Basics of corporate telephony. Corporate telephony

IP technology, like a greedy conqueror, is seizing more and more new lands: LAN, voice, video... Victorious reports are coming from the camp of IP telephony apologists. Is there still room in the market for classic circuit switching (TDM) technology? And what trends determine the development of IP telephone systems themselves?

Before the IP era, traffic switching in corporate PBX(PBX) was carried out exclusively on the TDM principle. The main terminal equipment in a TDM-PBX is ordinary analog telephones and special digital devices, the users of which have access to additional services. Such digital devices are often called system devices, since they can only work with the PBX (system) of “their” manufacturer and to implement additional services use proprietary alarms.

At the initial stage, the main incentive for the introduction of IP telephony was to reduce the costs of long-distance and international communications. Therefore, the first elements of VoIP in corporate telephony were gateways that ensure the transmission of traffic through the “cheap” Internet, bypassing the “expensive” PSTN. At first, such gateways were separate devices connected to a TDM PBX, then they began to be manufactured in the form of boards for installation in station structures. With the development of IP terminals new technology came to the subscriber side of TDM-PBX: gateways for connecting IP phones appeared. Telephone exchanges with a TDM switching field “framed” by IP telephony gateways are called hybrid (converged) PBXs.

In “pure” IP telephone systems (IP-PBX), the IP network acts as the switching field - it can be either local (LAN), geographically distributed (WAN) and even global (Internet). Actually, an IP PBX is just a call control server. In IP systems, conventional analog and digital telephones (TDM) are already “non-native” and gateways are needed to connect them. The internal functions of the gateways remain the same (converting traffic from TDM format to IP format and back), but their role changes: in TDM-PBX they serve to connect IP terminals and access the Internet, and in IP-PBX they serve to connect TDM- terminals and access to the PSTN.

At first, IP PBX manufacturers only copied the functions of classic telephone systems. However, it quickly became clear that IP technologies open the door to many new services, and also greatly simplify the integration of communication stations with other corporate systems and applications. Is there still room in the market for TDM technologies under these conditions?

Looking for niches for TDM

"Traditional telephone networks become an atavism and gradually become obsolete” - this is the opinion of a leading specialist at the Moscow office of Cisco, which has never released a TDM-PBX and entered the telephony market immediately with an IP system. For TDM, he sees a place only at the level of connection of private sector subscribers. Well, you can’t argue with the facts he cites: indeed, all the leading manufacturers of telephone solutions already have in their product portfolio either IP telephony modules (hybrid PBXs) or IP PBXs, and the production of “purely” TDM stations has practically ceased.

Representatives of other manufacturers who have produced classic TDM systems for decades believe that this technology has more prospects. “Nobody needs IP telephony for the sake of IP telephony, so in many cases, for example, when a TDM infrastructure is already in place, switching to “pure” IP telephony will mean a huge investment with an unobvious gain or a too long return on investment,” - warns Alexander, Nortel consultant.

One of the system implementation options unified communications(UfK) - integration of a conventional TDM-PBX with a UFK software solution, for example with Microsoft system OCS or Lotus SameTime. This means that the niche for traditional solutions will remain for a long time. That's why Nortel continues to offer hybrid PBXs that, on the one hand, give users complete flexibility in the matter of "rhythm and speed" of the transition to IP telephony, and on the other hand, provide almost the same functionality as VoIP systems, including support for UFK and service-oriented architecture (SOA).

Many large networks, originally built using traditional TDM technology (for example, the networks of Gazprom and Surgutneftegaz), continue to develop in the same traditional way, and only in some of them IP telephony is being introduced - as they say, “on trial” , shares his observation, deputy director of the department of the Datatel company. In turn, IP telephony dominates in cases where a corporate network is being built from scratch (a small percentage of projects), when building networks of representative offices of foreign companies (already having a similar structure abroad), and also where the leading role in the choice of telecommunication technology played by the IT department or the project is initially focused on connecting to the operator via a SIP trunk. I. Fioshkin notes the widespread abandonment of the H.323 protocol in favor of SIP and, as a result, the simplification of connecting VoIP equipment from different manufacturers.

In the foreseeable future, TDM solutions will not lose their positions, especially in geographically distributed networks, in which the requirements for fault tolerance come to the fore, - this is the forecast given by the head of the project management department of Abitel Group. IP telephony solutions available on the market require centralized call management and place fairly stringent requirements on the IP transport network. Meeting these requirements for geographically distributed networks in Russia is not always possible and not everywhere. Hybrid (convergent) solutions are often more effective, allowing equal use of traditional digital environment(SDH/PDH) and packet switched (IP) media, and in some cases analog media.

Avaya product manager at CompTek is also confident in preserving a niche for traditional solutions: there are a number of tasks in which their advantages are difficult to dispute. First of all, it is providing communications to a large number of subscribers for minimal money - the cost of one analog port along with a telephone for most IP solutions is still unattainably low. Yes, today IP phones are already available at prices comparable to the cost of analog phones, but to connect them you need transport: switches, routers, cable wiring of appropriate quality - all together it turns out to be more expensive than “good old copper.”

The second niche for TDM solutions, according to A. Bogachev, is the installation of telephones in production and raw material extraction enterprises. In an office, an IP phone looks very good. But imagine that you need to take your phone closer to a conveyor belt, lower it into a shaft, or put it in an aluminum production workshop. Immediately you find yourself in a dilemma: either install very expensive explosion-splash-mud-interference-proof IP terminals, and switches or routers of a similar class (Ethernet is not a very “long-range” transport) in pressurized boxes, or take an analog telephone, which will be cheaper and more reliable, and less sensitive to interference. In addition, the line to an analog telephone can stretch for several kilometers without any intermediate devices. At the same time, prices for an analog telephone “in an industrial version” and a similar IP device differ by an order of magnitude or two.

When considering the prospects for TDM telephony, one should distinguish between its analog and digital versions. Moreover, according to the director of telecommunications solutions at Landata, only analog TDM telephony will retain its position. It will continue to be used where the introduction of IP telephony is not an objective necessity and an IP port remains an expensive pleasure - at industrial enterprises, in the field of education and healthcare, in hotels and government agencies. Digital TDM ports, being less functional and imposing significant restrictions on the remoteness of terminals, will be actively replaced by IP.

Integration with business processes

In turn, IP-based corporate systems communication, according to A. Bogachev, three vectors of development can be distinguished. Firstly, they develop towards distributed systems with integration of functions to meet the needs of branch structures and retail networks. Secondly, solutions of increasingly higher reliability are emerging, in software stations, the ability to maintain “life activity” in the event of a failure of communication channels, part of the station’s equipment, and even its central processor. Finally, stations compete to provide the user with more and more wide range additional features.

“The focus of the development of corporate IP telephony systems has shifted to the area of unified communications,” adds the head of the department of corporate communication systems at AMT-Group. “Although new versions are and will be released, some new functions are being added, but the conceptual development of these systems are almost complete. We have repeatedly encountered the fact that the criterion for choosing an IP telephony system is not so much the price and telephone functions themselves, but rather the prospects for the development of unified communications applications based on this system, even if the customer did not plan to immediately implement UfK.”

At the initial stage of implementation of IP telephony systems, there were serious infrastructure problems associated with the need to ensure the quality of service (QoS) required for voice transmission. In packet networks, a “bulky” data packet can block the path of IP packets with voice information, which will lead to a delay that is unacceptable for real-time communications. To prevent this from happening, it is necessary to guarantee the priority of servicing voice packets in network equipment queues. However, today, according to the technical director of the Moscow office of Avaya, infrastructure issues fade into the background, and tasks related to the integration of communication systems into business come to the fore. For them, Avaya has developed CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processes) - a combination software products and services that enable such integration through web services. In essence, CEBP is inextricably linked to design services system integration, when Avaya specialists, in collaboration with customer IT departments, optimize enterprise production processes based on communication services. All communications within CEBP occur in a “closed loop”: information about actions taken by users can be returned to the system that initiated the event to manage the business process in real time.

“Many of our customers see the need to integrate their communication systems with business processes,” notes Aastra Product Manager. This need, in his opinion, is caused by today's market conditions, where sales volume increasingly depends on the speed of response to customer requests, high quality service and, most importantly, constant support of the customer base. Without the integration of various marketing tools and communication systems in modern market conditions this is difficult to achieve.

Thus, one of Aastra’s clients, a large car dealer, initially needed to combine several geographically dispersed offices into a single communication network that supported employee mobility. This was achieved through the introduction of telecommunication platforms Business Phone and MX-ONE. Subsequently, when the volume of customer calls increased significantly, the need arose for their distribution and optimal processing. This problem was solved by deploying the Solidus eCare contact center. It is not surprising that in the third stage the company needed to integrate a call center with client bases and CRM system. In this way, the car dealer expects to optimize work with customers, reduce the load on contact center operators and, as a result, increase its competitiveness.

The inclusion of communication systems in a company's business processes and the implementation of service-oriented architecture is both the most fashionable and the most problematic topic. A. Nonikov explains this by saying that not every organization is ready to implement communication-enhanced business processes; today they are in demand only in large and medium-sized companies. Complicating the task is the fact that most enterprises use communications products from different manufacturers; the basic PBX may be from one supplier, the UVK system from another, and the video conferencing system from a third. In order for the integration of communications and business processes to be effective, it is necessary to cover the entire enterprise, so multi-vendor infrastructure is a serious problem. One of its possible solutions is to install a server that, “able to talk” with communication products from different companies (Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Nortel, Tandberg, etc.) in their language, provides applications with a single set of SOA interfaces through a system of adapters. Such, for example, is the Nortel Agile Communication Environment server.

Unfortunately, examples of the integration of communication systems with the main business processes of enterprises are still rare, states A. Bogachev. He sees the main difficulty in the need to formalize and structurize business processes: “Not every business allows this to be done, but even where possible, the process is slow and quite painful, and losses at the implementation stage are almost inevitable. Not everyone can afford to pay a tactical loss for a strategic gain.”

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So, despite all the advantages of IP telephony, outside the “office environment” its rival TDM retains a serious position, which, however, has almost stopped its technological development. VoIP systems, on the contrary, are developing intensively, especially in the field of integration with business applications.

In the corporate sector, IP telephony is not yet as widespread as in the operator solutions market. Actually, in relation to the corporate market, IP telephony can be divided into trunk and local. Each of these directions has its drawbacks. In so-called LAN telephony, the main limiting factor was primarily the end devices. It is clear that at that stage of development of IP telephony, when the only option for a client device was a multimedia PC, no one could seriously take this solution as a corporate one. The very first IP phones (aka Ethernet phones) were frightening due to their price, as well as the need to organize power supply over a separate line. In essence, the user was asked to place a second one on the table next to one computer, which was not much cheaper. The need for external power also violated one of the basic principles, which stated that even if the entire building due to emergency the power supply will be lost, telephony should function, at least for some time (as long as the UPS supports the PBX). The main achievement of the previous year can be considered that the pace of convergence of IP phones with “normal” ones in all respects has noticeably accelerated.

The reduction in prices ensured, as one would expect, more mass production, and, probably, not so much the actual production volumes as the mass supply. Large providers of solutions for corporate (and not only, of course) telephony began to more actively promote their IP phones, which could not but lead to lower prices. It is also symptomatic that Asian manufacturers have begun to take up the production of IP phones: a clear sign that soon the IP phone will become a product, if not in the same mass demand as a regular phone, then at least commensurate. So far, the price of the final device remains quite high - at least $150. But if we take into account that one of the main marketing engines of “local” IP telephony is the support of many different services (including computer telephony), in terms of not a “bare” port, but per service, the current price level seems quite adequate.

In the corporate market, interest in IP telephony is also growing due to the fact that network equipment has acquired some features of a PBX - primarily this concerns the problem of powering IP phones operating in a completely networked environment (i.e., without the usual PBXs, even those supporting IP) . The pioneer in this direction is, naturally, Cisco Systems. It quickly upgraded its network equipment so that it could provide power to subscriber devices. For this purpose, the company produces, firstly, special interface modules capable of supplying power over twisted pair, and secondly, installed in an expansion slot, as well as external power supplies DC. It is worth noting that "electrical" interface modules can also work with conventional network equipment, since they have a function automatic detection type of device connected to the port - power is supplied only after the end device has “requested” it.

True, despite the fact that the main two obstacles to the implementation of IP telephony “from start to finish” in a corporate environment have been successfully overcome, one limiting factor still remains - the customer (and this, obviously, is a large customer) must either have new “untapped territories”, or be prepared to radically modernize its telecommunications infrastructure. Manufacturers are not able to influence this circumstance, since the objective advantages of their solutions in in this case not so important. However, in our country, solutions based on IP telephony are beginning to penetrate corporate networks. In general, there is reason to assume that in existing corporate networks, complete IP telephony solutions will be implemented first at the periphery, and then gradually penetrate closer to the network core.

May 21, 2003

Igor Maslennikov, director of business development at SomrTek

When it comes to corporate IP telephony in Russia, then, as a rule, a “bast” stereotype comes into play - they say, nothing good can happen in Russia and things don’t go beyond talking about IP-telephony at enterprises.

Meanwhile, corporate IP telephony in Russia really exists and is developing. Moreover, it exists and develops in at least three versions, and I don’t know of enterprises and organizations that would not use at least one of them.

The many faces of IP telephony

The first option is based on the use of “provider” IP telephony - either in the form of a corporate contract with a “card” IP telephony operator (in this case, to call another city, employees dial the operator’s telephone number, identification number and card PIN code, and then - the telephone number they need), or by reconfiguring the private telephone exchange (PBX) in such a way that long-distance and international calls“transparently” or through a special “intercity access number”, are sent to the IP telephony operator immediately in the form of IP packets via a data channel. This is the most widespread option (according to my data, many Russian enterprises and organizations use it).

The second option is the use by enterprises with a geographically distributed structure, corporate network data transmission for the exchange of voice traffic between the company's points of presence. Typically, this is done by connecting IP telephony gateways to corporate telephone exchanges at points of presence and setting routing rules on them. This system allows you to save significantly on telephone bills. In this case, of course, calls to cities and countries where there are no points of presence of the company are sent, as a rule, to an IP telephony operator. This option is also used very widely: I don’t know any enterprises with any significant “geography” that would not use it.

The third option, which most fully realizes the capabilities of IP telephony, is to build an integrated corporate IP network with functions for transmitting voice and data (and possibly also video, technological information, etc.). This option is the most convenient, economical and promising. Convenient - because the company has a digital telephone network with a unified numbering plan, single center control, with many additional services, starting from the usual hold and transfer of calls to other numbers, which is familiar to all users of corporate telephone exchanges, and ending with the capabilities inherent only in IP telephone systems, including:

corporate telephone directory, living on the company’s LDAP server and accessible directly from the IP phone screen;
personal call management systems, which make it possible to control the behavior of the phone via a Web interface, for example, forward calls received in your absence - all or only some, depending on who called - to mobile, home or another corporate phone;
unified messaging systems that send voice messages, faxes and messages email into a single mailbox, which the user can access through a Web browser, using an email system, or by telephone;
the ability to turn any corporate IP phone into your own, with your number and all personal settings(to do this, just enter the username and password on his keyboard).

The cost-effectiveness of the option is ensured through integration corporate communications and data networks, which allows you to reduce the cost of supporting and maintaining corporate communication systems and increase their coordination and efficiency. Firstly, it is enough to support only one network, and not two different ones - telephone and data transmission - and, secondly, the merger of two networks into one eliminates the peculiar competition between “telephone operators” and “computer specialists”, which often interferes with business.

Let us dwell on this third option as the most promising - now few experts doubt that such systems are the future.

IP telephony in the hands of employees

What new, useful and interesting does an IP phone bring to the daily activities of a company employee, besides voice communication itself?

Today there is no comprehensive answer to this question, since IP-PBX systems are still too young, their differences and advantages have not yet fully emerged, the process of gaining experience and the emergence of new ways to use IP phones has only recently begun, and yet some What can you say now?

Having a graphical display on an IP phone is likely to become standard soon, at least in corporate environment. This display and the standard (that is, based on open industrial standards Java, XML) tools used to display information through it (of course, along with the ability to work with sound) allow you to build corporate communications, warning and information systems in a completely new way. In my opinion, in the future it is integration voice services With enterprise applications and will be the main driving force behind the transition of enterprises to IP-PBX systems.

The main requirement that is imposed on the enterprise network infrastructure when deploying IP telephony is well known: the network must support standard mechanisms for ensuring the required quality of service (Quality of Service, QoS) on the network and link levels, be able to separate voice and data traffic and transmit voice packets with higher priority than other types of data. Of course, it must be reliable: fault tolerance must be ensured at all levels of the network.

In addition, there are a number of requirements specific to IP telephone elements of the network infrastructure. For example, in a wide-area network, gateways that provide access from the corporate network to the local telephone network must be able to route calls through the telephone networks public use if it is impossible to send them via the IP network (this may be necessary if the IP channel fails). Second example: switches local network should be able to electrically power IP phones over an Ethernet cable, this is very convenient and smart. It would be nice for IP phones to have a built-in two-port switch, as is done, say, in older models of Cisco IP phones, so that every workplace, equipped with an IP phone and a computer, did not require two Ethernet sockets: you can connect an IP phone to an Ethernet socket, and then a computer to it.

Performance assessment

As a rule, when it comes to deploying a full-fledged IP-PBX class system at any enterprise, the most controversial assessment is the assessment of the economic efficiency of such implementation. What should you keep in mind when preparing such an assessment? First of all, it makes sense to compare two different strategies for the development of an enterprise’s infocommunication infrastructure, and not the actual IP-PBX with a traditional corporate telephone exchange. (Consider IP-PBX in isolation from the rest functional systems corporate IP network means about the same as trying to discuss which is better - a wheel or a caterpillar, without deciding on vehicle- tank or motorcycle?)

If an enterprise has a strategy aimed at integrating all types of communications within a single IP network, increasing the efficiency of employees and their interaction through the introduction of new corporate converged applications, improving their mobility, reducing capital and operating costs for construction, support and coordination activities of several different infrastructures, then in this case the introduction of IP telephony will be only a logical and consistent step in the implementation of this strategy.

Since no one today doubts the feasibility and justification of investments in building a corporate network infrastructure, when introducing IP telephony in an enterprise that already has a data network, the costs of upgrading it (so that the network can provide the required level of quality of network services) should not relate solely to the costs of implementing IP telephony. Good network infrastructure isn't cheap, but it's worth it. A network with integration of services makes it possible to abandon the multitude of parallel existing and maintained systems available today at all enterprises (network, telephone, fire, technological, security, etc.). IP telephony is just one type of IP services that can be provided within a corporate network.

Thus, on one side of the scale are the costs of upgrading (or building from scratch) a “correct” IP infrastructure (reliable, supporting QoS mechanisms, equipped with additional technical means type of power supply capability for IP devices via network cable or wireless points IEEE 802.11b standard access for operation wireless IP phones along with wireless network access, both of which are needed not only for IP telephony!), and on the other - reducing construction and operating costs and increasing the efficiency of the enterprise through the introduction of new integrated applications and changing the way employees organize their work . Conducting an analysis of the benefits and costs of IP telephony is a very complex matter, and it must be done in the context of a long-term enterprise development strategy.

Prospects

How will events develop in the future? How soon will IP-PBX replace traditional telephone systems? Of course, this will not happen in the near future; the transition process will take many years. But the world's leading analysts believe that at the turn of 2005-2007 a turning point will occur: the number of IP telephone business systems will be equal to traditional ones in number telephone lines, and by market volume. Thus, according to IDC forecast, by 2006 50% of all telephone traffic will be IP traffic. Analysts at Frost and Sullivan estimate that by 2006, more than 50% of PBX systems sold will be IP systems. Yankee Group experts believe that by the end of 2005, 28% of all business telephone lines will be IP lines, and IP phones will become the dominant desktop voice terminal by then.

Today, the widespread implementation of systems of this class in Russia is hampered by such a circumstance as the low level of real demand for information and management systems in general. Only in conditions of a developed, highly cultured economy, information and management systems are a serious competitive factor.

In the meantime, we have to deal with the poor awareness of people making business decisions about the implementation of such systems and strategies, with the technological and functional immaturity of existing proposals (the professional community of specialists in the field of IP telephony is in search of, in the process of inventing and developing functional and business models of using IP communications in enterprise activities), with relatively high level prices for IP phones and other infrastructure elements, as well as the problem of compatibility of equipment from different manufacturers and different IP telephony protocols.

It is not surprising, therefore, that today almost all examples of the implementation of systems of this class in Russia relate to enterprises of highly profitable and at the same time highly competitive industries, or to federal and municipal authorities, which, as a rule, have a geographically distributed structure and/or are building new networks at the level of a building complex, that is, to situations in which the advantages of converged IP networks are most clearly manifested.

The development of corporate IP telephony in Russia will occur gradually and in stages. Those enterprises that are currently using IP telephony gateways to reduce communication costs (this is the second option discussed at the very beginning) will at some point be faced with a choice: continue to develop and maintain two networks in parallel - telephone and data transmission (IP). -network) or integrate voice communications into a single corporate IP network. And in the long term, the choice is a foregone conclusion.

To prevent IP telephony from turning into a headache and constant expenses for the company, it is necessary to understand in advance what consequences the choice and implementation of a particular solution will lead to. Should I use my own PBX or a virtual one? Which provider should you choose? Which is better: softphone or IP phone? How to make an auto-updating phone book in the IP phones of company employees? Why do “phone numbers” force developers to redesign CRM? See all this, as well as recommendations for choosing equipment, in our selection of materials!

VoIP telephony providers: who to choose?

There are one and a half hundred VoIP providers operating in Russia, but choosing among them the optimal one for corporate use is more difficult than it seems. From this article you will learn what problems VoIP providers solve today, what determines the quality of their communication services, what additional features they provide clients with and most importantly - how to choose the right provider for corporate telephony so as not to regret it in the future?

Softphone or hardware IP phone: which is better?

When IP telephony technology is implemented in an office or as a home solution, the question arises: what is better to choose for making and receiving calls: a softphone or a hardware IP phone? This dilemma has an ambiguous solution. This article examines the pros and cons of software and hardware solutions, and also gives practical advice and recommendations for choosing communication terminal devices for office and home.

What is the advertising of “virtual PBX” silent about?

Virtual IP PBXs are a fairly recent product, or rather a service in the corporate telephony market. Advantages virtual PBX are very well known due to their widespread advertising. But it is not so easy to find out what problems and difficulties users of this service actually face. This material discusses the main distinctive features of virtual PBXs with a detailed analysis of the positive and negative aspects of this technology.

How to build telephony based on Skype For Business?

On Skype solution For Business from Microsoft It makes sense to pay attention if you need a unified communications system, that is: telephony, video conferencing, collaboration with documents, instant messages, presence status and other features in one “bottle”. In you will find an analysis of options for building telephony based on Skype For Business with a description of the advantages and disadvantages of such a solution.

How to make an auto-updating phone book in the IP phones of company employees?
One of the advantages of IP phones over conventional analog phones is a single telephone address book, which is automatically updated when new employees appear. Why the unified address book function is vital for organizations with a large number of subscribers (1000+), and also why it is better to choose VoIP equipment that supports the open LDAP protocol is clearly shown in this short video.

15 popular misconceptions about phone numbers!

If the company is developing its own CRM systems, then be sure to show it to your developers. It examines typical misconceptions of programmers and ordinary people about telephone numbers, for example: a telephone number uniquely identifies a person; There are only two dialing formats; the country code corresponds to exactly one country; the telephone number contains only numbers; a person has only one phone number and it never changes, etc. In the future, this will help you avoid serious modifications.

What can modern modular VoIP gateways do?

AddPac company is one of the popular VoIP gateway providers in Russia. The equipment of this manufacturer is known for its reliability, which is why all major domestic landline and cellular operators use it in their networks. Record this webinar will give you detailed information about the capabilities of the most modern modular VoIP gateways with dozens of ports, as well as an understanding of whether such devices are needed in your communication network.

IP phones: is there such a thing as “good and cheap”?

The crisis has forced many domestic companies to look for cheap alternatives to proven solutions. This also affected IP phones. The demand for cheap equipment from Chinese manufacturers has increased many times over. But is cheap equipment ever good? Usually no, but there are exceptions. In the next video tells about one such example - the ATCOM company, which managed to release very inexpensive, fully Russified and, most importantly, stable working IP phones that are not inferior to market leaders (Yealink, Grandstream, Escene, etc.).

IP telephony is the youngest, yet promising and inexpensive type of communication, which has many advantages over a traditional connection. It's high quality new way data transmission without using a fixed telephone connection. Making a call via IP can be compared to receiving mail via e-mail - it is convenient, free (or very cheap), available wherever there is an Internet connection.

MegaFon solution

How does IP telephony work?

When using a dedicated PBX line, you pay not only for the conversation, but also for the construction and maintenance of telephone exchanges. That is why, unlike IP telephony, PBX always assumes subscription fee, regardless of the number of calls made. Long-distance and international calls are charged separately and, as a rule, are not very profitable for the client. Data transmission via IP is an excellent alternative for those who keep up with the times and actively use advances in their business recent years and does everything to minimize costs without losing communication quality.

In what business is IP telephony applicable?

You can freely use IP telephony from anywhere in the world. If your business involves frequent travel around the country and abroad, communication via IP is the ideal choice. Using regular telephone lines, you are forced to pay for communication services in proportion to the distance between you and the interlocutor, while in the case of IP telephony, the cost of the call will change slightly, regardless of whether you and the other subscriber are in the same room or there are hundreds of kilometers between you.

IP telephony is an excellent solution for small, medium and big business, and for individuals. While a dedicated telephone line is a specific connection to the office, IP telephony is suitable for mobile people and companies. Even if you decide to change your office or are forced to go on a business trip, you can continue to use IP telephony wherever there is Internet. Agree, each time setting up a new dedicated telephone line for your business is a feasible task, but it requires a certain amount of time and money. If you use IP telephony, you won’t even have to pay for the connection again, re-register your number, or perform other unnecessary manipulations. The number to contact your office will remain the same, since the IP to which it is associated has not changed. This means you can stay connected no matter where you are using IP data transfer.

Due to the rapid growth in popularity of IP telephony in lately many operators are ready to provide such services.

What is the advantage of our offer?

Excellent communication quality, which is especially important during business negotiations. Stable connection with high quality data transfer is an important component of a company’s image.
High level of service: we value and respect our clients, so we try to solve any difficulties that arise as quickly and efficiently as possible, our specialists are always available to you. You can submit a request to connect to IP telephony, ask a question, or get help from a qualified specialist on our website, as well as by toll free number through the operator.
Affordable tariffs: conversation via IP technologies is very, very affordable in terms of price. You already pay for traffic to the selected operator, so outgoing calls to mobile and landline numbers have a maximum low prices. Incoming calls are free for you, connection to the service is also free of charge.
A high degree of protection of conversations from eavesdropping when using telephony via IP: data exchange via an IP connection guarantees the confidentiality of information. When using standard telephone communications, unfortunately, there are often cases of attackers connecting to your telephone line and, as a result, their long-distance and international calls at your expense. When using data transmission over IP, the risk of becoming a victim of intruders is eliminated.
Additional services that are always available to IP telephony users: Caller ID for incoming calls, the ability to set up call forwarding, organizing conference calls with the participation of several subscribers and much more. You can receive calls both on your phone and on your computer ( this option confirmed in Personal account user), funds are debited from one account, which is convenient for both individuals and legal entities.
System electronic document turnover: you no longer need to worry about the safety of paper documents, organize their sending and receiving, use the services of couriers, for a long time wait for the required originals. We offer a system that is popular among many international companies electronic document management. You will be able to receive the necessary paper documentation in the shortest possible time, in electronic form. Acts, invoices and other reporting documents are always available in your Personal Account.

IP telephony service is often used corporate clients, whose branches are located in different cities. They have the opportunity to set up short internal numbers for company employees, and also significantly reduce the cost of telephone communication by using traffic instead of dedicated telephone lines. A nice bonus is the possibility of “unification” telephone numbers— you can choose uniform numbers for your employees or offices in different geographical locations.

What devices are required to make a call over IP?

You can access telephony via IP using simple IP equipment: PC (you will need to install a standard softphone), a special IP telephone device, easy to use, or an IP gateway. Which IP devices to choose for making and receiving calls is up to you. Many companies today actively use video communication; this is suitable for organizing a video call. mobile phone, laptop or PC. However, if you do not want to give up the equipment that is familiar to you and your employees, data transmission via IP channels can be configured on a regular radiotelephone and even a fax using an IP gateway.

How to activate the service?

Once again, please note that the procedure for connecting to IP telephony is free.

All instructions and explanations can be obtained from our specialist by leaving a request for connecting telephony via IP on our website. Becoming a MegaFon IP telephony user is easy: just be our client and apply for the service