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Avaya | LG | Panasonic | Samsung
With over 24 years’ proven experience, Microcare is a well established telecommunications organisation, committed to delivering good value, quality service and customer satisfaction and this has yet again been confirmed with our continuing ISO9001 accreditation.
Our strong relationships with Avaya, LG, Panasonic and Samsung and our industry accreditations enable us to design, sell, install and maintain telephony solutions over a wide range of equipment that best suit our customers’ requirements; whether for traditional voice solutions or IP enabled solutions. This is especially important when you need a phone system upgrade. We specialise in phone system upgrades including analogue phone system upgrades. Our solutions permit us to offer the following:
To find out more please contact us on 0870 240 8693 and talk to one of our systems specialists.
IP Telephony
IP, internet protocol (Version 4), is the communication language that enables a network of computers to ‘talk’ to each other to enable us to send emails, share documents and other files. IP is the underlying mechanism for the worldwide network of computers that make up the ‘internet’ and the language that your browser software uses to access websites.
The use of IP is no longer limited to computers and other data communication equipment but is now common in multimedia communication and voice.
IP can be used with telephones and telephone systems to provide a highly efficient way of making phone calls across the internet. Commonly referred to as Voice over IP or VoIP, this technology has been used for some time by public telephone operators to maximise the efficiency of their telecommunications networks.
As a technology, VoIP has many potential uses in the business world, which go far beyond the ability to reduce point-to-point call charges.
In many cases, it is the use of IP within a business’s private network, rather than the public internet, that offers the most compelling return on investment. For example, IP enables businesses to align their PC applications with the way that their telephone system operates, as both systems are interconnected on the same network. In this case, IP acts as the glue that binds together client contact areas and administrative services with a communication server.
The advents of VoIP and IP telephony applications have major implications for businesses, individuals and providers of telephony services and systems:
The main business impetuses for IP telephony are as follows:
Many companies have adopted, or plan to adopt IP telephony to cut call costs.
Voice calls usually made over the public telephone network can be routed over IP networks for little or no cost, between company sites, among supply chain/partner networks, and from home and mobile workers using broadband internet connections.
Businesses can use spare capacity on their exiting office and inter-office computer networks to transport voice traffic alongside data.
After the initial investment has been made in an office network based on an IP infrastructure, additional capacity and cabling can be added at low cost. This will provide excellent investment protection and capital savings.
The cost of managing a converged communication system could therefore be up to 50 per cent lower than managing separate voice and data systems. For example, setting up a new employee with a computer and phone is much easier if both devices connect to the same IP-based cabling system.
For international calls – particularly those made to mobile phones or from hotel rooms – the selective use of IP telephony can yield cost savings.
With calls to mobile phones counting for as much as 50 per cent of all telephone costs in some companies, there is scope for using VoIP in business. For example, while travelling, you can use a laptop as a phone (with software called a ‘softphone’) routing calls across the internet at a fraction of the cost of the public phone network from your hotel room.
Being able to add and remove users and rearrange services early and inexpensively from your office without using third parties will reduce costs.
IP telephony gives the ability to accommodate new ways of working and new applications.
In a few years time, less than half the population will count the traditional office environment as their main place of work. Mobile and flexible working are already becoming dominant working models. IP telephony offers considerable advantages for the extended mobile and remote working community.
A key impetus for mobility is also productivity. Many workers say they often send emails to chase voicemails, or make a phone call to draw attention to an email that they had sent. This suggests that businesses need to take control and unify communication. This is precisely the market for which IP telephony is equipped to provide solutions.
Mobile applications themselves form an important class of new systems that make use of IP telephony. But the technology offers much more. Already it is meeting demand for new and more efficient voice handling within companies and at call centres, as well as integrating with other channels such as email and website interaction. Other application areas emerging include online collaboration using video and white boarding techniques in ‘virtual ‘ meeting rooms.
Providers are phasing out development in older ‘legacy’ switchboard technology in favour of systems that provide convergence between the voice and data worlds.
We recognise that few companies will remove and replace their existing telephone systems with pure IP equipment. We believe that most companies will upgrade their existing telephony equipment to provide IP functionality.
We believe that a typical next step would be to add functionality that allows IP telephony calls between sites, to remote workers and also to provide specific staff such as salespeople with ‘softphones’ or IP handsets that enable them to use and benefit from unified communications.
Our strategic vendor relationships enable us to offer our clients the appropriate upgrade path to ensure they are able to benefit from the changes that IP telephony allows.
