In the modern era people have become accustomed to having their call answered by an automated IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Menu when they call any large organisation that uses a call centre to answer their inbound calls. The reason why such organisations implement and use this type technology, is to obtain significant improvements in their operational efficiency by having the caller provide information, such as the nature of their query, before their call is connected to a call centre agent. If a caller is able to navigate through a series of options in order to specify the reason for their call, it will save a considerable amount of time when compared to the amount of time it would take a call centre agent to do the same thing live on the call. More recently, this concept has been taken a step further through the introduction of speech recognition to further improve operational efficiency by increasing the amount of information that can be collected before a call is connected. Read more
A Codec is a technical term for the following variations, which essentially mean the same thing: compression - decompression / compressor - decompressor / Code Decode. In practice the compression and decompression is done by a computer program for the purpose of transmitting data over a data connection and allows them to be translated when they reach their destination. Within the telecommunications industry, the data transmitted through the Codec would be the packets of data that make up a call. Read more
A SIP Trunk is a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service which streams media based on the Session Initiation Protocol. SIP is often used to control voice and video calls or other communication sessions over Internet Protocol. The protocol can be used to both create and terminate sessions, or modify them whether they be unicast or multicast or over one or several media streams. Instant messaging and online games also use SIP. Read more
A virtual call centre is a call centre that operates with all of the organisation's employees are geographically dispersed instead of working from one centralised location. This is typically done through employees working from home, or from many small locations. Below is a list of 10 things that should be considered when setting up a virtual call centre. Read more
The telecommunications industry has developed vastly since the introduction of the conventional telephone back in 1876. Among all of the infrastructure sectors, the most dramatic changes and developments are thought to have taken place in the telecommunication sector. Read more
With the vast number of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) providers that are promoting their services on the internet, it can be extremely difficult to make a decision on which service provider to select. This list of 10 questions will assist you in making the right choice for your business, and avoid you being contracted to a provider that is unable to meet your requirements for the next 12 to 24 months. Read more
ISDN is an acronym of Integrated Services Digital Network, which can be defined as a series of communication standards that allows the simultaneous digital transmission of data, voice, and other services over the public switched telephone network. The introduction of ISDN technology represented a move from analogue connectivity to digital, which offered significant improvements in quality. Although SIP (session initiation protocol) has been around for several years, it is only recently that advances in technology that have now made SIP an viable alternative to ISDN. The purpose of this article is to explore whether a business should replace ISDN with SIP. Read more
A SIP trunk is the use of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) to set up communications over the Internet between a customer location and an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP), which transfers the SIP calls to the PSTN. Unlike in traditional telephony, where bundles of physical wires were once delivered from the service provider to a business, a SIP trunk is a logical connection from one point to another over the Internet. Read more
