Tenor®-Based Solution Provides ROI in Under 8 Months

The Business Environment

Boules Trading is an established UK specialist textile business that designs and supplies children’s clothing to High Street retailers’ own brands such as BHS, John Lewis, Laura Ashley, Mothercare and Tesco. Design offices are based in London. Manufacturing is controlled by its office in New Delhi.

Inter-office international telephone charges were becoming a significant overhead. The company wanted to drive out costs from the supply chain in order to remain price competitive as a ‘lean supplier’ for its customers. Geoffrey Bourne, the owner of Boules Trading, and an engineer by profession, was interested in the possibility of using VoIP technology. Solutions were being provided by suppliers to the corporate market working with substantial leased line data links that were already installed. His project could not justify the high cost of consultants, or the cost of their recommended solutions.

The Technical Challenge

A business colleague suggested Bourne look into a specific VoIP gateway, the Quintum Tenor MultiPath Switch which is distributed by the Techland Group, a High Wycombe-based supplier of voice and data communications products. Bourne believed it might be possible to use the two Tenors over a simple ADSL Internet link. Using their own data compression software, these units were capable of transmitting all London to New Delhi phone calls over the Internet (IP) link for a fixed cost rather than normal telephony charges.

Bourne convinced Techland to let himi trial two Tenors for a few weeks on his UK ADSL and Indian DSL link, due to his concerns over IP connectivity and its effect on voice quality. In the summer of 2002, Techland installed an 8-port analog Tenor in London and a 4-port analog Tenor in New Delhi.

Tenors were set up with telephone sets connected directly into each one. On successful completion of the trials the UK Tenor was upgraded to a digital D800 and installed in its prescribed position, between the Alchemy digital PBX (now Avaya) and the PSTN. This extended the VoIP benefit to all UK staff via the PBX.

To read more and register for a free subscription to Tenor Notes, click link below.

Click link below to read more and register for a free subscription to Tenor Notes, Quintum's bi-monthly newsletter - the best way to stay current with Quintum's latest announcements.