Save money the smart way with SIP
By Leslie Faughnan
Smart functionality is all very well, but saving money is the real imperative, said Joe Lavin, senior product manager with Magnet Networks. “We bundle call minutes to landlines and mobiles with the broadband service,” he said. “The overall value proposition is compelling, and in the current climate that is what is driving new customers to us and other service providers.”
Lavin said the entry level for broadband and VoIP in an SME was about €150 monthly for IP PBX and typically three Polycom IP handsets.
“We instal, host and manage,” he said. “If the calls are over our fibre network, say in major urban areas in Ireland, we can guarantee QoS [quality of service].But, in general, VoIP quality is fine for normal usage.”
But a VoIP solution offers other ways to control costs, Lavin said. “Once everything is digital it is easy to generate reports of call patterns, notably where the call costs are generated. That enables internal chargeback, if appropriate, but also controls personal usage or other formerly invisible costs.”
That point was echoed by Karl McDermott, sales director of networking specialist Damovo. “New services and functionality are very attractive and most organisations considering VoIP will be influenced to some degree by the productivity benefits. But there is no doubt the bottom line impact comes first.”
The potential savings come in toll bypass, lower call charges all round, and the much lower maintenance and support costs of VoIP systems as opposed to traditional phone systems. “You can add SIP trunking to enable internet calls and charges that are actually still reducing, even in the current market. As for things like adding or moving handsets, with no service engineers involved you have both the economy and the flexibility of self-service.”
An organisation that is VoIP and SIP enabled can shop around for the best tariffs, McDermott said.
“Mobile phones in government agencies, for example, all make their calls through the state network, which means fixed costs negotiated through one mobile carrier. In the meantime, all intra-government calls nationally are free over that network. In principle, exactly the same strategy is open to an SME.”
All service providers and equipment vendors will talk about QoS because VoIP is susceptible both to latency (time delay) and jitter (signal variation).
“These are real technical issues but in practical terms, especially for smaller businesses, the general call quality with a simple SIP handset and even ADSL broadband is perfectly acceptable,” said Eamonn O’Donnell, managing director of Bandwidth Telecommunications.
“The point is that you get what you pay for, so occasional aberrations in voice quality is a small penalty for greatly reduced telephony costs in a small enterprise. In any event, VoIP telephony is quite comparable to GSM mobile, which we all live with.”
The market driver is cost, O’Donnell said. “There are many VoIP features that offer flexibility and smarts in linking to applications. For example, you can be in two places at once- an incoming call can ring in any or all of the locations you set, including your mobile. While you are independent of geography you could set up your phone system to respond according to the location of the caller, Dublin or Dortmund, and automate the right language response and link to CRM.”
But all of these smart digital features are still secondary in the current market to the basic attraction of lowering costs and maintaining lower levels into the future, O’Donnell said.
