outbound voice at Vodafone UK, says: “British
businesses are about to experience a major shift
with the switch-o of the Integrated Services Digital
Network (ISDN) traditional telephone lines, which
commences this year. We will see legacy telephony
systems incrementally shut down, creating a stepchange
in the way companies communicate every day.
Those still running on ISDN lines need to start looking
at IP-based alternatives sooner rather than later, or
else they’ll feel the rug being swept from beneath
them when the service terminates in 2025.”
This chimes with the view of Steve McIntyre,
chief marketing ocer at Nimans: “VoIP really took
o when BT made very firm its intentions to shut
down the old analogue phone lines, and we’re
seeing activity around that ramping up now. The
bigger organisations have already got on board and
made those changes, but it’s moving down the size
of organisation. I’m still sure that by 2025 there’ll be
some medium-sized organisations running around
in a panic, not having realised the switch-o was on
its way.”
Jalloh adds that the benefits of hosted telephony –
using the cloud rather than private branch exchange
(PBX) – are manifold. He says: “Rather than using
costly and over-provisioned ISDN lines to cater for
potential call demand on the busiest day, hosted
telephony oers solutions that are much easier to
scale in response to peaks and troughs in call volumes,
significantly reducing unnecessary costs while oering
far greater flexibility and scalability.
“Hosted telephony also opens the door for
businesses to begin future-proofing their wider IT
stacks. Once organisations have made the switch to
IP-based communications and witnessed the positive
impact of less expensive, more agile telephony,
they typically begin considering other, newer tools
to improve daily operations. Mobile work phones,
videoconferencing and instant messaging
collaboration platforms can all help support new
ways of working, further unifying organisations’
communications packages.”
It is not just voice-based communications that
are now being brought into the UC mix. Motorola’s
Gonzalez says: “Once the customer has voice
communication capabilities, the question becomes
what else can I do? How can I use the data pipe to
improve productivity, security, or simply to give more
information to those out in the field? We move
from the concept of PTT to PTX. It’s not just about
voice, it’s about data, it’s about video. Being able to
transmit live video back to the control room or
share with other people in other locations means
everyone can see what is happening to better coordinate
the response.”
Live video could be particularly useful for
Unified communications
bringing together voice and data. After that, he says, “the industry
moved towards convergence, and from there UC was the next
phase of that journey. Initially this was just an IP system, but then
UC came along and it integrated and made things more seamless.
You could have a lot more presence and capabilities rather than
just voice through an IP network.”
Motorola Solutions sees UC as a way to expand
communications beyond the boundaries of radio-based
deployments. Gonzalez says: “Those two areas broadly cover the
traditional market of LMR. We see UC as an extension of that
same category. People look at UC as an extension of their radio
network. They already have a familiarity with radio but need data
capability or more coverage outside of their radio network.”
Gonzalez adds that UC can be used to share vital information
with employees outside of more traditional radio user groups. “As
an example, we helped a government customer recently
that wanted a TETRA network for its main users but used our
UC solution to extend the service to people that do not carry a
radio, yet who, in special cases, need to be part of the band
of communication.”
For organisations considering a UC solution, there is agreement
between companies that these are relatively simple from a
deployment point of view, if the right foundations are already in
place. Nimans’ Wilkinson explains: “It’s more about getting the
technology right before you launch. The interoperability of several
providers coming together to give one solution – that’s the bit
that can be dicult. The actual experience at the end is relatively
simple. It’s about testing and making sure it does work together.”
Driving forces
In the past couple of years, organisations in the UK have been
shifting towards Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services
for their phone systems. Borie Jalloh, product manager for fixed
14 February 2020 | www.landmobile.co.uk | Twitter:@Land_Mobile
/www.landmobile.co.uk