IP Telecom VoIP Phone System

Welcome to your IP Telecom voice over IP phone system. Your new phone system works like a traditional phone system except that the voice traffic is routed through high speed internet rather than through a circuit-switched network. Analog voice signals are digitized and the data is transmitted in data packets.

Your VoIP phone is connected to the internet and not to the traditional phone network. As your VoIP provider, IP Telecom translates and transmits the data to the phone network. Calls between VoIP phones, computers, smartphones or a mix of everything work exactly the same.

Figure 1 outlines how your VoIP system fits into your business network.

voip overview

Types of VoIP accounts

Hosted PBX: A Hosted PBX is a VoIP business phone system where the “PBX hardware” resides in the IP Telecom data centre. Using a hosted PBX can save significant upfront hardware charges because the PBX software/hardware sits remotely at our facility. Connection is made to it from your office through our connectivity with high capacity internet providers.
SIP Trunk: If your in house PBX is not IP capable, you can use a SIP trunk to connect to IP Telecom. This works by adding a gateway device that resides between your phone system and the internet and uses a SIP Trunk over your broadband internet connection.

Note

This guide is designed for use with our hosted PBX system. If an article is related to SIP trunk, this will be specified.

Key features

IP Telecom supports the following VoIP features:

On-Screen Menu System: Menu on your device screen that allows you to modify call settings.
Virtual Receptionist: An automated attendant that routes incoming calls to the correct agent or extension.
Blacklists/Blocklist: List of numbers that are not allowed to reach the PBX.
Unattended Transfer: Transfer a call directly to another party without introducing the caller.
Call Detail Records (CDR): Detailed call reports.
Call Forward on Busy/No Answer: Forward calls to another number if busy or there is no answer.
Call Forward Variable: Forward all incoming calls to a different telephone number.
Call Parking: Temporarily place calls in a parking spot.
Inbound Call Recording: Record inbound calls.
Call Retrieval: Retrieve a parked call.
Call Routing (DID): Call routing DID (direct inward dialing) - enables callers to dial directly to an extension in the hosted PBX.
Call Transfer: Transfers calls to another party.
Call Waiting: Indicates that a call is waiting.
Caller ID (CID): Display the callers number.
Caller ID Blocking/Privacy: Block the number being displayed.
Conference Bridge: Allow a group of people to participate in a phone call by dialling into a virtual meeting.
Directory: Dial the letters of name of person you want to call.
Internal/External Ringtone: Customise the internal or external ringtone per handset.
Do Not Disturb (DND): All calls go directly to voicemail.
ENUM (Caller ID): Telephone number mapping allows the use of the same phone number anywhere.
Incoming Fax: Receive inbound faxes.
Local and Remote Call Agents: Call center agents in house and remote.
Hold Music: Music while caller is on hold.
Intercom: Call several devices at once on speaker.
Application Gateway: Allows devices running dissimilar protocols to communicate.
Remote Office Support: Ability to use PBX from anywhere.
Hotdesking: Multiple users can log in to the same device at different times.
Attended Transfer: Connects to the recipient and introduces the call before transferring.
SIP Trunking: Customer not using our hosted PBX but instead using a gateway device to connect their PBX and internet and uses a SIP trunk on the broadband connection.
Conference: Allows more than two callers on a call.
Time and Date: Setting local timezone.
Codec: Refers to the conversion of call media from one voice encoding algorithm to another.
SIP: Trunking is a way to provide network access to many clients by sharing a set of lines or frequencies instead of providing them individually. This is analogous to the structure of a tree with one trunk and many branches.
VoIP Gateways (Hosted PBX or SIP): A gateway device that uses Internet protocols to transmit and receive voice communications (VoIP).
Busy Lamp Field (BLF): BLF is a flashing light that alerts you when you have a new notifications or voice messages; a BLF is configurable.
Voicemail to email: Sends an email notification with voicemail message attached.
Voicemail Manager: Manage voicemails in a UI.

Terms and abbreviations

Following are some of the common industry protocols and phone system terms used throughout this guide and in your hosted PBX system:

CDR: Call Detail Records - data record with details of all calls made within the telephone exchange.

DISA: Direct Inward System Access - a PBX feature where a caller gets another dial tone for accessing some or all of the features within the PBX, such as making an overseas call, or leaving a voicemail message.

DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - a DHCP server automatically assigned IP addresses, default gateways, and other network parameters to client devices.

DTMF: Dual-tone multifrequency is a method used to dial telephone numbers or to issue commands to switching systems.

ICMP: Internet Control Message Protocol - an error-reporting protocol used by routers to generate error messages to the source IP address.

IDP: Intrustion Detection and Prevention - devices or systems that monitor networks for anomalies and possible threats.

IP: Internet Protocol - defines how computers send packets of data to each other.

ISDN: Integrated Services Digital Network - a phone line for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the traditional circuits of the public switch telephone network. - FRA: Fractional rate access - 16 channels - PRA: Primary rate access - 30 channels

LAN: Local Area Network - a small localized network

NAT: Network Address Translation - the process of assigning public network addresses to computers in a private network.

PBX: Private Branch Exchange - private telephone network used within a company or organization.

PSTN: Public Switched Telephone Network - the world's collection of interconnected voice-oriented public telephone networks.

RTP: Real-time Transport Protocol - used to transmit real-time audio and video data.

SDP: Session Description Protocol - used for describing multimedia communication sessions.

SIP: Session Initiation Protocol - this protocol is invoked at the start of each connection.

TCP: Transmission Control Protocol - a standard that defines how to establish and maintain a network conversation through applications that exchange data.

UDP: User Datagram Protocol - used for establishing low latency and loss tolerating connections between application.

VoIP: Voice over Internet Protocol - a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet.

WAN: Wide Area Network - interconnectivity in larger areas such as cities and countries.

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