As a small business owner, it could be the best thing that ever happened to your company. Technology, some people fear it, some resist it, and others embrace it. With the technology available today, small businesses are increasingly leveling the playing field between themselves and big business. It used to be that only Fortune 500 companies with hundreds of employees and 10- story office buildings could afford and maintain a PBX telephone system. But now, with toll free virtual PBX services, anyone with a telephone can reap the benefits of this powerful communications tool. A virtual PBX has all the advantages of a traditional PBX and more without the hassle, hardware and expense. With virtual PBX (Private Branch Exchange) telephone systems, small businesses are combining today’s technology with traditional customer service to take their business to the next level.

A virtual PBX allows small businesses to:
* Project a professional, more established company image
* Have one unified number for office phone, cell phone, fax, and pager
* Make information available to their customers 24/7
* Have web-based, real time access to their system

Small and home-based businesses are using all of these features to sound and operate like a Fortune 500 company everyday.

Project a Professional, More Established Company Image
Right or wrong, consumers assume a company with a toll free number is a more established and secure company. When a toll free number is attached to a virtual PBX with an automated attendant, that powerful image is perpetuated. An automated attendant answers all incoming calls with the same professional and courteous message every time, day or night. Professional greetings can be recorded by the business owner themselves, or even by a voice talent, and customized for the needs of the business. It doesn’t matter if the business is operated out of a home office or the Oval Office. The caller hears a professional greeting each and every time they call.

Unified Voice and Messaging System
With a virtual PBX system, small businesses only need one telephone number. This number can be an office phone, cell phone, fax, and pager all in one. Gone are the days of having to put 3 or 4 different numbers on business cards. Now a virtual PBX toll free number can replace them all. When a call comes in, it can be routed to any local number. It can even be programmed to route to different numbers at different times of the day or on different days of the week. That kind of flexibility is unheard of with a traditional toll free number or a hardwired PBX. If the call is not answered, or is sent to voicemail, the virtual PBX system can even send out a page or email to let the user know that there is a message waiting for them.

The toll free number also acts as the fax number. When a fax is sent, the system recognizes it as a fax and can store it in a fax mailbox for later retrieval, forward the faxed document to a local fax machine, or even send the fax to an email address as an attachment. Unified messaging unchains business owners from their home or small office and allows them the flexibility to get out and build their business while still being available to their customers.

Powerful Automation
No matter how efficient a small or home-based business is, they simply cannot be available to their customers all the time. If a caller has questions they want the answers now. If they don’t get those answers when they call, chances are they’ll look some place else. Making sure information is available, even when a live person isn’t, can be the difference between someone becoming a customer or moving on to the competition.

A virtual PBX allows the storage of an unlimited amount of information for callers to retrieve 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Menus broken down into what kinds of information a caller might need make it easy for them to navigate the system and get what they are looking for. Faxes can even be attached so the caller can request an automated fax back. These automated processes not only save time, but they also make sure callers can get the information they need when no one is available.

Web Based System Access
A toll free virtual PBX is just that, virtual. What that means for a small business owner is that one, there is no hardware to maintain or software to buy, and two, that they can access their system from anywhere with Internet access. Online system access is one of the biggest advantages of a virtual PBX system. Web-based system access allows users to check their voice and fax messages over the Internet or have their messages delivered directly to an email address. Of course, messages can still be checked from any touch-tone phone.

Real time reporting allows users to check the call logs of all incoming calls to their phone number and use the call capture feature to not only capture the phone number of the person calling, but many times their name and address as well. It also allows a user to run reports based on different criteria chosen. For example, reports could be run to show when the busiest time of the week is for customer service or if the call volume increased after a specific ad campaign was released. The applications are endless.

With all these powerful features, and most times more, it’s amazing that virtual PBX systems can be found at a reasonable price. Most providers offer systems that are between $10.00 and $50.00 depending on the capabilities and size of the system. Many providers will offer a varying number of voice mailboxes and features. A quality virtual PBX service provider can also customize systems if needed.

Technology is ever changing in today’s fast paced world. Many of these technologies allow small businesses to compete at a higher level along side their bigger competition. Small business owners should embrace them or risk being left behind.

Source:  http://www.articlesbase.com/home-business-articles/level-the-playing-field-small-business-vs-fortune-500-199743.html

There are great Video Tutorials on VOIP!

Just visit http://www.thinkbright.net/voip_blog/voip-tutorials/

SiteStar is a cooling cabinet that can increase battery life by three times, and reduce the electricity consumed for cooling batteries at a base station site by up to 95%. The life of a battery is inversely proportional to the temperature under which it operates, and is reduced by 50% with a mere 10°C increase above the optimal temperature of 20°C. Service providers therefore have to undertake significant capital and operating expenditure to ensure that the batteries remain cool, or to replace them at regular intervals.It is ideal for countries with extreme climatic conditions and particularly for emerging markets where power supply can be scarce making battery back-up essential.

“SiteStar can replace expensive shelters and power hungry air conditioners which are often needed only for battery cooling,” said Prashant Agnihotri, Head of GSM/EDGE Product Management, Radio Access, Nokia Siemens Networks. “It eliminates the need for expensive indoor sites, while reducing the OPEX of an outdoor site thereby helping an operator not only reduce the cost of roll out and operation, but also its CO2 footprint.”

SiteStar’s unique design provides better resistance against external thermal radiation. This allows it to maintain a constant optimal temperature in very hot or cold climates, and increase battery life by three times in operating temperatures of 35°C, compared to a fan based cabinet. SiteStar also reduces electricity consumption for cooling batteries by up to 95% when compared to traditional air conditioned cabinets as it typically consumes only 40W. It thus helps operators reduce ongoing expenditure in battery replacements, site visits, electricity and diesel costs.

SiteStar’s operating range is from -40°C up to +50°C and it can therefore bring similar advantages in very cold climates too.

Security vendor, Cellcrypt has announced an application which enables encrypted voice calls from smartphones to conventional office landline phones. The Cellcrypt PBX Gateway integrates with commercial office PBX systems and allows users to complete encrypted voice calls from existing landlines to mobile smartphones that are running Cellcrypt Mobile software.

The PBX Gateway also enables encrypted voice calls between landline locations that have PBX Gateway installed; for instance between offices in different locations.

Cellcrypt technology is currently undergoing certification to the FIPS 140-2 standard approved by the US National Institute of Standard (NIST).

“Organisations spend significant amounts of effort and budget securing their data but until now have not had a viable solution for voice data,” said Simon Bransfield-Garth, CEO at Cellcrypt. “While traditional secure voice solutions have provided poor call quality and fail across most international boundaries, Cellcrypt offers unparalleled voice quality, government-specification security and global coverage never before experienced, all using standard smartphone and PBX technology.”

Source: Cellular News

More than 2,500 private branch exchanges (PBX)  companies were hacked by three people in the Philippines. These three people stole pass codes they sold to call center operators in Italy.    

Italian officials allege the sale of the pass codes helped finance terrorist activities, IDG News Service reported. On Friday, Italian officials arrested at least five people in raids on 10 call centers.

 The three indicted in the U.S. are charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, unauthorized access to computers and other charges, according to U.S. attorney Ralph J. Marra, Jr. 

“The hackers we’ve charged enabled their conspirators in Italy and elsewhere to steal large amounts of telecommunications capacity, which could then be used to further or finance just about any sort of nefarious activity here or overseas,” Marra said.

Pakistani nationals in Italy used the stolen codes to offer cheap calls to their clients on the PBXs of commercial companies in the United States, Australia and Europe.

Some of the profits from the scam were used to finance the activities of Islamist extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Italian officials said, according to the IDG News report.

Marra said the hackers dialed into the PBXs and used a process known as a brute force attack to hit vulnerable points of the PBX systems.

Source: IDG News Service

The Asterisk Development Team announced the third beta of Asterisk 1.6.2.0. Asterisk-1.6.2.0-beta3 is available for immediate download at
http://downloads.digium.com/pub/asterisk/

This is an incremental release of the 1.6.2.0 branch as the previous beta was released just over a month ago, and many issues have been resolved since then.  Included in this release are the following issues reported by the community:
 * Update spiral support in trunk and 1.6.x branches to match what is in 1.4.
 * Fix RFC2833 issues with DTMF getting duplicated and with duration wrapping over.
 * Fix a bug where the codecs of the called party leg were not properly sent
   back to the call leg when reinvited .
 * Fix broken attended transfers.
 * Add flags to chanspy audiohook so that audio stays in sync.
 * Resolve issues with choppy sound when using res_timing_pthread.
Additionally, an update to chan_iax2 related to issue AST-2009-001 is included in this beta release. For more information, see:
http://downloads.asterisk.org/pub/security/AST-2009-001.html
For a full list of changes in this beta, please see the ChangeLog:
http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/tags/1.6.2.0-beta3/ChangeLog
You can get more information about the new features and various changes in
Asterisk 1.6.2.0 at:
http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/tags/1.6.2.0-beta3/CHANGES
And if you’re upgrading from previous versions of Asterisk see this file:
http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk/tags/1.6.2.0-beta3/UPGRADE.txt
Issues discovered in testing of this beta can be reported at
http://issues.asterisk.org

July 8, 2009 — The leader supplier of test, monitoring, and analysis equipment for TDM, Wireless, IP and VoIP networks – GL Communications – announced today the release of enhanced PacketCheck™. CEO of the company – Mr. Vijay Kulkarni –  said it is a PC based Ethernet / IP BERT and Throughput test tool that is very easy to use. It also supports RTD (round trip delay), Loopback at all levels, including Ethernet frames and IP/UDP packets, and a simple to use GUI interface.

Mr. Kulkarni, further added, “PacketCheck™ allows monitoring of end to end performance such as total packets, packet loss, out of sequence packets, errorred packets, correct pattern frames, pattern sync status, and protocol statistics (Total IP packets, UDP Packets, IP/UDP Checksum errors etc ). It can operate on any of the three layers – Layer 2 (Data Link), Layer 3 (Network), and Layer 4 (Transport) of the OSI reference model”.

Important Enhancements Introduced:

Loopback Mode:
PacketCheck™ can now operate in Loopback mode in addition to its simultaneous Tx/Rx modes. PacketCheck™ can perform loopback at the Ethernet, IP and UDP levels. This powerful feature can prove extremely useful in diagnosing problems.

Calculation of Round Trip Delay (RTD):
PacketCheck™ now calculates the average Round Trip Delay. Round Trip Delay is the total time taken for a packet to travel to the remote end and back to the point of origin. Round Trip Delay can be calculated using 2 PacketCheck™ applications – one at the local end running in Tx_Rx (Transmit and Receive) mode and another at the remote end, running in Lopback mode. Round Trip Delay is reported in microseconds.

Command Line Interface:
PacketCheck™ can be operated through command line in addition to the simple to use GUI.

Other features include:

• Test Ethernet traffic of up to 500Mbps bandwidth
• Generates full duplex IP, UDP, or Ethernet frame traffic to transmit and/or receive traffic on any of the three layers (Data Link / Network / Transport) with on-demand bandwidth
• Bit-error-rate testing (BERT) on layer 2, layer 3, and layer 4 with detailed runtime statistics for both Tx and Rx
• Customizable 2 byte test patterns

Customizable protocol headers like MAC Source/Destination address, Length/Type field, IP Source/destination address, and UDP Source/Destination Port
For comprehensive information on the application, please visit PacketCheck™ web page.