ne asia feb 2006

NE Asia FEB 2006 Issue

Features

Voice Box Enables VoIP Calls without PC

Traditionally, voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) technology has only been used by computer enthusiasts or large corporations that can afford to invest in the technology. However engin VoIP, from engin Ltd of Australia, has been designed to bring this same technology directly to consumer households. In its simplest form, engin allows any broadband user to make and receive calls using their existing phone at a very low price.

Ilkka Tales, CEO, said that engin is the first broadband telephony service to be broadly available to Australian consumers and businesses. The service has been designed to be simple to use and comes with a wide range of included features allowing the user to actively control their own calls. engin offers six products in the engin suite: engin Voice Box series 1&2, engin X-Pro, engin X-Lite, engin 1-way and engin switchboard, all of which provide affordable telecommunication alternatives to Australian consumers and small businesses.

engin Voice Box allows people to make and receive calls from any landline or mobile phone over their broadband Internet connection using VoIP technology. Tales said that people can make savings of up to 40% on their existing phone bills. engin also recently launched its updated engin Voice Box Series 2 with new features enabling consumers to slash mobile phone bills as well as traditional fixed line calls.

Voice Box plugs directly into the user's local area network rather than their PC. The advantage of using VoIP adaptors is that there is no need to be concerned about a computer crashing during an important call.

Voice Box Series 2
The second version of Voice Box, which was released recently, addresses user concerns during an emergency and gives users the option of connecting their PSTN line to the box. So if power or Internet access is cut, when the user picks up their phone they hear a PSTN dial tone instead.

Connect any touch-tone, corded or cordless phone to the Voice Box 2 and it will convert an analog phone signal to digital so that it can be sent over the user's broadband Internet connection. This allows them to make and receive phone calls to any phone number worldwide.

The Voice Box 2 is also designed to be simple to use and has many features, including:

* Anywhere connect - if a user is away from the home or office but still wants to take advantage of their engin phone call system, they call their own phone number and are connected to their Voice Box 2 from that remote location. They are then able to make cheap phone calls to anywhere in the world. If a user rings overseas on a mobile phone, the call is free to their home number. They would just pay the engin charges to terminate the call for them overseas, thereby reducing mobile phone bill call costs as well as fixed line costs.

* Switchback - this allows the Voice Box 2 to automatically divert outgoing calls back to a customer's existing phone service in the event of a power or connection outage.

* Landline ring through - this allows calls that are made to a user's existing landline phone number to ring through on the phone connected to their Voice Box 2. It allows the user to have two incoming phone numbers on the handset.

Trend towards VoIP
According to Tales, within Australia 70% of broadband users access the Internet via ADSL. "However engin will work equally well over future forms of ADSL, cable, satellite, WiFi and broadband-over-powerlines (BPL) networks," he said. "In fact we were the first company to demonstrate VoIP calls over BPL within Australia.

"We currently lead the market in Australia in terms of market share and once we reach profitability which will happen in the next six months, we will start looking at expansion overseas - firstly through a partnership within Asia. engin is ideal in countries and regions where there are high levels of broadband penetration, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Taiwan and Japan."

Tales added that proof of the strength of this trend towards VoIP in the consumer marketplace is the fact that British Telecom has now announced that it will switch off the old BT phone system by the year 2010 - and replace it with IP telephony.

by Neil Munro

(February 2006 Issue, Nikkei Electronics Asia)