The Business Environment
Agricultural Bank of China (ABC), China's largest commercial bank, and one of the Global 500 with revenues exceeding $250 Billion US, was looking to decrease its long distance phone expenses between its more than 50,000 domestic and international branches and affiliate offices. These locations were in all of China's major provinces, cities and counties. ABC's goal was to consolidate multiple regional call centers to one centralized call center through the Tenor VoIP network to realize substantial cost savings.

ABC Bank had many requirements to implementing VoIP. Of foremost concern was that VoIP had to have minimum impact on the existing IP network and voice system performance. They did not want to have to upgrade the existing IP network, reprogram their PBX, or purchase any PBX upgrades or interface cards. Most importantly, they wanted assurances that there would be no degradation to voice quality compared to wire-line calls.

The bank required that their voice network be compatible with international standards, i.e., H.323. The system also needed to be scalable for nationwide deployment, and growth, and interoperable with other vendors. ABC wanted to minimize the impact on their end-users so they did not have to change their dial plans or habits. Overall, they required high reliability, even under extreme and unusual circumstances.

The Solution
In April, 2002, Public Information Technology Company Limited (PiTech), Quintum's largest distributor in China, recommended Quintum's Tenor VoIP MultiPath Switches. Tenors had the leading edge technologies that ABC required, the diverse applications that ABC's environment necessitated, and the customer support that put ABC at ease.



The extensive Tenor product line accommodated all of ABC's needs. In the Province locations, they recommended the 32-port digital Tenor; In cities, they recommended the 16-port Tenor; and in the smaller counties and towns, they suggested the smaller Tenors.

Quintum's Tenor VoIP MultiPath Solution Was The Perfect Fit
ABC utilizes Quintum's patented Technology which provides failover to the PSTN when IP network is down. In fact, over 95% of the calls remain within the IP ABC network. The Tenors are programmed to relay any off-net long distance calls to the nearest branch office Tenor. The call is terminated as either local, or, is directed via the lowest toll rate to its destination. To date, ABC has reduced their long distance phone expenses to near zero, thereby reaping a substantial cost advantage. ABC also required that the Tenors provide security and prevent eavesdropping from the PSTN. Tenors met all their needs!

The first Tenor deployment of 106 systems in AnHui province with 100+ branch offices to ABC was completed in 30 days in May, 2002. Deployments in ShanXi and GanSu Provinces are to take place in July, 2002. ABC continues to roll out the Tenor solution in many more provinces.

Mr. FanFan Zheng, Division Manager of Information Technology of ABC, said, "We evaluated a lot of VoIP products. We like Tenor because of its ease of installation and because it doesn't require any changes to the existing voice or data networks. Many other VoIP solutions require additional equipment and reprogramming, so, using other solutions would have required changes which would have impacted our entire data network."

Mr. John Huang, CTO of PiTech, said, "We represented other VoIP vendors prior to signing on to sell Quintum's products. When selling other vendors' VoIP gateways, we found that we could not cover all the hidden costs in dealing with PBX vendors for the installation of additional PBX hardware and the reconfiguration of PBX. The Tenor VoIP solution integrates all the elements required to deploy a VoIP network, making it a risk-free implementation.

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