CallingPlaces VoIP is a revolutionary telephony service, suitable for businesses and residential users. By delivering phone calls over an Internet connection but behaving like a traditional telephone service, it makes expensive PBXs and traditional PSTN/ISDN phone lines redundant. The service offers free on-net calls and reduced call rates to national, international and mobile destinations.

Our infrastructure is based on Cisco Powered Technology that offers the ability to target a broad range of customers from large enterprises down to small and medium-sized businesses. Its a flexible and scalable integrated service over any access method through a single connection and network, using a single protocol.

CallingPlaces’s VoIP call size is about 40K (bandwidth) per call. Our service is compatible with ADSL, SDSL and lease lines. In ADSL scenarios due to the limitation on ADSL upstream (256K), we recommend the customer to plan no more than 5 simultaneous calls on one single broadband connection.

In most business scenarios, and in particular where data traffic flow is high, we highly recommend the use of a dedicated broadband/leased line connection for the voice service. Customers may mistaken this as additional expenses, but consider the saving from the number of traditional PSTN/ISDN phone lines they can abandon, in most cases the customers are paying less for the service.

CallingPlaces service routes your incoming and outgoing voice calls right alongside the data being sent to or from your computer. Thus, you can make and receive calls while you use your computer to access the Internet.

CallingPlaces uses advanced audio compression techniques to minimize the data traffic caused by voice calls and maximize the bandwidth available for your other Internet traffic. However when purchase your DSL/leased line please always ensure you calculate enough bandwidth for both of your data and voice usage. Again, the best solution will be using dedicated internet connect for voice so it does not share bandwidth of data traffic.

1. Softphone – this is a web based phone that you can access with a PC and Internet connection. Although CallingPlaces provides a free softphone which can be download from User Portal (https://www.voipuserportal.co.uk), your can use any other softphone they want provided to configure it yourself (for configuration please see our configuration document). Please note we do not recommend customers to use Softphone as their permanent method of making/receiving calls, as many factors that affect the call quality is out of our control (e.g. firewall, PC sound card quality, headset quality…etc.).

2. IP Phones – There are many IP phone handsets available on the market price range from £50 to £250 per handset. You can use any SIP based IP phones. However any low quality phone will degrade the quality of our call service.

3. ATA (Analogue Telephone Adaptor) + Standard analogue phone – if you already have a standard analogue telephone and you do not want to upgrade to an IP phone, you can use ATA to route your calls over Internet. ATA is a device that connects your analogue phone with your router. Again we have a list of recommended ATAs including Cisco, Linksys and Sipura that you can choose from.

Existing analogue telephones handsets can be connected to the service using an ATA (Analogue Telephone Adaptor). Simply by plugging your telephone and broadband line into the adaptor.

It depends. If you are using the softphone, your computer must be running in order to receive calls. If your computer is not on or you are unavailable, the call will be directed to your Voicemail. If you are using a device that works without a computer such as an IP phone or an ATA, calls will be directed to that device which means you don’t need to have your PC switched on.

Yes as long as your wireless internet connection is reliable and has enough bandwidth for the voice traffic.

Your CallingPlaces VoIP account provides you with complete portability. You can access this service from anywhere in the world using CallingPlaces’s softphone or a phone adapter. To access the softphone, simply log into our user portal and press the phone icon. The softphone automatically installs (please note the firewall issue, sound card quality, and speaker quality will still remain issues for using this service). To use a phone adapter, just plug it into any high-speed Internet connection and place calls.

However our service is only built to comply with UK VoIP regulations (e.g. support 999 emergency service), therefore please bear in mind that our VoIP service cannot be the replacement of your local voice service provider in foreign countries.

No, you do not need a static IP address. Our service is designed to work in a dynamic address (DHCP) environment, such as that available with most home gateway routers.

The Centrex number is the main telephone number of your VoIP account that generated when you signup and is also the identity of your VoIP account. Please note this Centrex Number is also your ID/Username/User ID when you need to configure any devices. Your Centrex Number always remains the same even if you have multiple numbers on your account, or you allocate your Centrex Number for other service (e.g. conferencing, fax…etc.)

Yes. With CallingPlaces VoIP you can call any phone number that you can call via a traditional phone line. If the number you call to is an CallingPlaces VoIP telephone number then the call is free of charge; calls to other standard phone lines are charged on a per minute basis.

No. You may cancel your service at any time by giving 30 days cancellation notice.

No, you cannot receive collect calls (reverse charges) using CallingPlaces VoIP.

No, your CallingPlaces telephone number(s) will not be listed in a phone book.

No. All telephony hardware including high-speed modems (DLS or cable), computers and phone adapters require electricity to operate.

If you have a router with firewall installed to connect to the Internet or if you are using the service in a corporate environment, CallingPlaces provides a NAT traversal feature that allows you to use the softphone in such environments.

Yes it is possible. However please bear in mind that the migration can take about 8-10 weeks time to complete and there is no guaranteed lead time. Therefore you must make sure you are happy about this time scale before you place the order.

Yes. But this is a custom solution that we work on a case by case basis. You need to install an IP gateway on site to convert your calls over internet. A questionnaire needs to be completed by you before we can produce any quotation. A copy of questionnaire can be obtained from CallingPlaces.

When you initiate a call back on your account, you will be charged both legs of the call charges. For example, you initiate a call back to your home telephone number then request it to be connected to USA, you will be charge the call from UK to your home telephone number, AND the call from UK to USA. Both legs of the call will be charged at your standard VoIP call rate.

Yes. All calls generated from your VoIP account will be charged at your standard VoIP call rate.

Yes. Standard VoIP call charges apply to this call.

Yes.

Not at the moment. This is under development and it should be available soon.

We do not support the T38 protocol on application level, but our gateways are able to process and pass through that protocol if any of your customers will send the faxes over that. But please note we do not recommend your customer to do so. Our fax to email service is only for receiving faxes, not sending them.

IAX is not supported in our system. We support SIP end-to-end.

Our service can work with Asterisk but we do not support this implementation as we have found many potential issues can be raised from this.

G.711, G.729, G723 and G.726.

You can manage all your VoIP settings and view your call history on the VoIP Control Panel.