Car manufacturer zooms ahead with VoIP
Daewoo International deploys voice over IP gateways to reduce its long-distance phone bills.
 
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Seeking to reduce its telecom costs, car manufacturer Daewoo International decided to take Lynk USA's TeleLynk 1.02 voice over IP gateway for a test drive.
While the quality of VoIP still isn't as good as a PBX, Daewoo is saving on long-distance phone charges and doesn't need as many people to manage its existing phone system. The company is also getting good mileage from TeleLynk's least cost routing, Web-based management, and reporting features.
Shortly after deploying the gateways last year, Daewoo began reaping average monthly savings of $250 per site, says James Han, vice president of business development for Daewoo's North American operations in Ridgefield Park, N.J.
By moving some of its telecom traffic to the data network, Daewoo was able to reduce its telecom support staff by 50%; a few workers relocated to different departments while others moved on to new employment. The company's IT staff now maintains most of its telecom traffic.
However, most of the savings stem from reducing long-distance telecom charges between the company's worldwide headquarters in Seoul, Korea, and its U.S. offices.
Daewoo uses the TeleLynk gateways to send internal calls across its WAN, allowing the company to bypass long-haul toll charges. TeleLynk's VoIP gateway includes software and voice cards that enable real-time connections between IP packet-based networks and circuit-switched networks. The product also includes gatekeeper software for managing the gateways and call routing functions.
Han says the most important factor when choosing the product was cost per port, while scalability was another big consideration.
Evaluating the options
Last spring, IT began investigating different VoIP gateways by scouring the technical and cost information that was available on the Web and in trade journals. Staffers also examined various products at trade shows and found the voice quality comparable amongst vendors such as Lynk, MultiTech, Net-to-Phone and VocalTek. Han says IT narrowed its search down to three products, including Lynk's TeleLynk, Cisco's 2600 and 3600 routers, and MultiTech's MultiVOIP gateway. However, the group found the Cisco gateways too expensive because they required WAN infrastructure changes such as replacing existing routers with Cisco routers. Moreover, MultiTech's proprietary box architecture was less appealing than the TeleLynk card. In order to add phone lines with MultiVOIP, IT would need to buy more standalone boxes, whereas the TeleLynk approach only entailed adding boards. Along with product capabilities, Daewoo also considered vendor relationships important for both service needs and for projected future development. Han's staff considered each company's history and found that Lynk's demonstrated a focus on product enhancement. What's more, TeleLynk's engineering staff impressed IT with good detailed answers to technical questions. IT chose TeleLynk last June and rolled the gateways out to five sites just two weeks later. Daewoo installed two 4-port cards at the company's Korean headquarters to support a maximum of eight simultaneous long distance calls from the gateway. Some locations got 2-port cards, while others needed 4-port cards; card density is dependent on the estimated long-distance. So far the company has deployed VoIP to six locations, and the rollout is still ongoing. Han admits that using WAN bandwidth to carry voice sometimes compromises voice quality due to delay and busy signals, but it's free. Regardless of quality, his company wanted to invest in gateways because improvements such as interoperability standards and Quality of Service protocols are on the way. TeleLynk gatekeeper's Least Cost Routing feature lets IT pre-program the system to use the least expensive carrier to terminate calls. End users don't have to dial any special sequence - all they do is dial as they normally would and TeleLynk determines the least expensive way to connect. For example, for calls outside of the company, TeleLynk is programmed to use MCI after 6 p.m. EST because the carrier's rate is two cents less per minute than AT&T's.Aside from cost savings, the TeleLynk gateways offer other benefits that make the VoIP deployment worthwhile. For example, IT can manage all of the gateways from Seoul headquarters via TeleLynk's Web-based management, including rebooting the server. Han says IT primarily uses remote management to change settings and configure RADIUS authentication.
The client software also allows designated staff to access the PBX from home. This is useful for dealing with different time zones because they can work from home without incurring phone expenses just as if they were in the office. And, various functions can be executed remotely. Users get the full functionality of the PBX, as if they were in their office. For instance, people working from home dial a local number for an ISP, launch the TeleLynk client software and simply double click on the gateway or PBX that they want to call into. They can then dial the extension that they want or dial 9 to get an outside line. TeleLynk's dial shortcuts allow staff to only dial a 3-digit number when it's actually sending 10-20 digits over the wire.Han uses TeleLynk's reporting to see how much money the company is saving in long-distance charges. IT can also track calls and use the reports to monitor call demand and determine when to add new boards. Han says this information is useful for maintaining the quality of calls.
The VoIP rollout prompted Daewoo to ensure its network was in good condition. For example, IT noticed a delay in voice conversations between the U.S. and Korea. Now IT prioritizes voice packets in its router configurations.
The company also did more network testing to confirm that its pipeline is big enough to handle the traffic. Even though voice packets consume less than 6K bit/sec of bandwidth, the combined voice and data traffic sometimes uses the entire available amount of bandwidth.
If Daewoo learned anything during the VoIP implementation, Han says it's that IT should have provided more training and mandated usage of the gateway to guarantee optimal cost savings. IT simply told the staff about the new product and asked them to use it as much as possible. Like any new technology, users didn't grasp it initially and continued to make long-distance calls the old way.
But now all who need to make a long distance call to headquarters or other locations are on board and Daewoo only expects VoIP to keep getting better.
Related links
Buyer's guide: Voice over IP
An interactive database that lets you find the VoIP products that best meet your criteria, plus a chart of voicer over IP services.
Research: Voice over IP
Links to Network World articles and internet resources about voice over ip.
The Road to VoIP
Barriers include lack of applications and lack of converged network management tools.
Four ways to do VoIP
A do-it-yourselfer's guide to installing voice over IP on your enterprise network.
Extreme Networking
VoIP smokes at minus 100 degrees in Antarctica.
Call of the VoIP
Alaska eyes voice over IP to connect state offices scattered across the vast, frozen landscape.
VoIP mind meld
Find out how voice and data professionals will be working together to deploy voice over IP.
Voice specialists are skeptical about convergence
Convergence may be inevitable, but the Bell heads aren't holding their breath.
Getting Ready for IP Telephony
IP Telephony Gateways
An in-depth report.
Stay ahead of IP telephony hype
Kevin Tolly:
"In the race to understand IP telephony, it is critical that net professionals' knowledge remain ahead of vendor hype. The last thing we need is vendors telling us how to define and evaluate new technology." Network World, 3/6/00.
