VOICE over IP - HOW DOES IT
WORK
Voice over IP is based on a piece of hardware, called
an Telephony Gateway Server. Telephony Gateway Servers are being
offered by many manufacturers of network equipment. Rodopi currently
supports 2 of them, Cisco's, and Lucent's.
A customer dials his ISP with his regular phone over
the regular Plain Old Telephone Services (POTS). He is prompted to
enter his Personal ID Number (PIN). After the authentication he
enters the long distance number he wishes to reach. Then the
Telephony Gateway Server (TGS) sends all this information to the ISP
member of the ISP-NETWORK that is closest to the destination of the
call. The TGS at the site of this ISP dials the destination phone
number. After the connection is established both parties are talking
over the Internet. Neither of them needs anything more than a plain
old telephone. The originator has to have an account with an ISP
providing such services. The destination must be covered by an ISP
member of the ISP-NETWORK.
Two things are essential in this scenario. First,
there must be a well-developed NETWORK of ISPs covering reasonable
part of the globe. It wouldn't make much sense to your customers if
you told them you only cover Boston and Paris. Second, the services
must be cheap but not free. Obviously a good billing solution is
needed to make sure everyone in the ISP-NETWORK will be properly
compensated for the services provided to others.
Fortunately RODOPI will take care of both. With our
large number of installations worldwide, we are laying the foundation
for pretty nice coverage. Although there is no guarantee that all
RODOPI owners will participate we do not see a reason why most of
them wouldn't. Needless to say, that being a billing software, RODOPI
will be able to handle care of all billing including charging the end
user.
Here you can find more detailed information about
using Voice over IP with each type of gateway we support:
