General Session Offers Whole Truth About VoIP

Todays general session, The Whole Truth About VoIP, will provide Channel Partners Conference & Expo attendees with a soup-to-nuts education on VoIP.

Stephen Olejniczak, director of operations at ATI, will begin his presentation by talking about the evolution of VoIP legitimacy and how the technology began as a hobbyist tool to become integral in long-distance networks, then moved on to be embraced by techno startups and is now the basis for established businesses, both new and old.

He also will discuss hardware interoperability and costs in the VoIP world. Today, he says, most hardware is interoperable, meaning testing among vendors is now unnecessary. As for hardware costs, he notes that new hardware setup for a DS3 of outbound voice on a traditional network can cost up to $100,000, whereas new hardware setup with VoIP servers is more in the neighborhood of $43,000. Thats based on pricing at about $5,000 per server, he says.

Offering a view of the field of VoIP service providers, Olejniczak will emphasize that some of the best names, like Vonage, is stuff we dont make money on, but that VoIP can offer savings compared to buying new local loops. If local loops cost more than Internet port fees VoIP is a good alternative, he says.

VoIP, he adds, also is appealing in terms of its feature savings, troubleshooting benefits and ability to handle 8XX overflow for TDM circuits.

ATI www.ati1.com