Setup New VoIP Network

We are planning to setup a new VoIP network. We need to know what all setup (Hardware and Software) is required and an estimated cost if possible.

We want to setup a VoIP website so that people can call all over the world at very low price/ free.

We also want to to be able to add the VoIP phone systems to the same network as we are thinking to setup our own call center/ support center as well.

What would be the best setup for this? Do we have to go through other VoIP providers/ servers to connect to the PSTN/ Mobile phones or can we setup our own server?

What kind of costs are we lookig at for initial setup? and ongoing costs?

Hi vgarav and welcome to Voipuser

Please post requests just once. Start by reading through the information already on the forum. The answer to your question is here ... http://www.voipuser.org/forum_topic_8289.html

Hi.

Sorry to sound harsh. But if you have to ask such fundamental questions then this maynot be the best business for you to enter into.
The main reason for this is that its very competitive and customer retention is hard.

Do lots of reading and good luck

Ian

I have to agree with Ian I'm afraid. To stand any real chance of survival you need to have a CTO that understands the technology inside out. To quote Thomas Anglerro (former CEO of FreeWorldDialup) from that thread linked to above:-

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When a new architecture is announced or a new product category that changes the current paradigm is revealed, you must be the one who can provide that instantaneous priceless thought that will differentiate your company from the competition and in doing so, elevate your company above all others.

Without that you're left competing with the incumbents on ever-decreasing cheap minutes, and that's not a business that has any legs. You might get 12 months out of it (in which case just white-label and concentrate on the marketing) but without a technology capability and from that an ability to evolve, it will die.

The purpose of the "How to Build a Network" thread was really only to highlight that it's the easy part, but in itself it does not make a business and if you have to read it, you're probably in the wrong one.

Gossiptel : £3m invested, over 100k subscribers and went bust.
SunRocket : $80m invested (not a typo) over 500k subscribers and went bust.

Why is it hard? Here's a couple of reasons for starters:-

1. Low barrier to Entry - the core technology is easy, which means there's lots of competition.

2. Cost of customer aquisition, AKA how to get customers to leave the competition and come to you. Everyone already has a phoneline (developing markets are the exception, but they need infrastructure like WiMAX and you're then into a Government scale project).

3. You don't own the last mile of copper. Which means you can't offer the customer a single monthly bill for the whole bundle.

4. The incumbents can price cut until the cows come home. They have billion dollar war-chests. While you may think you're little outfit can stay well under the radar, the reality is collectively all those little outfits together are a threat and are having an impact on pricing and minutes bundles.

Thanks for your reply guys. I know that it is very hard to enter a business when you don't know much about the technology but not everyone is perfect on all technologies.

We are actually looking to setup a Call center/ support center and thought may be we can do a bigger setup if it suits the budget.

What we are looking at at the monent is to setup an inbound/ outbound call center and make outgoing calls through some VoIP provider. But before we went ahead we wanted to have an idea about how muct will it cost to have our own server.

Also, we needed to know how if we can use the DID numbers with IVR's. is it possible? which hardware would to recommend?

Basically we are just looking for your advice on what will be the best and most cost effective way to setup a inbound and outbound call center.

Any advice will be much appreciated.

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what will be the best and most cost effective way to setup a inbound and outbound call center

Start by writing a full specification of exactly what you want the equipment to achieve and what locations you are proposing to work in. Decide how many desks you will be wanting to run simultaneously and what proportion (if any) will be out workers in alternative locations. Specify what internet connection you plan to use in each and the available bandwidth (both up and down). Work out an outline budget for hardware and take some decisions on exactly what services you want to provide for each chair (PC & Softphone?, IP Phone?) work out what kind of info logging and reporting you need to achieve, decide on a CRM or bespoke software package. Will you be using one provided by clients? Who are the clients at this point ? Maybe they will they have specific requirements anyway that will affect your choice of hardware?

List all of this and give it to your preferred choice of local hardware vendors so they can put some equipment (and more importantly technical support) proposals on paper for you.

Then you need to take a company policy decision on how much of an SLA you want to provide to your clients, if you want to provide 'mission critical' service then you will need redundancy on all equipment + standby/reserve procedures for hardware, software and connection failures.

With that info in front of you, it may then be possible to get closer to taking some decisions on what is both best and cost effective for your/your own clients specific needs.

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But before we went ahead we wanted to have an idea about how muct will it cost to have our own server.

If you mean instead of having a third party do the PSTN gateway duties, then my advice would be don't. Outsource it. You'll need SS7 expertise, networking expertise and possibly a sprinkling of Cisco Certified engineers to do that in-house. Plus a relationship with Ofcom (or counterpart if outside the UK) and all the headaches of emergency services access etc. There are plenty of companies out there offering this. Let them compete with each other and save your own money. We use Magrathea who can supply you with both the DID's you'll need and the outbound PSTN gateway/proxies.

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Also, we needed to know how if we can use the DID numbers with IVR's.

Yes you can.

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which hardware would to recommend?

For less than 500 seat call center cheap(ish) hardware running Asterisk in a redundant array. Anticipate failure and back that up with a 4 hour response time hardware/software replacement package through a specialist IT support angency. But that said, John Gray's post above is excellent advice and you can't really make this decision until you understand your own requirements.

Thanks for your replies guys.

This is what we had planned:

One location will have inbound and outbound team but another location overseas will have the outbound setup but may have inbound as well.

We are planning to connect the different locations through VPN using the Netgear prosafe routers (will this be ok?).

The internet connection we are think to get on the locations is T1 lines. what do you think about this?

we'll get a eCommerce/ CRM solution designed through a webdesign company. Or can you recommend any already available to purchase. The solution will be run on the intranet at the head office (main location) and the VPN connectivity will allow other sites to access it.

The main issue we are facing is in deciding what hardware to setup (router, server, IP-PBX) for the inbound and outbound calling.

We will also need some DID numbers to be setup for incoming calls for all agents as well (direct contact for clients).

Please advice on what do you think will be the best setup in the scenario mentioned above and what hardware do you think will best suit our needs.

vgaurav :

One location will have inbound and outbound team but another location overseas will have the outbound setup but may have inbound as well.

How many people requiring simultaneous connection? Approximately how many calls per month?

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We are planning to connect the different locations through VPN using the Netgear prosafe routers (will this be ok?).

VPN is going to be an essential for your business, there are too many security issues to rely on public routing, choice of router depends on other equipment choices which themselves depend on call volume.

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The internet connection we are think to get on the locations is T1 lines. what do you think about this?

Again this depends on call volume, if we knew this we could reverse calculate bandwidth requirements.

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We'll get a eCommerce/ CRM solution designed through a webdesign company. Or can you recommend any already available to purchase. The solution will be run on the intranet at the head office (main location) and the VPN connectivity will allow other sites to access it.

What is the budget for this element?

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The main issue we are facing is in deciding what hardware to setup (router, server, IP-PBX) for the inbound and outbound calling.

We also face this issue in trying to help you, without some more info on your startup call levels and proposed scaling it is impossible to guess what will work.

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We will also need some DID numbers to be setup for incoming calls for all agents as well (direct contact for clients).

Easy and off the shelf, probably the simplest to solve.

Thanks for your reply again and sorry for not providing this information earlier, here is some more information:

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How many people requiring simultaneous connection? Approximately how many calls per month?

Initially we are looking at around minimum 6500 to 7000 outbound calls and around 500 incoming calls per day per location. But we expect this volume to grow by large numbers.

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VPN is going to be an essential for your business, there are too many security issues to rely on public routing, choice of router depends on other equipment choices which themselves depend on call volume.

We will like to install something that will be reliable and will be able to handle the increase in the call volumes.

The internet connection we are think to get on the locations is T1 lines. what do you think about this?

We'll get a eCommerce/ CRM solution designed through a webdesign company. Or can you recommend any already available to purchase. The solution will be run on the intranet at the head office (main location) and the VPN connectivity will allow other sites to access it. The budget for this element has been kept around $4000.

I hope the information above is complete and now you can help us is in deciding what hardware to setup (router, server, IP-PBX) for the inbound and outbound calling.

We will also need some DID numbers to be setup for incoming calls for all agents as well (direct contact for clients).

Please let me know if any more information is required and thanks a lot for your help.

Hi.

Ok so your budget for a CRM package is $4000 is that US or AU ? That wont even cover the training bill for users to use it.
For example sugarCRM cost for the pro version $275 per user per year and then training is in the region of $1200 per admin user and train the trainer.

There are many offshore call centrers already in existence and they will all be going for the same market as you.

The running costs of a offshore centre is in the region of US$12 - US$25 per seat per hour. omitting initial set-up costs of in the region of $1000 per seat for hardware and furniture.

Ian

dean :

Why is it hard? Here's a couple of reasons for starters:- 1. Low barrier to Entry - the core technology is easy, which means there's lots of competition. 3. You don't own the last mile of copper. Which means you can't offer the customer a single monthly bill for the whole bundle.

Excellant post Dean, and most depressing on first read, (there's no money in VOIP as a stand alone service) and I agree.

However, in the UK, your Item 3 is not true. LLU and like for like transfer allow you to take over the line. While owning the last mile isn't something I'd recomend for the SME, taking over the billing is.

Simply supplying minutes is a money pit, but combine it with on-site installation, providing the physical lines/BB AND the minutes is definately a way to make a living. If it weren't there wouldn't be any telecom system providers apart from the big ones.

Regards

Thanks for your replies guys. We are not planning on competing with any other call centers. We are trying to open this call center for our own products.

We have tried quite a few call centers and were totally disaapointed from all. So we came to the conclusion that it is best to run your own. We know it may cost a little bit extra at the start but atleast we'll have access to all the reports etc.

Also, this way we can train the team as reqired and alsocheck their performance time to time.

A web design company has offerred us to design a basic ecommerse solution for us for $2000USD. This will be a basic CRM and will be built/ designed according to our requirements. The CRM will be hosted on internally so security should not be a big requirement initially.

I look forward to your help and support as i really need your advice on the following:

1. What router, server, IP-PBX should we use? It should support VPN connection and sould be able to handle high call volume (Initially around 7000 outbound calls and 500 inbound calls per day)

2. Which IP-PBX we should use so that we can configure IVR on the DID number

3. Which VoIP provider do you suggest we should use for inboind/outbound calls as clarity will be very important for us.


I look forward to a reply from your side.

Hi

How are we meant to help when you havent passed on all the info,

Where are you going to base the centre, I see you are in Australia but will the call centre be there ?

As to call volume what will this be in erlangs as 7500 30 second calls is very different to 7500 2 minute calls.

As to IP PBX haev a look at Asterisk.

And point 3 without knowing where you are basing the service and where calls will be originating from its not possible to say and to be honest we dont recomend ITSPs here.

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Where are you going to base the centre, I see you are in Australia but will the call centre be there ?

One office will be in Australia and one in India. However most of tha outgoing calls will be made to Aus and NZ.

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As to call volume what will this be in erlangs as 7500 30 second calls is very different to 7500 2 minute calls.

Most of the calls will be longer than 2 minutes. I would say 60% will be around 15 minute calls and 40% will be even longer.