Fax over IP or SIP trunks!

Across the Internet even a G.711 codec fax transmission is unpredictable. An excellent discussion of why faxing and modems don’t work well over VoIP can be found here. However, people often get perfectly good results on lightly loaded LANs. It still isn’t perfect, as a burst of data on the LAN can still upset things, but some people get results they can live with. Fax-over-Internet T.38 pass-thru functionality within ShoreTel has arrived in 11! In detail: There are two conceptual methods of carrying virtually real-time fax-machine-to-fax-machine communication across packet networks: Fax relay, in which the T.30 fax from the PSTN is demodulated at the sending gateway. The demodulated fax content is enveloped into packets, sent over the network, and remodulated into T.30 fax at the receiving end. Fax pass-through, in which modulated fax information from the PSTN is passed in-band end-to-end over a voice speech path in an IP network. The following two pass-through techniques are possible: The configured voice codec is used for the fax transmission. This technique works only when the configured codec is G.711 with no voice activity detection (VAD) and no echo cancellation (EC), or when the configured codec is a clear-channel codec or G.726/32. Low bit-rate codecs cannot be used for fax transmissions. The gateway dynamically changes the codec from the codec configured for voice to G.711 with no VAD and no EC for the duration of the fax session. This method is specifically referred to as codec upspeed or fax pass-through with upspeed. In addition to the methods for real-time fax transmission, a method called store-and-forward fax breaks the fax process into distinct sending and receiving processes and allows fax messages to be stored between those processes. store-and-forward fax is based on the ITU-T T.37 standard, and it also enables fax transmissions to be received from or delivered to computers rather than fax machines. T.38 relay: In fax relay mode, gateways terminate T.30 fax signaling by spoofing a virtual fax machine to the locally attached fax machine. Unlike in-band faxing or fax pass-through, fax relay breaks down the T.30 fax tones into their specific HDLC frames (demodulation), sends the information across the voice network using the fax relay protocol (T.38), and then converts the bits back into tones at the far side (modulation). The fax machines on either end are sending and receiving tones and are not aware that a demodulation/modulation fax relay process is occurring. Summary: Fax pass-through is the simplest technique for sending fax over IP networks, but it is not the default, nor is it the most desirable method of supporting fax over IP. T.38 fax relay provides a more reliable and error-free method of sending faxes over an IP network

What is new in ShoreTel Contact Center Version 7?

ShoreTel Recently announced the availability of Version 7 of the Enterprise Contact Center. It is not secret that I am a big fan of this product, so I was anxious to see what the new version had to offer. The product has a number of new features and capabilities that are both feature specific and impact the infrastructure of the product. Anyone who has worked with the ShoreTel iPBX for any period of time will become instantly comfortable with the new ECC system administration interface. It is now a browser based portal, very similar to the interface used for the iPBX administration. In fact I would be willing to bet that the new ECC portal will become the standard for the ShoreTel product line and the iPBX Shoreware Director will take on some of the characteristics of the new ECC 7 administration portal. Another area in which the ECC has adopted the exiting iPBX paradigm is in the area of licensing. Early versions of the ECC required the installation of a hardware dongle on the server and each desktop that ran the Supervisor software. Dongles are a pain for everyone and beginning with Version 6, ShoreTel began to migrate away from this requirement by eliminating the dongle requirement for Supervisors. Previous versions of ECC required the installation of the USB Hasp on the server before installing the ECC application. No dongle, not ECC! With ECC 7, not only are the dongles not needed, you get the familiar 45 day grace period to run the ECC application and try all the features before you have to provide the license keys. The server key locks to the MAC of the server, in a fashion similar to the iPBX key. The ECC application also reads the BIOS serial number of the server for added software protection. Other infrastructure changes include the support for Windows 2008 R2 64 Bit Servers. The ECC will support Citrix and WTS clusters and most importantly, roaming profiles are now supported. The system will now allow for 100 concurrent Supervisors and 1000 concurrent Agents, though you may define 2000 agents in the database configuration. The application support 400 DNIS reports and historical data can now be kept for 24 months allowing for year over year trend analysis. An exciting new feature is the addition of Personal Queues. I am sure we have all had the experience of working with an “agent” on a particular customer service issue, maybe given a “home work “ assignment only to call back and have to start over with a new agent. The concept of a “Personal Queue” makes it possible for inbound callers to reach specific agents, if you desire that option. In this way, after completing the “home work” assignment, you can call back in and queue for the agent that originally handled your call in the first place. Agents can move high priority calls to their personal queue with a simple mouse click. Historically, if you wanted this option you had to configure a group and service for each agent that required a personal queue. With Version 7, this process has been streamlined with the creation go a new entity that defines how the caller should be handled while in the personal queue. A very powerful option and very useful in direct selling environments. The familiar graphical scripting tools has not changed and scripts are generated using the established procedure. The Diagnostic console has been upgraded and is more usable for trouble shooting at the System Administrator level. I am particularly excited about the creation of a Lab SKU, something I would like to see ShoreTel do with the entire product line. The Lab SKU makes it possible for you to purchase and run a small scale Contact Center along side your production environment. In this way you can create new scripts, strategies, call flows and of course, test new upgrades before putting them into your production environment!

FastVoip now offers Free Calls to 13 Countries including India

Yeah, India is now independent again. FastVoip announced their best ever deal to make India calls totally free along with other 12 countries where you can make free calls. Lets find out about the deal. FastVoip, a leading VOIP company from Europe has just announced their biggest ever promotion to date. If you thought betamax was the only VOIP Provider to offer free calls per month to various destinations for a flat fee per month, then fastvoip has proved you wrong. Betamax as you all know is a unreliable VOIP Provider which can go block your accounts without notice and freeze your balance. FastVoip has now emerged as a strong competitor after this latest announcement to offer free calls to over 13 countries including India Landine. You can make calls to following countries using FastVoip. Belgium Netherlands Canada (+mobile) Poland China Sweden France Thailand Germany United Kingdom India United States (+mobile) Italy Please note the only calls to landline phones are free except for USA and Canada where calls to mobile phones are free too. In order to use the Free Calls promotion, you need to make a minimum deposit of 5 Euro by Credit card or $7.50 by Ukash. You will need to recharge your account every month for this amount in order to keep the free call service active. There is one more solid opportunity for all of you to make some money from fastvoip. I will discuss it later this week. For now, Download FastVoip and start making those free calls.

Call India for 0 cents per minute

Surprised or shocked? Yes, its true. You can now make calls to India for 0 cents per minute and if you miss this offer, you will surely regret later. IndiaLD, one of the largest India focused VOIP Provider has launched a smashing offer that will make you drool. With IndiaLD Quarter Call Offer, you can call any Indian Mobile for only 25 cents per call. Don't get confused, its per call and not per minute. Each call will last for an hour i.e 60 minutes which makes the effective calling rate per minute as $0.004 (less than 1 cent). This is a perfect offer for anyone looking to call India and talk at length. Don't we all love talking back home for literally hours? Even for people who actually hang up within 1 minute, there will be no charge for that short call, yes it will be free. IndiaLD currently offering $5, $10, $20 & $30 call credits to be bought for this offer. The quarter call offer is only available till end of April 2011. However, IndiaLD is seriously considering to extend the offer further into the summer holidays. You can call from the USA, Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Bahrain, India, HK, Ireland, Japan, NZ, Spain Norway, Netherlands and Singapore using IndiaLD Access numbers. To be honest, I find this offer "the best ever" till date. The calling rates are unmatched and unheard of. Don't think and procrastinate, Join the party till it lasts and Sign up now at IndiaLD