VOIP and PBX Solutions for Beginners

VOIP Softphone

2010-02-15T22:40:00.002-05:00

One of the interesting things about VOIP is that in addition to using a dedicated piece of hardware as a phone such as a cellphone or handset, you can also make use of a softphone. More specifically it's called a VOIP softphone. This is simply a piece of software that can be installed on your computer (desktop or laptop), pda, smartphone or other internet connected device. This software then takes advantage of the hardware on that device such as a microphone and speakers to substitute for the parts of the handset of a traditional phone. Why would you install a voip softphone on a smartphone? Well, let's say you have a smartphone that also supports wireless internet connections, so when you have an open access point available you may choose to use your voip softphone instead of using the wireless providers network. That would make your phone calls free and not run up per minute charges from your wireless carrier.

There are many different voip softphones available and many are free. They are available now for many operating systems to support handheld smart phones and computers of various kinds including Windows, Mac and Linux based computers. Below is a summary:

Ekiga Smartphone - this is the client I use and have had no problems with on linux. It is freely available and open source. Linux and Windows.

SJPhone is a freely available voip softphone for Linux, Windows and Mac. WindowsCE, PocketPC (Makers of MagicJack).

Twinkle is a very popular open source voip softphone for Linux only.

Opensoftphone - lacks many features - appears designed more for callcenter use when using an asterisk server backend. Java based - Windows and Linux

linphone - Linux based softphone. Also runs on Windows XP - open source.

Kphone - Linux only. Open Source

X-Lite - Windows, Mac, Linux - free download - other versions available.

Gizmo - Windows, Mac, Linux versions available.

This is just a sampling and there are many other voip softphones available. Many are free, there are pay versions as well. I haven't even madea n attempt at addressing softphones that may be available for platforms such as Android or Apple's iPhone or other internet capable devices that also have microphone, and speakers. A VOIP Softphone is really the quickest, easiest and cheapest way to test the waters of Voice over IP.

New Rules Affecting Voice Blast and Voice Broadcast for Marketers

2009-09-25T14:51:00.002-04:00

September 1st marked a dramatic change in the rules for Marketers involved with making voice broadcast or robocalls. In the United States, the FTC has changed their rules for marketers making use of robocalls so that the recipient should have explicitly requested such communications in writing. Fines will be fairly hefty for violators $16,000 per call.

Some of the things that are exempt from this new voice broadcast rule are calls that do not sell a product or service. So, debt collectors calling about unpaid credit card debt, appointment or cancellation reminders and notices as well as political related calls are all allowed under this rule change.

Surveys and calls from charitable organizations are also whitelisted. I personally find the political calls the most annoying because in the days or weeks leading up to an election in a hotly contested area you can be bombarded with literally dozens of calls a day that try your patience and waste your time. I would love to see an easy way to be on a do not call list for political causes of any and all stripes(!)

So, if you're a marketer you will need written permission from customers before making your automated marketing calls or face the $16k per call fines. For more information you might reference the ftc's post on the matter, or consult legal council on how to be in compliance with these new restrictions.

So, What is an AutoDialer?

2009-08-05T21:18:00.004-04:00

You may have seen ads in our discussion of voice blast or voice broadcast technology for autodialers.... what are they anyway?

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An autodialer, autodialler, or automatic calling unit is an electronic device that can automatically dial telephone numbers to communicate between any two points in the telephone, mobile phone and pager networks. Once the call has been established (through the telephone exchange) the autodialer will announce verbal messages (called a robocall in the US) or transmit digital data (like SMS messages) to the called party.

A key technology for autodialers is the ability to detect live human pickup and answering machine. Since there is no indication/hardware signal when a call is answered by an answering machine or voicemail system, autodialer systems have to analyze incoming audio in order to make a prediction. Currently, there is no algorithm that can achieve 100% accuracy.

A regular PC, desktop or laptop, can be turned into an autodialer by using a telephony board or modem. There are software programs which can set up an autodialer-like function over a physical telephone line using such hardware. It is also possible to run cheap or free autodialers without a modem or telephone line using the Internet and VoIP.

Traditional advantages of using telephony cards over simple modems include detecting touch tones and transferring calls directly through to the caller.

With the advancement of computer software technology at the end of the 20th century, many hardware-based telephony capabilities for auto dialing can be implemented in software. Voice modems are much less expensive and some computers have them pre-installed already. Touch tones, call transfer, call progress detection, detection of answering machine and voice mail, and other telephony card features, are available in voice modem-based auto dialing systems. For a simple autodialer supporting only a few phone lines per PC, telephony cards offer few advantages over simple voice modems.

However, with single systems that initiate large volumes of calls simultaneously, telephony cards offload the PC by performing most of the telephony functions (call status determination, playing music on hold, answer machine detection, etc.). Calls can likewise be cross transferred at the telephony board level.

A Smart Autodialer is an autodialer capable of personalizing messages and collecting touch tone or speech feedbacks. A speech engine is usually included for converting text to speech and recognizing speech over the phone.

To customize or personalize messages, a smart autodialer system uses message template, which contains variables that can be replaced later by actual values. For example, a time variable included in the message template can be replaced by the actual time when a phone call is made.

A semi-automatic dialer is a human controlled dialer. All actions, such as dialing, playing audio message, recording, are initiated by human, normally by the press of a key. It is a productivity tool for telemarketing agents.

An enterprise grade dialer must provide two key features. First, it must be capable of making large number of simultaneous phone calls; and second, it must provide an application programming interface (API) for system integration. Almost all enterprise grade autodialers employ computer networking technology, since voice boards have fixed number of ports and cannot be scaled up. In order to make 2000 simultaneous phone calls, for example, a group of computers have to be linked together to provide the support for that many phone lines.

Some advanced enterprise dialers are distributed dialers, i.e., independent dialers that are linked together through the Internet and controlled by a call dispatching program. With distributed computing, there is virtually no limit on scalability. All distributed dialers, by definition, can be accessed remotely. Today with optimized and highly specialized coding some companies have been able to sustain 2000 simultaneous calls using only one server and a single 100 mbit connection.

Source: Wikipedia

SO, it's exactly as it sounds, an autodialer is a tool that can automatically dial a lot of phone numbers, potentially playing a recorded message and possibly even dialing those numbers simultaneously.

Voice Broadcast | Voice Blast

2009-07-31T18:30:00.002-04:00

I put together this collection of voice broadcast services and am reposting here:

A Voice Broadcast or Voice Blast is a term given to the idea of sending lot's of different people the same pre recorded voice message much along the lines of how you can send a single email to multiple recipients. This is the same concept as a "robocall" that many of us are familiar with when a political group has a prerecorded message call or survey, or a local organization or school has a message sent to parents or employees. There are many good uses and applications of the idea of doing a voice blast or voice broadcast. On this page I will try to make a good compilation of the VOIP providers that provide this service as well and where possible I will give some detail on their plans and pricing.

Voiceshot.com - this is the first company I became aware of that did this voice broadcast or outbound message service. I wrote up a bit of a review of voiceshot once upon a time... and here is what I've written on their VOIP entry: Using voice shot you can make outbound prerecorded message calls to a specific list of recipients. You can also conduct surveys using voice shot. They can also let you send text messages to a group of recipients. They also have services that allow for rapid deployment of emergency alert voice or text messages (the kinds of things that school systems and businesses may be interested in to get the word out to employees/students.) They offer inbound services as well with virtual receptionist, 800 numbers possible. With these inbound services call extensions can be forwarded to other numbers making essentially a virtual office possible. You might also like this review of voiceshot. No start up price for outbound calls. The calls are charged at 12 cents per minute (within the US) for successful calls. THis article gives an idea of how easy it is to use curl to trigger their api to make a call on a form submission. It could be a nice touch for an online form campaign. (Developer API)

Callfire has a voice broadcast service (voice blast) as well. They do appear to offer pay as you go plans and advertise competitive rates. (3.5 cents per minute) It all looks fairly straightforward. Create your list via excel or comma separated value text, upload the list. Upload or call in your voice message and launch the campaign. (Cheap rate too.) They appear to support many of the same features as voiceshot including the interactive calling for surveys and the ability to drop to a call center if someone chooses to. (Developer API)

Blast Companies.com has a voice broadcasting service. The procedure seems similar: upload a list through the web interface, create and launch your campaign via any touch tone phone. Their pricing link currently comes up with a page could not be found error. Their features though also include the ability to drop to a call center, to repeat the message with a keypress from the recipient, automatic redial and support for dialing phone extensions.

Call-center-tech.com has a voice broadcasting service. They have interesting legal information about voice broadcasting at the bottom of the page. They also sell voice broadcasting software and equipment (auto-dialers). It appears that their service carries a monthly fee and perhaps a setup charge (they mention that online registration will save non-profits the setup fee.) Setup fee is $125 for their standard plan, $25 per month for 5 day a week/16 hour a day access. (They have a more expensive premium plan for emergency 24x7 access.)

Voiceblast.com - they have a pay as you go plan with no upfront setup costs or monthly fees. Simply upload your call list, record your message and launch (I assume they want you to buy time before you launch the campaign.) There is a members plan that gives a certain number of calls per month as well.

Call-em-all offers voice broadcasting - (they call it an automated calling service). Upload your list, schedule the call and record your message on their toll free number. Busy redial, option to repeat and leaves a message on answering machines/voice mail. No setup fees, no monthly minimum charges. They do have 2 approaches to paying though. The first is a pay as you go where you buy call units of 30 seconds each. The smallest buys of call units cost more per call unit (15 cents per unit if you just buy 100). The cost goes as low as 6 cents a call unit though (and they have a link to get a quote if you have a larger call volume.) There is also an unlimited calling monthly schedule that you could pay x amount for x number of numbers to call per month. Messages can be up to 2 minutes long.

ifbyphone advertises "smart voice broadcasting" - I read they have a blackberry app as well by the way. Developer API. It looks as though to do voice broadcast you have to go with their Advanced (34.95) or Complete (49.95) service (plus usage amounts.) You do get 100 free minutes each month though. Extra minutes start at 7.9 cents per and work their way down to 3.5 per minute in bulk.

Protus.com offers voice broadcast. All connect time is charged, similar features to the others. Low volume pricing starts at 11 and 12 cents per minute. (Developers API)

Accelerated Voice Solutions Claims to have a downloadable "web based" call manager program. It's not clear to me if this is flash based, activex, or a download executable. Judging from their FAQ it is a downloadable windows application. (Macs and Linux/Unix need not bother I guess.) Pay as you go. No setup, no monthly fees. The minutes start at 3 cents a minute for their 5,000 minute package. (Although it's not clear to me if you have to plop down $150 and buy 5,000 minutes to get started.) Per minute plans go down from there with more minutes. (Billed in 6 second increments.)

kwikcall.com offers robo calls and appointment reminders. Group call is their automated voice blast or voice broadcasting service. You essentially start out by buying credits toward calls (these credits last until they are used up.) They claim competitive prices, but you need to contact them for a quote. Everything appears web based and similar to the other services... upload a call list, record your message, schedule (buy credit of course) and launch the campaign.

VoiceShot - Virtual Receptionist and Outbound Call Service

2009-07-30T12:17:00.004-04:00

I started using voiceshot.com a couple years ago. I was looking for a quick and easy way to get the message out to about a half dozen people (who each had several contact numbers) when I was canceling a scheduled event. I could always call manually and when I did, invariably I would invest 10-15 minutes working through each persons numbers and leaving messages (or talking to the individual, or their spouse, child, etc. leaving a message.)

It was tedious and would usually take a half hour or more. For some of my work it made the task of canceling the event more trouble than going and HAVING the event. I needed a solution that would send out a pre recorded message to all the numbers on the list, would let me know for certain that they received the message and it needed to be something that I could trigger and send either from a computer or from a phone.

Voiceshot was my solution. The reason I needed this solution is that we were expecting our second child and I needed a quick way to let 20-30 people know that my appointments with them would be canceled and why. As I noted previously, some of these people have as many as 3 numbers (most actually have at least 2). Which means we would be looking at 40-60 calls or more if I was doing this manually. (Not something I really would have the time to deal with.)

The way voiceshot works is actually pretty neat. You can record a message via phone or your computer after you've signed up. You then buy credit towards the outbound phone calls and can upload (or enter online) a list of contacts with phone numbers. When you're ready to send an outbound message you can initiate it either by calling their number and entering your pin number to get into your account, or by using their web interface.

When I needed it my calls went through and everything worked very well. The sound quality was good and the calls were placed in a reasonable amount of time. (You can schedule when the calls are made as well.)

Voiceshot also provides essentially hosted pbx style services where you can have a single 800 number with them for instance that then rings your phone as on of the extensions, or perhaps your partner has a cell phone. That could be rung as a second extension and so on. A hosted PBX like this can really give the impression to a caller that they are dealing with a big company. Along with this are the virtual receptionist services that they advertise.

Costs?

For outbound messages you pay as you go. So, if I want to send a prerecorded message to twenty people, I add credit to my account and then use that credit at a rate of 12 cent per successful call within the United States. Rates may vary for other locations.

One of the really interesting things with outbound calls. You can make them interactive to design surveys. So, if you're in charge of doing a survey or poll, you could make use of voiceshot to register the results.

For services other than the outbound voice messages there are monthly fees associated. For instance you could sign up to send text message alerts to a list of phone numbers. For this service you would pay a setup fee of $60 and then $10 a month. (10 cents per text message in addition to that.)

For their Virtual Receptionist plans (they have several) it starts at $25 per month for their lite plan, there's a $50 activation fee. With that you get 250 minutes, one voicemail box, unlimited extensions. Storage for 15 voicemail messages is also included and extra minutes are 19 cents per minute. Their plans go up to a call center plan with 10,000 minutes for $350 per month (setup fee waived) and 6 cent per minute rates for extra minutes.

It appears that toll free numbers or "enhanced local" numbers are a $10 per month charge.

On the downside, I have heard from a friend that their support was not as friendly as you would hope. She has a mac and they were unhelpful in getting help for her in how to import a calling list. She was working on a similar issue to mine, trying to do the outbound calling which is the cheapest part of their service. It may be that their support for the outbound calling is not a high priority for them. (Which would be unfortunate.)

Privacy Policy

2009-02-23T12:07:00.000-05:00

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About Me

2009-02-05T20:26:00.000-05:00

This is likely going to be a fairly uninteresting post, but I wanted to give a bit of a background about me for the first post. I have done computer work independently for about 10 years and have worked with a variety of operating systems and at varying levels of support. I've done everything from running network cable to desktop application assistance, server design and management, Linux, Windows, etc. etc.

Over that time I've had the great joy to learn and experiment with linux and the many distributions of that operating system. Along the way I've learned a little bit about VOIP and PBX systems as well and am expanding my knowledge of those day by day.

I also do other services, some of which have routine scheduled appointments and for this reason I have had to look for calling solutions to notify a large number of people at one time of a cancellation or other news. These requirements led me to learn about voiceshot which is essentially a hosted pbx solution of sorts and includes the ability to call lot's of people with a prerecorded message at a reasonable rate.

So, I will be using this site to talk about what I know about VOIP and PBX systems, what I learn about hosted pbx, virtual pbx and voip, virtual pbx setups. Obviously i don't know everything, but I am learning and will be using this site as a place to give and sort the information I learn and find.