Telephony

POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service)

How a POTS phone call works

Plain Old Telephone Service is a circuit-switched telephony, because it sets up a

dedicated connection between two points for the duration of the call.

Residential POTS Lines

POTS line Costs Explained

• Access charges are for the use of its local network, per line

• Federal Excise Tax applied to local services• State & Local Taxes imposed by governments on

services• Universal Service Charges imposed contribute to

telecomm services for rural, low-income. • 911 - Charge imposed by local governments to

pay for emergency services

Enter Internet over Phone Lines

Enter BROADBAND

Broadband?

• high data rate Internet access• Download data transfer rate 256kbit/s +• much slower maximum upload data rate

Enter FREE Internet Phone Providers

FREE Phone Service

• Uses internet instead of PSTN (pub switched tele net)

• No phone line access charges• Use from any internet connection• Connects only to other Internet phones • NO PHONE NUMBER• Person to person video, up to 4 people• Audio conferencing of what to 9 people

Voice and Video Quality

• Voice and Video quality is mostly due to UPLOAD SPEED on your digital line.

• Image size, compression, other traffic• Conditioned lines

Skype Demo

Voice Over Internet Protocol Phone Service (VOIP)

FASTER & VOICE-READY

Paid Broadband Phone Service

• Uses internet instead of PSTN (pub switched tele net)

• No phone line access charges• Full phone services• Phone number is associated with the adapter,

not the line! You can take it with you.• Looks and operates like a regular phone• Some offer video phones

Why Switch to Paid VOIP?

• Low, fixed, monthly fee• Unlimited calling plans• Bundled features such as Voicemail, Caller ID,

Call Waiting, Call Transfer, and 3 Way Calling• Can call any other type of phone (land, voip,

cellular)

How a VOIP Call Works

• VoIP is packet-switched, because the voice information travels to its destination in countless individual network packets across the Internet.

• Individual packets may — and almost always do — take different paths to the same place. They must arrive a fairly narrow time window and be assembled in the correct order to be intelligible to the recipient.

Fax over IP (FOIP)When VOIP technologies digitize and compress analog voice

communication it is optimized for VOICE and not for FAX. Three options:

• Use your old fax machine over a VoIP phone system via a VoIP Gateway and an ATA that supports T38. T38 is a protocol designed to allow fax to 'travel' over a VoIP network.

• Convert to computer based fax and choose a VoIP phone system that supports fax.

• Connect the fax machine directly to a phone line and bypass your VOIP system.

Broadband Residential Providers

• Comcast• AT&T• Vonage

Take your VoIP phone on the road

• place or receive calls as if you were sitting at your desk from almost anywhere.

• make "local" calls back home or call around the globe without worrying about cell phone roaming or hotel surcharges.

Wi-Fi versus Cellular

• Wi-Fi is a wireless broadband connection of less than 300 feet, via a transmitting antenna connected to a DSL or cable Internet connection.

• A cellular network is a radio network• A Radio cell covers an area from a fixed

transmitter and transceiver • The cells of transmitters and transceivers

form a network

In what year was the first mobile phone call made?

• September 7, 1966• April 3, 1973• February 20, 1981

first portable cellular telephone, 1973

Receiving Signals from Cellular Network

Your telephone system?

What’s a PBX?

• Short for private branch exchange, a private telephone network within a business.

• Users of PBX share a certain number of outside lines for making external calls

• PBXs make connections among the internal telephones of a private organization and connect them to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) via trunk lines

Why have a PBX?

Businesses move to PBXes to avoid a direct line to the public telephone system for each employee, each of which incurs a connection and line charge, and to benefit from special

features.

POTS PBX

PBX Features

• Automated Attendant• Call Menus• Add/Change/Delete Extensions• Call Forwarding• Call Transfer• Call Parking

More Features

• Mailboxes• Voice mail• Call Hold• Conference Calling

More Features

• Call Routing based on flexible criteria• Automatic Ring Back Features• Call Screening• Call Monitoring• Barge in

VOIP PBX

VOIP PBX ALSO OFFERS

• Support Remote Users as if Local• Users make any physical phone in the system

act like any other number• Full Outlook/Email Integration• Voice mail to Email• Data Network Integration• Click-to-Dial• Web-Based Management• User Directory

POTS and VOIP Mixed

Administering a VOIP PBX

Hosted VOIP Service

PBX Bandwidth

• A good rule of thumb: enough capacity for roughly one third of your employees to be on the phone at any one time.

Typical issues that change costs in a business phone system involve:

• Do you need an incoming 800 number?• Do you have a receptionist/phone operator or do you want an

auto-attendant?• Do you need to be able to make conference calls? How large, how

many and across how many locations?• Do you need a call center?• Do you need integrated voice response (voice menus)?• Do you have someone available to manage the system for your

employees or are they going to have to do it themselves?• Do you need to integrate with other office systems?• How quickly are you going to need to grow the system and how

frequently?• What level of service and SLAs (service level agreements) do you

need?

Thank you!

If you would like to explore what product(s) might make the most sense for your business,

we can help! 248-404-0393 or customerservice@tlccoop.org.

Technology Leveraging Cooperativewww.tlccoop.org