Trixbox
VOIP! There, I have said it – it’s the word of the month – VOIP – and everyone seems to be talking about it but most of us find it pretty confusing. I have spoken about VOIP in my ABC radio spots but it’s a simple concept that’s confusing to implement.
VOIP allows you to make telephone calls over the internet.
The big end of town has been using VOIP for some years and the principal supplier is probably Cisco providing high end systems for hundreds of extensions.
At the individual level, suppliers such as Engin have been making inroads into the market and Skype and Yahoo and MSN messenger all have individual user offerings.
The gap has been for small business which needs more than a single handset but not a top end solution.
To use VOIP, you need:
- a client device, either a VOIP handset or a software phone on a computer and a headset and microphone.
- Broadband internet with enough capacity to carry the number of calls that may be required simultaneously
- A service provider who can terminate your calls on the ordinary telephone system so you call cal lpeople who don’t have VOIP.
- And – if you are a business – some switching capacity – a digital PABX such as Trix Box, Cisco Call manager or Asterisk
Voice and Internet protocol is a replacement for conventional telephone systems where the audio is digitised and transmitted over the Internet. If this is done from computer to computer, the conventional telephone system can be bypassed all together and there are no charges other than the cost of the broadband. Systems such as Skype and Messenger use this process. This may be done from a VOIP handset rather than from the computer. Many people feel more comfortable using a handset because it looks and feels like a conventional telephone.
However, it is often the case that one party is on the conventional telephone system and the other party is on a VOIP system. In this case, the call must be terminated using the conventional telephone system and some telco charges for this apply. However, it is common for local call termination costs to be less than 15cents a call and for long-distance calls to be un-timed and treated similarly to a local call because the Internet is used to carry the call to the destination city where it is switched to the conventional system and charged as a local call.
In any case, the business driver for VOIP is cost savings. There are many many VOIP providers available in Australia offering a wide range of plans and charges. Often calls made entirely on the providers network are free. Most plans effectively eliminate STD and ISD charges and offer instead low fixed prices.
VOIP has been relatively slow to take off in Australia partly because of the relatively slow speed of our broadband network and the relatively high charges for Data. VOIP has been more popular with larger business who have been able to generate significant savings base through zero cost inter-office calls over their own Internet connection and through high-volume low-cost public network calls. Smaller businesses are now catching on to the savings both by using full-service providers who effectively replace the telephone handset with one of their own or by using free software such as Asterix running on a computer in their office which replaces the PABX and a VOIP termination service.
Often for small business, the inhibitor is not the cost but the expertise to understand and configure a VOIP system.
For any business which has a large number of national or international phone calls VOIP is an essential cost saver.
The free computer-based PABX “Asterix” is now available in an easy-to-use configuration called “Trix Box” which boasts that you can have a PABX up and running in under an hour. My experience has been that this is more practically under a day. Trixbox does assume a reasonably high level of expertise both in the Linux operating system, VOIP, and PABX systems. However, once it is up and running it is a very powerful PABX capable of both VOIP calls and with the addition of about $500 worth of hardware, conventional telephone lines. Handsets may either be conventional handsets, VOIP handsets, or a soft phone which is software installed on an ordinary computer and used with a headset. The list of features available in Trix box is impressive and includes all the things that you would expect on a top end PABX such as ring groups, call queues, voice mail, conference calls and the much hated but often used “interactive voice response” (IVR) system. While most of us hate pushing button one for anything, IVR does offer functionality which is important for some businesses particularly for internal use. Trix box is an ideal low-cost platform or businesses which may consider the cost of a conventional PABX too expensive. It will run on relatively cheap low powered computer hardware provided that there are not too many simultaneous calls or too many extensions.
The Asterix PABX is free to download and use and is written by the company that produces the hardware cards are that you require to connect the computer to a conventional phone. The software appears to the in use on thousands of PABX and in thousands of businesses around the world (including mine) and it's certainly worth investigating.
There is a downside to VOIP. The quality of the audio transmitted in a VOIP call depends mostly on the bandwidth that is used for the call and this in turn is dependent on the compression protocol or “codec” that is used. Some codecs are free and some require a licence fee and it is probably best to experiment a little with what works well on your broadband connection. Generally speaking, normal domestic broadband access will be enough to make calls where the call quality is similar to a mobile phone and quite acceptable as a business service.
In Australia, most broadband accounts have some cost component related to the volume of data that is transmitted and received. This may be in the form of a capped volume per month or it may be covered by so-called “fair usage” policies. In any case, if you begin experimenting with VOIP, be careful to keep an eye on the volume of Data that is being charged against your broadband account.
For some businesses, it may be worthwhile changing Internet service providers in order to get a broadband plan where the data charges suit your use of a VOIP system.
We sell a configured Trixbox PABX for $1500.00 and charge a $33.00 per month maintenance fee. Trixbox is cheaper if connection to normal phone lines is not required. If you want a VOIP system or if you want a cracker PABX, give me a call and check out TRIXBOX.