Six burning VoIP questions

Page 11 of 12

6. How do I run my business on Skype?

Skype, which claims around 100 million registered names, estimates that 30% of its installed base are business users. The free VoIP tool is utilized widely by road-warrior employees with laptops, as well as small businesses and teleworkers.

Some companies are even patching together systems that integrate Skype into larger VoIP systems. Big cost savings can be gained this way by using Skype to connect branch offices, while still maintaining the feeling of working on a business telephone, as opposed to a PC-based softphone, which some employees may find unfamiliar.

Chicago to China: a case study

One such company is Eastern Accents, a Chicago home furnishing manufacturer, which has a growing presence in China. It started using Skype to connect to China years ago, and recently took its Skype/telephony integration to the next level.

Elvin Rakhmankulov, the company's director of IT, wanted a way to inexpensively, and reliably connect its growing China operation with the company's 200 employees in Chicago, and other domestic satellite offices. Eastern Accents has 3Com NBX IP PBX system, which easily ties together its U.S. branch offices over the Internet. Sites in Los Angeles and North Carolina get 3Com IP phones, which link back to the Chicago NBX through VPN links.

When Rakhmankulov tried this setup to connect to China, he hit the wall.

"The calls were not being blocked, but the latency, the speed of the network, was really slow," he says. "Nobody knows for sure why there is so much latency for Internet traffic going into and out of China. But any Internet communication to China is a huge issue. When the signal goes from the United States to China, it really takes a while."

Rakhmankulov discovered the free VoIP client worked fine, passing through whatever firewalls or other gateways without any perceived latency to the calls. "Skype does not need a lot of bandwidth. At the same time works with China very well," he says. "The quality of the calls is very good."

Employees used PC-to-PC Skype, but Rakhmankulov wanted to integrate communication line as part of the businesses phone system. "It would be much easier for most people because they don't have to have headsets on their computers, microphones and all that stuff," he says.