• Convergence –packetPointe’s VoIP solution allows you to combine existing solutions for data connectivity and voice telephone service into a consolidated network--both within the enterprise and on the access connection to the network. One of the fundamental features and benefits offered by packetPointe’s IP Centrex based solution, is that the service is hosted and operated by packetPointe, which frees you from the consequences connected with self-administration. The hosted platform also alleviates the burden associated with capital expenditures and administrative expense connected with managing complex PBX systems. 

• Lower Capital Investment Cost – The system acquisition cost for packetPointe’s IP Centrex is much lower than a PBX. A packetPointe VoIP IP Centrex customer needs only to obtain telephone sets, whereas the PBX customer must obtain an entire system. Although any firm can benefit from this aspect of IP Centrex, fast-growing companies with limited capital resources and limited personnel for non-core functions are particularly attracted to IP Centrex. Not only does IP Centrex allow you to focus on your core businesses, it also provides a cost-effective way for you to expand your system freed from these responsibilities of service and support. You can be confident that 24x7 support is being addressed by competent telecom service professionals. Since packetPointe is the service provider, and owns the infrastructure, the start-up costs for packetPointe’s VoIP service are much lower than purchasing a CPE-based solution, like key systems, traditional PBXs or IP PBXs. Services include:

• Mutlilocation Centrex – packetPointe’s VoIP solution delivers you the ability to make multiple locations part of the same IP Centrex group. With packetPointe, geographic location is not a factor when defining an IP Centrex group. Now your retail locations, branch offices, telecommuters, and even business travelers can be combined into a single IP Centrex group with the main office- even if they are all served by different wire centers. This is possible because packet transport is so inexpensive and is not mileage sensitive. Multilocation IP Centrex provides the following advantages to the customer:
  
• Easier for your corporate users to manage and administer one large IP Centrex group rather than several separate IP Centrex groups.
• Uniform services and features for all your users, regardless of where their office is located.
• Extend advanced business features to your telecommuters' homes without Foreign Exchange costs.
• Uniform dialing plan across your entire company. Abbreviated dialing can be used to call the office next door or the office across the state.
• No toll charges for calls between each of your locations
• Better utilization of adjunct customer premise equipment (CPE) solutions, such as voicemail systems or interactive voice response (IVR) equipment.

• Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and Softphones – packetPointe’s VoIP solution promotes CTI solutions where telephone functions can be controlled by your PC, and where telephone information (e.g., caller id information) can be integrated with other software applications. Unlike previous CTI solutions, packetPointe’s VoIP solution allows CTI without the need for special interface cards. The ultimate form of CTI is the softphone, where your PC actually replaces the telephone. Softphones may be particularly useful in Call Center applications.

• Reduction of MAC Activity – With packetPointe’s VoIP solution, certain Move, Add, and Change (MAC) activities can be eliminated when the user of an IP Phone changes offices. The phone number and features follow your IP Phone throughout the LAN, without needing any change orders or service calls to support MACs.

• Mixed Technology Groups –packetPointe’s VoIP solution is fully compatible with previous Centrex services. Analog lines, ISDN lines, and Centrex lines can all be made part of your same VoIP group. This makes it simple for your existing Centrex customers to introduce packetPointe’s VoIP solution. Also, you don't have to convert your entire group at once. Instead, you can add or convert lines to packetPointe’s VoIP solution on a line-by-line basis.

• Use of Existing Centrex Management Tools – If you are a current analog or ISDN Centrex customer you can continue to use existing Centrex management tools for many administrative functions on packetPointe’s lines. For example, Macstar (SM) or Centrex Customer Rearrangement System/CCRS (TM) can be used for packetPointe’s VoIP solution. In addition, Station Message Detail Recording (SMDR) can be used to get the calling records for a packetPointe station.

• Scalability – With packetPointe’s VoIP solution, you can buy the exact number of lines that are needed, and readily add or remove lines. In contrast, when you remove a station from a PBX, since the equipment was already purchased. Also, when adding stations to a PBX, there are costs not only for the line cards, but periodically for new common equipment, like shelves to accommodate the line cards.

• Simplicity – With packetPointe’s VoIP solution, packetPointe is responsible for installing and configuring the service. With a PBX, you, or your consultant, has this responsibility.

• Operations and Maintenance – packetPointe is responsible for the day-to-day operations and maintenance of the VoIP solution. This includes adding new lines and changing faulty components. With a PBX, you are responsible for these functions, as well as for keeping an inventory of spare parts.

• Upgrades – One of the principles of packetPointe’s VoIP solution is that we continue to upgrade the service features for you without system downtime. This includes not only the major evolutionary upgrades, such as from analog to IP, but also more mundane upgrades, like installing a new generic switch which offers more features.

• Reliability – packetPointe monitors the network 24 x 7 and has staff to immediately respond to alarms and equipment failures.

• Standardized Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) – packetPointe’s VoIP solution station equipment uses standardized protocols and conforms to an open interface. This allows multiple equipment suppliers to manufacture IP Centrex CPE, and you can purchase any suppliers' brand of IP CPE. This competition drives down station equipment prices. In contrast, many PBXs use proprietary station sets, and you can purchase only the station sets designed to work with a particular PBX. Since you are locked into a limited selection of CPE, PBX station prices are higher than comparable IP Centrex station equipment.

• Eliminate Floor Space and Environmental Requirements – With packetPointe’s VoIP solution, the infrastructure is located in packetPointe’s world-class data center and monitored from packetPointe’s Network Operations Center (NOC). In contrast, PBX and key system solutions are located on your premises and you must provide floor space for the equipment. You must ensure that the room the equipment is in meets certain environmental requirements, such as air conditioning, humidity, fire protection, and power back-up. This requires intensive capital outlay.

• Complete Solution – packetPointe’s VoIP IP Centrex service is a complete solution that provides your users internal and external voice traffic. PBXs require LEC-provided trunks to the PSTN in order to support external traffic; consequently, a PBX customer needs to work with more service and product providers than a Centrex customer.

• Equipment Lifecycle Management – Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of packetPointe’s VoIP solution is that you do not face the same amount of risk that a PBX user does when selecting a PBX. When choosing a PBX, you must evaluate all of the above factors to determine which PBX offers the best price and performance for your current and future needs. This requires you to accurately predict the lifetime of the PBX and your growth in terms of stations, call volumes, and feature requirements. An error in this evaluation can make any particular PBX solution much more costly than anticipated. Not only does packetPointe’s IP Centrex remove these risks, it also offers predictability of costs (based on terms stated in the Centrex contract). Although PBX acquisition and installation expenses can be predicted accurately, PBX upgrades and enhancements are subject to higher markup and can increase at unpredictable rates. Also, as mentioned above, the lack of proportionate scalability of PBX costs makes the total cost of PBX ownership difficult for a you to predict.
  
  In addition to the general advantages of IP Centrex that apply to most customers, Centrex offers other benefits that attract users with niche applications. For example, firms with trunk-intensive, incoming applications, like large call centers, may find that Centrex reduces the number of trunks that may have been required by PBX solutions. In Centrex, traffic is queued and held in the packetPointe switch when there is no available line. On the other hand, PBXs hold traffic at the customer premises; one PBX trunk is needed for each call on hold. Consequently, a call center in which large call volumes wait on hold would require fewer IP Centrex lines than PBX trunks.

• Line Expansion and Ease of Scalability – CO switches are very large, serving many thousands of lines. If you were to choose an IP Centrex service usually occupies only a small portion of a switch's capacity and making changes takes weeks or months to make. In contrast, when you need additional lines, packetPointe would simply allocate them. packetPointe has the responsibility to manage the hardware resources such that it has sufficient capacity to satisfy future demand. In order for you to add a line on a PBX, the you (or outsourced support) must provision the new line on the PBX.
  
  In addition, you must maintain a sufficient inventory of line cards. Provisioning, installation, and inventory expenses increase the operating costs of PBXs. packetPointe’s VoIP IP Centrex service provides you with an amount of scalability that cannot be matched by PBXs. Scalability refers to the relationship between capacity and costs. In a scalable system, costs increase or decrease in a proportionate relationship to capacity. In a system with low scalability, costs can increase significantly in response to minor increases in capacity. Since packetPointe’s service is billed per line, your cost for IP Centrex service increases as they add lines and decreases as they remove lines.
  
  After the high acquisition cost for a PBX is incurred, the cost to add a line may be nominal until certain breakpoints are reached (e.g., the need to add a new cabinet and processor), at which point a substantial expense may be incurred to add just one additional line. In addition, PBXs do not have scalability as line requirements decrease; instead, the investment in PBX capacity is distributed over fewer lines, increasing the price per line. Now you can engage in highly seasonal businesses tend to favor Centrex service because it offers scalability for both increasing and decreasing line requirements.

• Reliability and Repairs – System maintenance for Centrex is provided by the packetPointe; there is no extra charge to the customer for maintaining the switch. The packetPointe provides 24 x 7 centralized monitoring of the switch and often resolves switching problems before customer service is affected. PBX troubles usually affect users before the problems are detected. In addition to the operating expenses for PBX maintenance personnel (or outsourced support), the PBX customer must make a capital outlay for spare parts.

• Upgrades – packetPointe is responsible for hardware and software upgrades on the VoIP switch. The PBX customer assumes these responsibilities for the PBX; in addition, the PBX customer has the additional burden of replacing the PBX at the end of its lifetime. Consequently, an IP Centrex services model removes both capital and personnel expenses from the customer.

• Security – IP Centrex service is more secure from hackers and fraud than PBXs. PBXs offer Direct Inward System Access (DISA) trunks and remote maintenance ports that hackers can use to vandalize the system or to make long-distance calls that are billed back to the PBX. Although it is possible to disable insecure access ports, many PBXs continue to operate with their ports accessible to hackers. In contrast, packetPointe has implemented reliable security measures to protect the packetPointe VoIP system from hackers.

• Complete Solution & Dynamic Bandwidth – The packetPointe’s VoIP solution is a complete solution that provides you internal and external voice traffic. PBXs require LEC-provided trunks to the PSTN in order to support external traffic; consequently, a PBX customer needs to work with more service and product providers than an IP Centrex customer. Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of packetPointe’s VoIP solution is that you do not face the same amount of risk that a PBX user does when selecting a PBX.

In addition to these advantages, bandwidth being utilized by the customer can be dynamically sized to match needs.  Customers will not be concerned with having enough voice capacity as Internet bandwidth will be throttled back or accelerated automatically based on the users needs.  This feature will save customers money on line and Internet charges.

pakcetPointe’s IP Centrex and VoIP Integrated Solutions Recap:

• Hosted PBX and IP Centrex based solution.
• Complete seamless integration of voice (telephone) and data (desktop computer) environments.
• Phone portability feature allows Remote Instant Office anywhere by plugging handset into any Internet access.
• User provisioned enhancements, feature sets and MACs (moves, adds, changes).
• Full Carrier class reliability and service.
• Auto attendant and hunt group capabilities.
• Significantly reduced fees on traditional voice services.
• Significantly reduced fees on domestic and long distance services.
• Flat fee service offering with online billing access.
• Broadband Internet access to each desktop.
• Unified messaging of email, voicemail, and handset features.
• Enhanced bridging and conference call features.
• Multi-number “find me” features.
• Deployable as an extension to other Class 4 or 5 switches or PBX systems.
• Simple to navigate, user-friendly portal interface.
• Ability to maintain current telephone numbers
• Integration into legacy equipment.
• Fully secure.