Thursday, September 23, 2010

Managed Voice over MPLS For High Quality Enterprise Telephony

Companies with multiple locations are rapidly discovering the cost and performance advantages of MPLS networks. MPLS VPN networks are becoming the preferred way to interconnect multiple sites around the country and around the world. But what do you do about your voice services?

Voice services to link multiple locaitons with VoMPLS
The traditional approach is to keep voice and data separate. The telephone system has a proven legacy based on switched circuit analog and digital trunking. Most PBX systems are set up to interface to standardized copper pair analog business lines or ISDN PRI digital trunks. These are your portal to the worldwide PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network that links every telephone set on Earth.

This traditional approach to business telephony has the advantage of guaranteed connectivity and proven voice quality. The incentive to change to something more advanced comes from potential cost savings and productivity features.

There are huge cost savings possible if you can combine your voice and data networks and keep your internal phone calls off the PSTN. Isn’t that what Enterprise VoIP about? That’s exactly what many major corporations are doing. But only well-healed companies can afford to manage their own nationwide converged private line networks. When it comes to international connections, the costs can go up dramatically. Is there a more cost effective option?

Why not use the same MPLS networks that provide data connectivity for your many geographically diverse sites to also carry your voice traffic? Well, why not? MPLS networks already have the requisite quality of service controls to ensure that voice packets won’t get trampled by data packets. The entire network is managed to ensure low latency, jitter and packet loss. It seems like a good match for IP telephony.

Indeed it is. That’s what VoMPLS or Voice over MPLS is all about. With VoMPLS, your internal telephone traffic stays on your own network. In fact, it’s the same network that interconnects all your PCs and other network device. You’ll only pay per-minute telephone charges when your calls have to go “off net” to the public phone system. You can make that connection yourself with ISDN PRI trunks connected to your company PBX or you can outsource call termination to a SIP trunking service.

Does VoMPLS make sense for your company or organization? New services, including one just announced by AireSpring, are making this option the best cost/performance choice more and more. Find out with a quick inquiry about Voice over MPLS network options.

Click to check pricing and features or get support from a Telarus product specialist.




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