Author: Chris Koehncke

Save money on Int’l conferencing

A multinational electronics company had offices in several countries and project teams that worked between them and with their customers. They had equipped each office with a Cisco Call Manager for their PBX. The calling rates between these various countries using the local telephone company was quite high as were the rates for calling internationally.

They installed an Asterisk PBX as tandem hub and sign-up for various SIP trunks for pure outbound calling. The Asterisk PBX had the routing intelligence and flexibility to deal with all types of interfacing with the various SIP companies. After some trial, they decided to run these trunks over the public internet and found only a handful of instances where they encountered poor call quality and if so, only for a few moments. Ironically, the Cisco Call Manager wasn’t able to handle the various SIP interface parameters they needed for all their service providers.

Initially, this company started using the conferencing capabilities of the Asterisk system. It worked, but they quickly ran into problems. First off, they wanted each office to be able to configure and set-up conference rooms as they needed and the IT dept wasn’t comfortable allowing too many administrators access to the Asterisk system. Second, they needed to include US callers and they didn’t wish to incur the cost or expense with establishing US telephone numbers and trying to manage it all. Finally, they were concerned about the load conferencing presented on their Asterisk system, which was already busy handling tandem calls.

Discovering TurboBridge, they literally configured a new SIP trunk from their Asterisk tandem in < 5 minutes such that any user on their network could reach TurboBridge via VoIP.  Outside participants can dial in via any of the TurboBridge access methods. PLUS, the company’s internal staff, using both Cisco and Polycom IP phones which support HD Audio (G.722) can experience crystal clear communications.

Using TurboBridge, this multinational company reduced their conferencing expenses by 1/3 and increased their overall call quality. A nice bonus and it was easy to set-up with no hassles. TurboBridge’s ability to support multiple administrators and accounts, enabled each division to manage their own conference ID and monitor usage.

Save $$$ on conferencing with local numbers

A prospective customer was interested in TurboBridge because of our competitive toll free 800 conference rates and was interested in one of our introductory specials. The customer was using toll-free conferencing for all of their calls as the participants were all customers.

This particular customer was using 90,000+ minutes of toll free conferencing each month and had a bill in excess of $5,000 a month! The good news, TurboBridge was able to offer them a lower rate and right out of the gate, this customer was saving over $2,000 a month.

We had mentioned that TurboBridge also offered local toll numbers which might save them even more money. The company was hesitant, they didn’t want to appear ‘cheap’ and they also didn’t want to confuse their customer on what number they needed to dial.

TurboBridge toll and toll free numbers are almost the same 800-309-2350 or 805-309-2350. Almost the same is an understatement, only 1 digit difference! We suggested the customer advertise both numbers for several upcoming conferences and let the customer decide what number they wanted to dial.

The customer agreed to advertise both as a trial and on one of their first calls, fully 2/3rds of all participants dialed the toll number! The customer continued the trial and the same % held, 2/3rds called the local number with no prodding from them.

Two simple changes, selecting TurboBridge and offering toll calling as an option has saved this company almost 75% of what they had been spending for conferencing. It’s real money. It’s a real savings and it’s all because of TurboBridge.

TurboBridge supports iNum

iNum stands for international Number. It is a new kind of global phone number for a new kind of world — a world with a new geography that’s about local presence and global relationships, not about distance or national borders. TurboBridge now support iNum. Our iNum number to reach the TurboBridge conferencing service  is +883.510.001.399.900

iNum is making use of the +883 global country code newly created by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). Unfortunately, this +883 number was not accepted by most telephone companies so you basically couldn’t dial it directly from any telephone. However. iNum and it’s partner’s set-up a network of local access numbers in 45 different countries so you could indeed dial iNum telephone numbers at no charge.

Basically, you find your access number (here’s the list), dial that local number and then enter the iNum number you wished to call and you’d be connected at no charge (sans the cost to dial the local number if any). While not the most perfect solution, it works.

FierceVoip is reporting that a handful of real telephone companies are now allowing you to call iNum numbers directly from their networks, meaning you don’t have to dial an access number first. This is a major and exciting step forward. TurboBridge supports iNum!

iNum is a beta service for TurboBridge, so we can guarantee the quality yet, nor are there worldwide access numbers, but with 45 countries, it’s a good start.

Wanna talk to us about it? Well we have an iNum number for customer support as well (+883.510.013.425.105)!