SOLUTION VOIP OPERATOR – IP CENTREX

Overview

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is simply the biggest revolution in phone technology since cellular, and poised to eclipse it. By routing phone calls over broadband Internet connections, VoIP bypasses traditional phone service and delivers practically free long-distance calling around the world. If you aren’t using VoIP yet, you should be. Or you may be using it, and just not know it. Almost all voice chat services, like Skype and GoogleTalk, use some form of VoIP.

Now, Wi-Fi/WIMAX is enabling VoIP to move out of the home and office, pitting it squarely against cellular service. Cellular providers have seen the writing on the wall, and are now starting to offer their own hybrid cell/Wi-Fi services that take advantage of the strengths of each. Wi-Fi-based VoIP calling is the most efficient solution in homes, offices and public hotspots where broadband provides reliable and inexpensive connections. Cellular works best in the field, where Wi-Fi may not be available. It’s expected that all major carriers will offer hybrid service in the near future, T-Mobile is the first, with its Hotspot@Home offering.

This document describes a complete Voice over IP solution for the Internet Service Provider business telephony.

Presentation of Innovative IP CENTREX

If you want to launch any of the following services, then Epicentre IP Centrex (EIC) may be the system for you:

• Traditional Calling Card services – EIC can be configured to provide standard calling card services via traditional “dial through”, with PIN or CID authentication.
• Callback services, EIC supports a number of call-back methods including ANI, DID and web based call-backs.
• VoIP residential services – Customers can be issued with a softphone or hard phone and be billed for calls made via Voice over IP.
• VoIP wholesale termination – EIC can be used as a softswitch to terminate and bill large numbers of VoIP minutes from a number of sources such as resellers and distributors of your services.
• VoIP termination – With the growth of IP based PBX systems , EIC can be used to provide services and billing to IP PBX resellers and Asterisk system integrators.
• DID termination and redirection. DID can be redirected to any SIP, IAX or PSTN destination with monthly charges and duration based charges.
• Unified communications (FAX, Email, Instant Messaging etc…)

The IIC Platform has been deployed in a number of commercial environments by both traditional TDM based telecoms companies wishing to move into the VoIP market, and calling card and call-shop businesses. Additionally, there has been a lot of interest from IT and networking companies who are beginning to deploy VoIP PBXs in addition to their traditional business, and wish to enjoy an ongoing income by terminating their customer’s calls using EIC as their Wholesale Billing Platform.

Epicentre IP Centrex Architecture

 IP Centrex features

VoIP features

• All basic calls features (ring group, follow me, conference, DND, Black list etc…)
• Call recording with a Web interface to search recordings
• Voicemail and Voicemail-to-Email functionality
• Flexible IVR configurable by a Web Interface.
• Voice synthesis support
• Extension Batch Tool to create large numbers of extensions using CSV files.
• Phone provisioner, configurable via a Web Interface. Allows configuration of a large number of IP phones in a short time for supported phones.
• Support for video phones
• Hardware detection interface allowing quick & easy setup of a range of popular telephony hardware.
• Operator panel. Monitor PBX activity via a graphical interface and perform call transfers and parkings by a simple drag-n-drop. * Call parking allowing calls to be picked up at any extension.
• Call Detail (CDRs) report within you can search calls based on different criteria as date, extension number, etc
• Billing report from which you can filter by destination, source
• Report of channels used by technology (SIP, ZAP, IAX, Local, H323)
• Support for call queues including static and dynamic agents
• Conference Center. Allows setup of temporary scheduled conferences or static conference rooms via Web Interface * Support the following protocols: SIP, IAX, H323, MGCP, SKINNY, etc
• Supported codecs: ADPCM, G.711 (A-Law & μ-Law), G.722, G.723.1 (pass through), G.726, G.729, GSM, iLBC
• Support for analog interfaces as FXS/FXO (PSTN/POTS)
• Support for digital interfaces as E1/T1/J1 through protocols as PRI/BRI/R2
• Support for bluetooth interfaces through cell phones
• Callback

IIC Billing Platform

The IIC Billing Platform is now a fully featured telecom platform providing converged services, with self contained billing, reporting and statistics for IP and TDM based voice networks and can be configured to supply a wide range of services, rate calls, prepare and send out invoices, as well as accept payments via a number of payment service providers.

The Billing Platform has been deployed in a number of commercial environments by both traditional TDM based telecoms companies wishing to move into the VoIP market, and calling card and call-shop businesses. Additionally, there has been a lot of interest from IT and networking companies who are beginning to deploy VoIP PBXs in addition to their traditional business, and wish to enjoy an ongoing income by terminating their customer’s calls using the billing platform as their Wholesale Billing Platform

Features list

The features list are split into three sections for clarity: IVR, Web management interface & Customer interface :

IVR FEATURES :

• Caller ID & Card Number and SIP/IAX2 Friend authentication
• Multi-Language support – force specific language, give a menu for language choices
• Customize the IVR rapidly, chose to play Balance, Time to call, Intro prompt, etc…
• Recording of all calls
• Speed-dial
• Play balance with multi currency support
• Free VoIP calls between application users
• Support simultaneous or single access on same card
• Support call at Zero-Cost & Negative cost
• Auto creation card option for new callerID
• Web based, DID & CID based Call Back
• Top-up account via IVR menu.

WEB MANAGEMENT INTERFACE :

• Advanced Card and Customer management : Creation ; Edit ; Search engine ; batch update ; CallerID handling ; Refill Cards.
• Define : post-pay/prepay ; Language ; Currency ; Expiry ; VAT ; Recurring Service, User Data, etc…
• SIP / IAX Friends
• Speed dial
• BILLING MANAGEMENT & REPORTING
  • Check the Customers balance; see Refills made, payment received, amount to pay
  • browse online payments made by Paypal, Authorize.net and Moneybooker
  • Voucher support : creation ; browsing ; batch creation
  • Multi-Currencies support : automatic update based currently base on Yahoo Financial
  • Reporting statistics: CDR ; Maximum Concurrent calls ; Graphing ; Profit Margin analysis

• POWERFULL RATE-ENGINE
  • LCR(Least cost routing) & LCD (Least Cost Dialling) management
  • Billing Increment: Progressively different rates through the call
  • Scheduled Rates (days/hours of the weeks – PEAK & OFF-PEAK)
  • Expiry of rates;
  • Import Rate Cards from Ciles
  • Rate-card Simulator
  • trunk/voip-provider management
  • Failover Trunks
  • Batch update for rates
  • Calling Packages – X number free minutes to specified destinations
  • Subscription services
  • Callback Rating

• DID SALES
  • Manage your DIDs and sell them to your customer for monthly usage.
  • Customer can reserve DIDs for themselves and configure a Follow-me to redirect the calls over the PSTN by VoIP.

• REPORTING
  • Monthly & daily reporting
  • Earnings calculation and markup/margin on report
  • Monthly traffic reports (pie chart)
  • Daily load
  • Compare call-load with previous days
  • Criteria definition for reporting
  • Export report to PDF & CSV
  • Generate invoices to PDF format
  • Email invoices to customers Automatically

• RECURRING SERVICE OVER THE CARD
  • Auto refill existing card with auto refill option
  • Periodically remove credit from customer balance

• OTHERS
  • E-Product : allows interaction with third party ecommerce platforms in order to create cards such as OS-commerce
  • Signup modules
  • Email activation to verify customer email address.
  • Customise mail templates
  • ACL (Access control) support for admin users
  • DB backup/restore tool
  • SOAP-Webservice : Create Card, Remove card, Update… See WSDL :
  • Export data into XML or CSV
  • Customise look and feel of the interface
  • Call-back, Web based, DDI based, CID based and URL / Text triggered Call back
  • Call-back triggered through multiple asterisk servers.
  • API to display ratecard on own website

CUSTOMER INTERFACE : (The customer use a web interface)

• Online signup, selection of tariff, language and currency with email verification.
• Account info, including update details
• Call history – CDR
• Voucher usage and voucher entry.
• Invoice Viewing
• DID selling support – features to sell to pre-configured DID. Customers can redirect DID to his phone-number and even deploy a Follow-Me
• Speed dial configuration
• Ratecard browsing & ratecard simulator
• Web based callback
• Web-phone (Applet Java – IAX Web Phone)
• Caller id : list / add so that customer can authenticate to the service without needing to enter account and PIN
• Multi-Language support for the customer interface (Spanish, English, French, Chinese, Italian, Romanian, Turkish, Urdu)

• Forget password option

OPTION: Unified communications features

FAX

• The fax functionality is administrable via Web
• Fax visor integrated. The faxes can be downloaded from the Web in PDF format *
• Fax-to-email application
• The email template (from fax-to-email) can be customized
• Access control for fax clientes (white list)
• Can be integrated with the WinprintHylafax plugin. This applications allows to print any document to a virtual fax from a Windows application.

Instant Messaging

• The IM server can be configured from the Web from a friendly interface
• Supports groups of IM users
• Supports connection with other IM gateways like MSN, Yahoo Messenger, GTalk, ICQ, etc. This allows the user to connect to several networks from the same IM client
• Report of user sessions * Support for plugins to extend functionality
• LDAP support
• Support server-to-server connections to share users between two servers

Email

• Email server with multi-domain support
• Administrable via Web
• Interface to configure the Relay networks
• Web based email client based on the Roundcube project
• Support for quotas (the quotas are configurable via Web)

Collaboration

• Calendar integrated with the PBX with support for automatic voice notifications. That means that a call is generated when a notification is triggered
• Phone Book with click-to-dial capabilities
• Two CRM products integrated to the interface (vTigerCRM and SugarCRM)

Call center module

The call center module can handle incoming and outgoing campaigns. Some features are:

• Open Source Predictive dialer
• Support for Do-Not-Call List
• Support for incoming and outgoing campaigns
• Forms can be associated to a campaign and designed through an Web wizard
• A “script” can be associated to a campaign
• Agent console
• Support for various types of breaks
• Advanced Reports