Solutions

Remote Line Extensions

The Background

Due to family commitments and transportation difficulties, there is a growing need for employees to work from home, and thus for enterprises to provide the means to facilitate this. In turn, the need for remote access and mobility provides system integrators and resellers the opportunity to present solutions to enterprises designed to establish home office capabilities through IP telephony. The present scenario sees a legacy PBX, Key system, or standard CO lines, and remote workers who wish to stay home or in a satellite office. The application must connect remote workers to the main office in a way that is simple, affordable, and transparent to everyone.

The Solution

TelEvolution integrated devices constitute the ideal solution to extend PBX extensions to remote workers located at SOHOs, using VoIP. In this scenario, the PBX extension assigned to the reote worker is connected through a TelEvolution integrated device to enable remote access from the Internet (see Office 1 diagram above). At the SOHO locations, TelEvolution integrated devices connect analog phones to the same IP network. To call a remote worker, a PBX user or a PSTN caller simply dials the PBX extension assigned to the remote user - the line that has been connected through the TelEvolution device instead of directly to the worker's office phone. The remote worker is reached without a second dial tone or any additional dialed digits. It is as if the remote workers are physically present in the office, while in reality they could be at any distance away. Moreover with this application, remote workers have direct access to their own voice mails on the PBX and can call one another toll-free. The worker can use both the remote and main office facilities interchangeably - both locations can be made to ring when the extension is dialed, simultaneously, and answered at either location, transparently to the caller.

The remote worker can elect to use a separate phone to avoid the costs of a second telephone line (SOHO 1 scenario above), or, if there is already a CO line installed and desired for local access, the worker may use the existing phone connected to that CO line for normal calls and also as a remote extension (SOHO 2 scenario).

The Benefit

• Increased mobility for remote workers.
• Increased productivity.
• Savings on second line charges at home.
• Toll bypass between office and remote SOHOs.
• Existing PBX line cards leveraged.
• No significant changes in user habits.
• Cost-effective SOHO implementation.
• Investment protected in legacy equipment.
• Avoid complexity of deploying and operating costly Softswitch, H.323 Gatekeeper, SIP Server, MGCP Call Agent, or other IP Telephony servers.