I am starting a virtual call center and am currently trying to figure out which hardware and software components I will need. I have been doing some research via goolge and asking around. I’m wondering if Asterisk would be ideal for my Business? I am looking for a solution that will allow me to have some phones in house and also allow for reps to log in via a softphone and take calls from a remote location. If asterisk is not a good solution I am looking for suggestions. I dont have any phone equipment as of yet and was looking for input since I am hoping to have most of my employees connect via a vpn and soft phone of some sort to take calls remotely. There will be a few people in the office who may be taking some calls however mainly just monitoring and coaching. Any Suggestions would be appreciated.
Asterisk is OK. Your main effort will have to go into choosing and configuring routers and choosing good ISPs for both the central system and outworkers, as network quality issues are likely to be the main factor.
I wouldn’t recommend softphones for professional (call centre) use.
The only reason i figured softphone would be a good fit is most of the employees will use a remote vpn to login and take calls from home. Not sure of any other way to make it simpler for them.
[quote=“david55”]Asterisk is OK. Your main effort will have to go into choosing and configuring routers and choosing good ISPs for both the central system and outworkers, as network quality issues are likely to be the main factor.
I wouldn’t recommend softphones for professional (call centre) use.[/quote]
Hi!
I’m very interested to this project.
In fact, I’d like to installal N.1 atìsterisk server to a central location and a number of remote sip phones (say 10 per branch office) connected via ADSL to the same central server.
But I’ve a doubt:
the ADSL that I’ll use in every remote location will be a commercial, cheap, ADSL tipically with only 256 kb in upload.
I know that from any remote location I’ll can’t set up more than one external call at time but within the “local network” will be possible to use all the local (remote) phone to perform internal calls without limitation?
In other words - once all internal phones are registered on the remote, central, SIP server, will be possible to use all internal IP phone to call each other without limitation or quality issue?
Thanks in advance for any reply.
G.711 audio streams burn about 80kbps so you could get at least 2, possibly 3 upstream calls, out of 256k upstream.
You can give the local phones the option to talk talk directly to each other if you configure Asterisk to use “directmedia” or “canreinvite” (semantics differ in different Asterisk versions). If your central Asterisk server has direct PSTN connections so that external calls never have to pass through the internet, then this works great. However, if the media streams ever have to traverse the public internet through NAT, directmedia sometimes prevents audio from working properly.
I see 3 solutions here:
Try the directmedia settings and see if everything works great. If not, try option 2 or 3.
Switch all your phones to a lower rate codec such as G.729 or GSM (if they support it). You may have to buy G.729 codec licenses for your Asterisk machine to allow it to transcode to your VOIP provider (unless your voip provider supports G.729 natively).
Install a small Asterisk box (think Linksys router running dd-wrt and Asterisk) at each remote site. Let them handle internal call routing and route calls with unknown destinations to the central Asterisk server.
And you’ll definitely want to make sure your ADSL router supports some sort of QoS so your upstream voicepackets get priority over anything else.
Hi jpsharp.
I’ll just evaluate wich of your suggested solutions best fit my needs.
My first impression is that the solution #1 is the best and cheaper.
Regarding the lower rate codec, I’ve performed some test with G.729 but with our commercial ADSL (I leave in Italy …) even with only two concurrent outbound voip calls I’ve experienced strong quality issues.
The third solutions seems to me very interesting to and is cheaper than other that I’ve just eveluated like FRITZ!Box Fon Wlan 7170, 7270, 7390.
I’ll update you and the forum’s users with my upcoming test results.
Thanks in advance
