With RIM’s recent announcement to broaden its BlackBerry (News - Alert) Mobile Voice System 5, the seamless integration of corporate phone systems and wireless communications will soon allow employees to cost-effectively and securely make and take desk phone calls practically anywhere in the world on their BlackBerry devices. Part of this strategic opportunity for anytime-anywhere communication involves least cost routing, or the process of selecting the most cost-effective method of transmitting outbound communications traffic.

VoIP technologies provider AudioCodes (News - Alert) has been tapped to provide its Mediant family of media gateways to integrate the BlackBerry MVS 5 with voice over WiFi (News - Alert) calling, as well as enterprise PBX systems by Avaya and Nortel. With the combination of AudioCodes’ gateways and BlackBerry MVS 5, businesses will be able to broaden their IP-PBX (News - Alert) phone systems to BlackBerry devices.

“Working with RIM, Avaya customers have expanded options to increase their mobile productivity,” said Eric Rossman (News - Alert), vice president of Developer Relations and Alliances for Avaya, as reported by TMCnet. “By using BlackBerry Mobile Voice System 5 with Avaya Aura and Avaya CS1000, enterprises can more fully exploit investments previously made in BlackBerry solutions to benefit their IT organizations, end users and customers.”

Depending on business employee or administrator preferences, this new integration means that BlackBerry users performing calls over cellular or WiFi networks will be provided automatic, prompted and manual handoff between networks. By making and taking phone calls delivered to their desk on their BlackBerry smartphones instead, users will enjoy features like single number reach, extension dialing and phone system functions like transfer, hold and ad-hoc conferencing.

In terms of least cost routing, administrators will set IT policies and controls in order to cost-effectively route calls through the company’s phone system without expensive long-distance and international roaming charges. With least cost routing policies in place, administrators are supported in their goal to adhere to company policies as well as regulatory compliance requirements.

Using an array of densities and physical interfaces – including fractional T1/E1 up to 84 T1 digital trunks, three DS3s or single 0C3 physical interfaces – the AudioCode gateways, featuring extensive interoperability to a range of TDM and IP PBXs, convert legacy TDM or proprietary IP call control protocols to standard RFC3261 SIP. Packaged in a stackable 1U or 2U chassis that can be installed in enterprise or carrier 19-inch equipment racks, AudioCodes Mediant gateways also offer full 1+1 redundancy for optimal reliability.

“Our ability to enable deployments of BlackBerry Mobile Voice System 5 for legacy PBX and new IP-PBX environments demonstrates the important role AudioCodes plays in this explosive market,” said Lio Aldema, chief operating officer of AudioCodes.

Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Jennifer Russell