing important qualitative changes: from an additional service it is gradually turning into a kind of basic service, which will soon become one of the components of multiservice technology. In the future, IP telephony will combine services such as high-speed Internet access, telephony, video transmission, Mobile Internet etc.
Currently, two types of protocols for transmitting voice traffic are actively developing in the world. Firstly, this is the H.323 group, which originates from traditional telephone protocols, and secondly, protocols created on the basis of IP technologies in order to increase the “intelligence” of network services, such as SIP, MGCP, MEGACO.
Russian IP telephony operators most often use protocols of the H.323 group. This is because this protocol was the first generally accepted standard for the industrial implementation of IP telephony. Many operators are in no hurry to destroy well-functioning interaction patterns between equipment, personnel and billing systems.
As for Western European countries, the H.323 group protocols are also actively used there, although there is already a clear tendency to switch to more modern MGCP and MEGACO. This is due to the progressive development of Internet technologies and network infrastructure. SIP in this group is the most simple view protocol, somewhat similar to HTTP and, therefore, more accessible to perception and understanding by the average IT specialist. SIP is good for use in intracorporate networks based on comprehensive solutions from a single manufacturer. At the same time, the external protocol in the network of a telecommunications operator for an enterprise, as a rule, will still remain either H.323 or MGCP/MEGACO.
Of course, in the field of IP telephony there are still many different problems, such as accounting for the use of technological resources, traffic routing, billing, calculating the cost of transport delays, etc.
As noted above, IP telephony is gradually ceasing to be just a service, but becoming one of the components of a solution for transmitting heterogeneous multimedia traffic using the TCP/IP protocol. And it is quite natural that the development of individual multimedia traffic management tools affects the entire system of packet data transmission technologies. In current conditions, IP telephony is the basis for the development and formation of tools for processing and transmitting multimedia traffic.
It should also be kept in mind that IP telephony is not just an alternative to regular telephony. The relevance of the development of IP telephony solutions is due not only to the possibility of reducing the costs of telephone conversations and infrastructure maintenance (although this, of course, is important). Strategically, IP telephony is united technical platform, which will combine solutions for data and voice transmission, as well as for processing and subsequent use of this information in all business processes. Thus, the development of IP telephony in a certain sense is a means of increasing labor productivity and business development.
In the foreseeable future, IP phones will no longer be analogues of conventional telephones. CRM systems will be built on the basis of IP phones new generation, systems of corporate knowledge bases will be created, and as a result there will be an integration of all information services Email, video conferencing and telephony into a single communication service that can satisfy communication needs corporate client of any scale - from small and medium-sized enterprises to large corporations.
Where does the sale begin? Often from the first phone call. The client’s first impression of the company and whether he will continue to work with it depends on this contact. In order to make this and subsequent communications with the client high-quality and effective, companies use a whole range of IT technologies and solutions. A special place among them is occupied by office communications based on IP telephony or SIP and VoIP telephony. Today we talk about the advantages, and at the same time the reasons for the growing popularity of this type of communication in Russia.
According to a study conducted by the marketing research agency DISCOVERY Research Group, at the end of 2017, the volume of the IP telephony market in Russia reached 7.9 billion rubles, and the volume of the virtual PBX market amounted to 3.8 billion rubles. According to researchers’ forecasts, the growth of the virtual PBX market in Russia will continue and in 4 years will reach a volume of 9.7 billion rubles.
Advantages of VoIP
As opposed to traditional communication? IP telephony has many advantages:
- IP telephony “lives” in data networks. This means that to implement it, you do not need to run a telephone cable to the office. Existing computer network enterprises, Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G (LTE) - choose what is more convenient. You can deploy an enterprise telephone system on any network.
- Since VoIP is based on data transmission, it will work anywhere in the world where there is Internet. This means that companies will be able to easily create distributed call centers, and employees will be able to receive and make office calls both inside and outside the office. And, of course, the headache “How to save a phone number?” will disappear once and for all. when moving an office. Due to its “Internet nature”, VoIP will allow you to “take” the company’s telephone number with you to a new address.
- To create a telephone infrastructure based on VoIP technologies, there is no need to purchase expensive equipment. You can use computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones with free software “dialers” installed on them as subscriber devices. They connect to special office IP telephone stations. Just don’t immediately grab your head and remember about boxes like Panasonic or Avaya for hundreds of thousands of rubles, for which you need to allocate a server room. No, everything is much simpler. To deploy IP telephony, you will need a virtual PBX, which is deployed on the basis cloud storage and occupies 0 m² of office space.
- With IP telephony you can connect a multi-channel Russian or foreign number in a matter of minutes. You can choose numbers from any region of the Russian Federation and foreign countries.
- VoIP is one of the highest quality, reliable, convenient and cost-effective options for organizing corporate communications. VoIP reduces communication costs: calls between employees are free, and calls outside the office system will please the most frugal economist.
- IP telephony is primarily intended for business. That’s why the creators “stuffed” it with a lot of “bells and whistles”. In addition to voice communications, VoIP provides additional services and technologies such as voice menus, call statistics, auto-dialing, conference calling, faxing, etc.
Note! Based on VoIP, you can build an effective customer loyalty program.
All this makes Internet telephony more advantageous in comparison with analog communications.
What can you do using IP telephony?
Let's look at a specific example - virtual PBX"Telfin.Office" - why IP telephony has become so popular in the corporate telephony sector today.
All VoIP capabilities are “hardwired” into this “virtual box” PBX. And this is more than 100 business functions for turning calls into clients (and for only 490 rubles/month for 4 internal numbers). The system is controlled through an intuitive web interface in the browser.
What functionality will be available with VoIP:
- Voice menu (IVR) with automatic distribution of incoming calls. The client does not have to wait for an operator’s response: with the help of IVR, he will quickly get through to the right employee or department.
- Call scripts with different algorithms for processing incoming calls depending on the structure, schedule, business task, week, days, time of day.
- Call queues. The company's telephone number will never be busy: IP telephony is multi-channel. It will allow you to receive dozens, hundreds of calls at a time. All of them will, if necessary, be automatically lined up one after another as they arrive in accordance with the specified settings. Calls can be held, intercepted, and transferred.
- Autoinformer, informing the client of the position in the queue and the approximate time of waiting for an answer on the line.
- Time intervals to process incoming calls during and after business hours. AND voice mail to record messages from those who call the company when it is not open.
- Recording, storing, listening to conversations, prompting, connecting to an ongoing conversation— ATS functions that allow you to keep track of the client’s history without omissions, improve the quality of the company’s service, and resolve disputes that arise between the company and the buyer.
- "Black" and "white" lists of phone numbers to minimize unwanted calls to the company.
- Conference call to combine several telephone conversations in one - subscribers have the opportunity to “telephone meeting”.
- Virtual buttons for the company website: "Order a call back" “Call directly from the site” (WebRTC technology) for free prompt connection between the client and the company.
- Receiving and sending faxes. Sending a fax without a fax is now possible. With VoIP, fax messages are sent, received, and stored as PDF files directly in your Internet browser.
Do not forget that not only cloud PBXs can be built on the basis of VoIP. On the contrary, IP telephony can be integrated with the functionality of CRM, CMS, and other software via the REST API or using ready-made solution. Moreover, modern convergence various types telephone connection allows you to include employee mobile devices in the general corporate network using FMC technology.
conclusions
The decline of analogue, traditional telephony and the growth in demand for VoIP is a logical consequence of increasing market requirements for office PBXs. Landline telephony is not able to compete with VoIP functionality.
IP telephony offers businesses broader and more flexible opportunities for successfully building and effectively managing corporate communications. Lower financial and time costs for implementation and maintenance, rapid network scalability, intuitive customization for business specifics - all this is forcing businesses to increasingly choose cloud technologies and VoIP services.
Reviews: why businesses chose VoIP
“With the help of IP telephony, we saved on the 8-800 number; instead, we rented regional telephone numbers. The savings are more than 10 times,” says Ilya Kozlov, technical director of Wikimart.
"We connected two telephone numbers Moscow and Yekaterinburg and now we communicate within the corporate telephone network absolutely free of charge,” Egor Nogtev, head of the online store of FC Zenit, shares his impressions.
IN Lately An increasing number of subscribers, both private and corporate, are trying to use VoIP telephony services. This is due to a number of technological advantages that IP telephony offers over conventional wired communications. When IP telephony technology has already been implemented in the office or as a home solution, any user is faced with the question of what is better to choose: a softphone or a hardware IP phone? We will try to give a number of tips and recommendations for choosing communication terminals, as well as determine the pros and cons of each of these solutions.
So, we will begin our research into the market for VoIP telephony devices directly from softphones. Softphone- this is actually a software product that allows the user to make calls over the Internet or through any IP network. The softphone does not require additional hardware solutions, with the possible exception of a computer headset or webcam for making video calls. Softphone software is typically developed based on the open communication protocols SIP or H.323. But there are certain companies that have developed their softphones based on specialized closed communication protocols, for example, such as Skype, ICQ or Mail.ru Agent.
A softphone is essentially a program that replaces your hardware IP phone on your computer. As we already wrote above, for the softphone to fully work, you need a telephone headset (in extreme cases, headphones and an external microphone). The advantages of a softphone are the following: firstly, it is an expanded interface that cannot be limited to a small phone screen. Secondly, this is a large phone book, which is physically impossible to implement on a hardware phone. You can also add to the advantages of softphones the function of your online status, the ability to send text messages and faxes, and video calls. Softphones come in both paid and free versions. The most common programs for IP telephony are 3CX, iSoftphone, Bria, ZoiPer, ShoreTel Sky Softphone, Octofon and others. It would seem that software clients for IP telephony are an ideal solution for any subscriber, but as with all purely software solutions, there are pitfalls. What disadvantages can we find in softphones?
I would also like to note the fact that, like any software, a softphone can “freeze”, “fail to boot”, “require updates via the Internet”, “give an error”, etc. Also, the quality of work of such programs directly depends on the power of your computer and optimal settings operating system. For example, if you are in this moment process video, work with graphic programs or you are performing other resource-intensive tasks, and suddenly they call you on a softphone, the quality of the connection may turn out to be simply terrible or unstable, the sound will periodically disappear. In the case of a home subscriber, you can “turn a blind eye” to these shortcomings, given the availability, simplicity and even sometimes freeness of such software solutions. If you are an office subscriber, then it is still optimal for you to use a hardware VoIP solution.
An IP phone is a hardware device for communication between remote subscribers, which provides voice communication over the Internet or corporate local networks. Externally, devices for VoIP communications look like completely ordinary telephones. They have a handset, a dialing keyboard, an LCD display, and an interface for connecting to IP networks. This phone operates using SIP or H.323 protocols.
IP phones, as a rule, have the following functionality: voice mail, speakerphone, auto redial, call transfer and forwarding options, call hold. A convenient telephone headset can also be purchased for such a device. An advanced IP device can also support a number of additional options, such as Various types call transfer (“blind” transfer, transfer with notification), turning on background music in call hold mode (music on hold) and conferences with several subscribers on the phone.
The main advantage of an IP phone over a softphone is that it is still an independent hardware device that works autonomously and is not loaded as a software on the computer. This means that even if your computer is not currently turned on, boots, does not work at all, or is reinstalling the operating system, you can still fully use VoIP communication 100%. Yes, to purchase an IP phone you need to allocate funds (and this is the main disadvantage of IP devices), it is also possible to purchase a professional headset for operators, for example. But in the corporate sector, as well as in medium-sized or even small businesses, these investments will pay off. In business, relying on the reliability of software such as a softphone, especially free software, is extremely imprudent. Softphones were created primarily for the home user or for the very small business sector. Another factor worth noting is the security and confidentiality of your negotiations. After all, when using softphones, it is much easier for hackers to hack the program and intercept all your voice traffic than when using hardware IP phones.
problem information security special attention must be paid before selecting a communication device for IP telephony. For example, such well-known VoIP programs as Skype, as well as the ZoiPer softphone and other similar programs have repeatedly appeared in reports of hacking or leaks of confidential information or passwords. The fact is that your information, for example passwords, is in such software solutions can be stored in a common database either on the servers of the softphone developer company or in the cloud. The company that developed this software product is responsible for its security, and in the event of a data leak to attackers, you will not be able to influence this negative process in any way. After all, you don’t know how securely the password database in this company is protected. If you use a hardware IP phone, detecting vulnerabilities, hacking and intercepting your conversations will require more resources and skills from hackers than hacking a computer program. Therefore, in case of special confidentiality of your conversations, we recommend using only IP phones from trusted and reliable manufacturers, preferably with support for the SRTP protocol (a protocol for encrypting voice traffic).
Recently, more and more technical innovations have appeared, and people do not have time to keep up with the constant changes in technology. Because of this, the communications market simultaneously offers both outdated and technically more advanced telephony technologies, the difference between which is vaguely understood by users. Let's look at what the characteristics are, what are the advantages of IP telephony, and what opportunities this system provides to the user.
This is what IP telephony provides in the office, its benefits and advantages over analog communication systems:
- reducing the cost of any kind of incoming or outgoing calls, especially for international and long-distance calls;
- high signal quality: clear sound, complete absence of voice delay, no echo;
- lack of the concept of “busy”. The great advantage of IP telephony is the almost unlimited number of lines used under one number. This quality has been enthusiastically embraced and is widely used in call centers and website support;
- integration abilities. You can easily add new devices to your working IP network, Cell phones, ordinary analog phones, etc., but networks of earlier generations are incapable of this. In addition, networks of different enterprises mounted on different equipment and using different software products can easily be combined into one network;
- and, probably, the most important advantage: an IP telephony network can do everything that the Internet can. For communication systems, this means linking a number to a website, a customizable answering machine, intelligent forwarding, video conferencing, free unlimited calls within an organization, free choice of number and other delights of the information age.
To grasp all the possibilities of IP telephony and the advantages of digital communication, you need to understand the basis of its operation. If telephone communications The previous generation used an analog data transmission system (with the help of amplifying devices, vibrations from one subscriber reached another), while IP communication is digital. This means that the sound vibrations of the speaker's voice are converted into computer language, and then, at the recipient, back into sound.
Analogue communications can only be made more powerful, but with digital data a computer can do anything it wants, and what it does with it depends on the software and the programmer’s imagination.
You can always consult with us about Internet communication functions, and we will be happy to help you create, install and configure IP telephony and take your company to a new level of working with clients and staff!
