The Situation
In response to changing market demands and available resources, companies now maintain larger numbers of comparatively regional offices. In many cases, these offices are no more than a telecommuting employee's spare bedroom. These small satellite offices are convenient for employees, inexpensive to maintain, and help companies stay closer to their valued customers. Unfortunately, they also tend to limit the sophistication of the telecom capabilities available to employees in such offices. Without a PBX at their worksite, employees are left without access to corporate voice mail, private dial plans, the IVR-based corporate directory, call transfer, auto attendant and other services that help keep staff at larger offices productive and well-connected.

Historically, companies have faced three choices in addressing this issue: 1) allow remote offices and teleworkers to fend for themselves without corporate PBX services; 2) shoulder the tremendous expense of providing a PBX or PBX-like device at the remote office; or 3) allow remote staff to connect to the PBX over the public switched telephone network. This last alternative can be particularly costly, since it means that every call to and from the remote office must pass over the PSTN – typically during peak business hours when rates are most expensive.

VoIP technology affords such companies a tremendous opportunity to extend the power of their PBXs to remote offices and teleworkers without having to foot the bill for incessant use of the PSTN day in and day out. Instead of using the PSTN, companies can simply allow remote phones to connect to the PBX via local IP connections, which are typically available for an extremely low, flat monthly rate. Usually, this low-cost IP connectivity is already in place, since remote workers need access to both corporate IT services and the Internet.

Quintum's Tenor: Non-Intrusive Solution That Assures Survivability of Calls
PBX extension allows remote offices and teleworkers to leverage the capabilities of the corporate PBX, such as voice mail, private dial plans, access to the corporate directory, call transfer and auto attendant, regardless of their location. But, the greatest fear of routing phone calls through the IP is survivability of those calls and the availability of the entire phone network in the event that the IP fails.

Quintum Technologies' patented Tenor switching solution uniquely enables companies to extend their PBX capabilities to remote offices and teleworkers via VoIP without compromising voice quality, disrupting existing infrastructure, or making the administration of communications infrastructure unacceptably complex. Calls to and from the outside world can easily be routed through the corporate PBX – eliminating PSTN charges while allowing remote employees to use PBX functions just as if they were working in the main office.

With Quintum's Tenor solution, remote offices and teleworkers can be easily and inexpensively connected to corporate PBXs for full-function phone services.

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