International VOIP Networking 2

[TJaw14]

We have a small office in London that is asking if they can be included in our NY based centralized VOIP offering. They are interested in keeping their current phone number, and are wondering if they can have that and be set up with an MPLS link to our office, without subscribing to local PSTN. Does anyone have any experience with an international set up of this kind?

Any input/advice would be great. Thanks.

Tjaw14

 

[brianinms]

It would depend on what hardware you have and what hardware they have.

 

[TJaw14]

We have a central Call Manager 5.1 and Unity 4.2, they would be set up as our other remote offices with a gateway router with connection via an MPLS link. I am thinking to not at least have some pots lines for SRST in case of a WAN failure would be kind of crazy. It will be a 15 person office, I have been asked to explore all options.

I think maybe one approach would be to have one pots line with the current main number pointing to it attached via an FXO port to the router and then build a translation pattern and hunt list from there.

Your thoughts?

 

[iptuser]

It depends on what you are trying to get out of the set up

Reduce costs, bring them onto IPT, PSTN breakout to the states etc

If you only them to have IPT so to reduc etehir PABX maint. contract but most of the voice is within the UK then you could configure the set up so that only call control goes across the link no need for QOS, MPLS increase BW etc Most UK cariers have much cheaper US rates when compared maybe having to implement QOS on the WAN so the call control option may be better. You could even configure a router with SRST send it to the UK but not link it to the CCM yet until you are ready - UK site stays in SRST

 

[TJaw14]

The goal is to provide IPT to the office via our centralized build in the most cost effective way possible.

We currently only use the MPLS WAN for call set up, tear down and voicemail. With a 15 person office I could probably set them up with 5 or 6 pots lines and tie those out to a few fxo cards on an SRST gateway router that tied to our site via the MPLS connection.
What do you think? Do you have any recommendations for UK providers?

Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[iptuser]

I would look to use E1 so you are future proof. You need lines for emergency servcies so E1 makes more sense, you can order I think down to 8 channels also you can aways break out in the UK as well as to Europe from the US so save money an dthen expand teh number of channels later? BT is usually easy to work with

 

[whykap]

For 15 users you can also do two or three ISDN BRI circuits instead of a fractional E1.
A lot cheaper as ISDN services are very inexpensive in Europe.

 

[TJaw14]

What about using a few SIP trunks instead of going through a local carrier? Do you have any experience with this kind of connection?

Thank you for your feedback.

 

[whykap]

Call manager 5.X supports SIP trunks so you can do that also.
A lot of the MPLS providers can also provide SIP trunks these days.
Just be aware that you will need to purchase the IPIPGW IOS for your router in order to terminate SIP trunks to it.

 

[TJaw14]

Thank you this is really helpful.