Private branch exchanges (PBXs) are used by many businesses to serve the communications needs of a particular company or office. A PBX
is an internal phone system with features like extensions that ensures all employees at a particular company have easy access to one-another and that customers can with relative ease reach a particular rep.
During the past several years, a change has occurred in the technology infrastructure associated with PBXs. Internet phone services (also referred to as VoIP for “voice over IP”) use IP
data networks to send digital voice signal from one location to another, rather than traditional analog phone networks. This has made phone service more affordable, and also made it possible for service providers to develop software-based phone systems that can integrate more easily with other data network business applications.
The move toward IP-based communications systems has led to the development of “hosted” or “managed” solutions that tie together affordable toll rates (local and long distance) with the advanced features of a PBX (News - Alert) — at a price that small businesses can afford.
Delivering such solutions opens up new revenue opportunities for service providers and resellers, but in order to benefit they need appropriate and flexible solutions that ease the task of managing IP communications systems. One company, IVR Technologies, has been quite busy lately enhancing its flagship solution, Talking SIP
, designed to provide just such support for service providers seeking ways to cash in on the VoIP and IP PBX trend.
Talking SIP is a software-only, SIP-based application, media and billing server. As an application server, Talking SIP provides intelligence and revenue-generating services for next-gen networks. As a media server, it provides tone, voice prompts, recordings and DTMF recognition. As a billing platform, it provides pre-paid, post-paid and multi-level billing and call cut off. These revenue-generating applications are based on a scalable and extensible architecture.
Talking SIP will soon be out in version 3.4. TMCnet asked Barry Sher (News - Alert), business development director at IVR
Technologies, to provide a sneak-peak at the new features of Talking SIP 3.4.
Sher started off by saying that Talking SIP 3.4 will support enhanced carrier billing for easy reconciliation between origination and termination sides of each call. System reporting enables quick comparisons between inbound and outbound costs for any specified period of time.
But the really exciting new feature with Talking SIP 3.4, Sher said, is a PBX/voicemail/auto-attendant/ACD
module.
“With the addition of this module our service provider customers can now roll out high margin and in-demand applications such as hosted PBX and primary line residential and business replacement,” Sher explained. “Advanced voice messaging, PBX features, business specific autoattendant, ACD functions are all inclusive with this new module.”
While most of IVR Technologies’ competitors require third-party solutions to create such a complete solution, Talking SIP now offers all these functions in a single software package, from a single vendor for consistent support.
Additional information about Talking SIP 3.4 and the new module will be available soon. In the meantime, learn more by visiting the PBX channel on TMCnet.com, brought to you by IVR Technologies.
Mae Kowalke is senior editor for TMCnet, covering VoIP, CRM, call center and wireless technologies. To read more of Mae’s articles, please visit her columnist page. She also blogs for TMCnet here.
Automated Call Distribution (ACD) | X |
A device used to distribute incoming calls to specific sets of users based on pre-determined criteria....more |
Private Branch Exchange (PBX) | X |
Originally, telephone features were provided by telephone central office switching systems, often called CENTREX.�PBX systems emerged as customers wanted to have more calling features and control over...more |
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) | X |
SIP is the real-time communication protocol for VoIP. SIP is a signaling protocol for Internet conferencing, telephony, presence, events notification (emergency calling) and instant messaging.
SIP...more |
Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
Interactive Voice Response (IVR) | X |
A hardware- or software-based computer system that enables incoming callers to interact with voice prompts or verbal commands....more |