Alternate numbers
Applications
Hosted PBX
Offer your customers IP Centrex, voice and video calls, conferencing, unified messaging, and presence service with PortaSwitch
What are the business drivers that lead enterprises to consider IP Centrex?
- Replacing a legacy PBX in order to simplify maintenance, enable remote offices or work-from-home employees to function in a single environment
- Migrating from another IP PBX solution to gain better flexibility, reduce costs
- Increasing staff productivity through CIT (computer telephony integration), which typically means integration with CRM, auto-dialing, access to call recordings, etc.
Customize your revenue stream
You have the power to define your service offer as a combination of recurring fees per line, charges to be applied based on the total number of extensions, per-minute calling rates, bundled minutes, volume discounts, so on. You can offer “à la carte” subscriptions for specific features on top of the basic plans. The options are endless so that you can create what works for you and your customers.
Get your customers set up quickly
When a customer is created in PortaSwitch, administrator picks the desired product combination and enters the financial parameters (such as credit limit, payment terms, or fraud-detection profile). This defines which platform features customer has access to, how the system will charge for the usage (e.g. phone calls) and how it will assess the recurring charges—either fixed or based on the number of extensions. Alternatively, customers can activate their services independently via online sign-up portal.
The administrator allocates IP phones from the CPE inventory to the customer. This means that for more than 50 supported models of phones as soon as an IP phone is connected to the network it is automatically provisioned by PortaSwitch, with no further action required on the customer side.
Customers are assigned login credentials for the self-care portal, so later on they can configure their extensions, huntgroups, auto attendants, obtain additional local/toll-free DID numbers, purchase add-ons such as call recording or conferencing.
High end security and reliability
PortaSwitch supports SIP over TLS and ZRTP, so all communication between a phone and the server is encrypted and secure. When an end user makes an outgoing call from the customer’s office, the call is authorized by PortaSwitch: various fraud-prevention measures are applied, and the customer’s balance is checked in real time. PortaSwitch then routes the call to another IP PBX extension (for intra-office calls), or to a PSTN network.
Calls to DID numbers (local or toll-free) arrive from carriers or DID exchanges, and are then routed to an auto attendant, call queue, huntgroup, or individual extension, depending on the settings. Fax-over-IP, both outgoing and incoming, is supported as well.
When customers use the service from the office, at home or on-the-go, the advanced NAT traversal capabilities of PortaSwitch allow them to connect calls regardless of the specifics of the network configuration.
Hosted IP PBX integrated billing
PortaSwitch is a service delivery platform for hosted IP PBX that streamlines your business end-to-end. Inside their portal, your customer has a clear overview of all configuration settings, call recordings, CDRs and invoices. What’s more, each employee has access to the self-care portal for his individual line and can monitor their usage or configure settings such as follow-me numbers.
PortaSwitch revenue assurance means that no call is allowed when the balance is insufficient; every call is immediately charged and applied to the customer’s balance; every feature activation / deactivation is directly linked to the billing.
At the end of the month, all applicable fees are assessed, a PDF invoice is generated and emailed, and the credit card on file is automatically charged.
Architecture of an IP Centrex platform
Supported features
SIP Trunking
Provide inter-office exchange, outgoing long-distance and international calls, incoming DIDs for enterprise customers and call centers
What is SIP trunking and how does it work?
SIP is a popular VoIP protocol and de-facto standard in today’s technological world of communications. SIP trunking allows IP PBX systems to connect various locations of a company’s offices by using VoIP (as opposed to sending calls via a traditional PSTN network and thus paying local telecom operators).
What motivates enterprises to sign up for SIP trunking?
Target customers are enterprises that have on-premises IP PBX, legacy PBX (connected to VoIP gateway) or Microsoft Lync. The three main business drivers are:
- Customer has multiple branch offices in various cities – so they want a toll bypass for calls between different branches;
- Customer wants to save money on outgoing long-distance and international calls; and
- Customer wants to have various incoming phone numbers (toll-free, in different cities or even different countries) and / or advanced features (such as call recording).
So, for example, a call travels over the internet from an IP PBX in office A to the Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) VoIP Softswitch – where it is then routed to the IP PBX in office B. There are zero per-minute costs for these calls and the service is typically billed based on the maximum allowed number of connected calls (these are “trunks”).
Although standard SIP trunking usage allows companies to save costs on calls between extensions / employees – the real benefit comes from its ability to route outgoing long-distance and international calls via a VoIP at a reduced rate – or easily allocate phone numbers (local, toll-free or international) for inbound calls. In addition to connecting voice calls, – a frequently sought after value-added service is fax delivery via VoIP using a T.38 protocol, which ensures quality and best of all, saves costs.
Supported features
Architecture of a SIP trunking platform
Calling Cards
Software platform for calling cards, PIN-less dialing and callback services. A unique set of features, complemented by convenient administration tools and proven reliability
Architecture
PortaSwitch works as a single, ready-to-use calling card software platform that is very easy to launch and manage. It consists of the following:
Softswitch cluster
A highly scalable class 4 and 5 SIP Softswitch delivers call control and media processing functions. It supports real-time call authorization and charging, dynamic call routing, and advanced call control. The media server includes multilingual IVR applications, with the ability to easily customize the call flow.
B/OSS
is used to configure access numbers and IVR applications, create tariffs and prepaid products, set up resellers and distributors, generate batches of cards (PINs) and top-up vouchers, and perform monitoring & troubleshooting. There is a real-time data link between B/OSS and the softswitch, so any changes are effective instantly and require no additional configuration.
A highly flexible real-time charging engine
supports flexible rating formulas, special fees, variable call announcement time, profit-guarantee call routing, and the like.
The web portal
allows administrators, resellers and distributors to perform card generation/activation, browse reports, and so on.
The webservices API
allows easy integration with external applications (e.g. point-of-sale payment submission in a supermarket network).
Calling Cards
How does it work for the service provider?
- Establish a relationship with carriers, who provide incoming local and toll-free access numbers (phone numbers your customers will dial in order to access the IVR). These are entered as “VoIP from Vendor” connections in PortaSwitch.
- Interconnect with carriers to which international calls will be sent. These are entered as “VoIP to Vendor” connections. Rates provided by carriers are uploaded into PortaSwitch via easy-to-use wizards.
- Using PortaSwitch’s “LCR blending” tool, create your sales tariffs. (The tool analyzes available vendors for each destination, calculates average costs, and determines the selling rate based on the desired profit margin.) You can further enhance these tariffs by changing the rounding increments, adding surcharges, and so on.
- Configure routing plans to adjust parameters such as “profit guarantee”. If you offer toll-free numbers, configure the additional costs to be charged to end users when they use toll-free numbers, in order to offset your costs.
- Customize your IVR applications. For each application you can decide which languages to include (PortaSwitch supports more than 20 IVR languages), what the desired call-flow is, and which options are to be included (e.g. whether to allow automatic caller number registration for future PIN-less dialing).
- Sign up distributors for the cards.
- Generate batches of cards and have them printed. Then use PortaSwitch’s inventory to manage the assignment of cards to individual distributors.
- When a distributor activates (sells) the card, the card’s balance (minus his commission) is added to his balance. If the distributor has no more balance, no new activations are allowed; the distributor must first transfer funds to you to re-enable his/her account.
- The customer purchases a card and dials the access number. After PIN verification, he has the option to store his CLI (ANI) for future use so that the system will recognize him automatically, without needing to enter a PIN. Calls that the customer makes are immediately reflected in his balance.
- When the customer’s balance is low, he is reminded to top up his account. This can be done by purchasing another card, paying the distributor, or using the online self-care portal.
- Use the PortaSwitch administrator GUI to view various statistics, monitor your profits, adjust rates, generate new batches of cards, and expand your sales.
Supported features