ISDN an PSTN

Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), which really came into being in the 1990s, is a set of communication standards that are used for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitised circuits of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The PSTN is a broad term for the world’s collection of interconnected, circuit-switched, voice-oriented, public telephone networks that (whether operated by national, regional, or local telephony operators) make up the infrastructure and services for public telecommunication.

Originally, ISDN offered the chance for digital services to operate through the same copper wire as the normal telephone system.  It became popular with businesses because it offered a faster Internet connection than dial-up. Fast-forwarding through different attempts to upgrade includes B-ISDN, transmitting data over fibre optic cable, and ISDN BRI (improving voice services), and the building of modern internet protocol (IP) based networks which can support both broadband and landline telephone services, and ISDN now seems to be only of real use for internet access in areas which haven’t yet been reached by broadband.

Also, as noted by Ofcom, the old PSTN is reaching the end of its life and is becoming increasingly difficult and costly to maintain, which is another reason why a switch-over to a better alternative is necessary.

What’s Happening With the Switch-Off?

BT Openreach have announced that starting from the end of this year and finishing in 2025, it will be “switching off the UK telephone network as we know it” by moving 15 million lines to a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) based replacement telephone service. In essence, this means that the Internet (broadband) will be used to carry telephone calls rather than traditional copper wires.  Since ISDN used the copper wire phone network, this change marks the ISDN switch-off.

The Alternatives

With the now inevitable switch-off of ISDN, the main alternatives for businesses are:

– SIP, which uses virtual, cloud-based phone lines rather than physical lines. This may be more suitable for businesses with an on-premise phone system. Many existing phone systems are already compatible with SIP.

– Hosted VoIP/ a Hosted IP phone system may suit businesses that don’t want to commit or retain an on-premise phone system.  As this option uses the business’s internet lines, it essentially means that the business rents a phone system.

What Are The Advantages?

Broadly speaking, the switch to VoIP should bring many advantages, such as:

– A greater breadth of capabilities.

– Cost savings and fewer system failures and outages.

– Scalability and portability (VoIP phone systems can go wherever the company goes).

– Greater communications mobility, flexibility, and increased productivity and collaboration. The importance of this has been particularly well-illustrated with the need to use remote, cloud-based communications and collaborative working platforms during the pandemic.

– Better security that’s continuously updated.

– Greater reliability.

– Improved customer experiences.

– Clearer calls, making it easier to keep existing numbers, and the choice to have broadband provided separately from the telephone service.

– Better identification and prevention of nuisance calls, thereby saving businesses time and money and potentially protecting against scammers.

What Are The Disadvantages?

Some disadvantages of switching to VoIP could be:

– Potential problems with latency.

– Vulnerability to phone systems going down if there’s a broadband outage or if the electricity supply is interrupted.

Possible Impact Downstream

Both Ofcom and Openreach have acknowledged that the area of concern, if preparations are not made sufficiently in advance of the switch-over, is downstream services such as security and fire alarms, telecare devices, retail payment terminals, and equipment for monitoring and controlling networks.  These rely on some attributes of the PSTN that may not be fully replicated in VoIP-based platforms, hence the importance of adequate preparation.  This will require service providers to test their equipment to see if it will continue to function over IP and then replace, upgrade, or reconfigure it as appropriate. These service provider businesses will also need to ensure that customers (from residential users to large commercial and public sector entities) are made aware of the issue well in advance so that necessary steps can be taken to maintain service(s).

Ofcom has stated that the government will work with the sectors that use these downstream services (e.g. health, energy, transport, and business) so that they are aware of the change and can prepare in time.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Although the move is industry-led, there is little doubt that analogue and old, expensive to maintain copper wire phone systems will not be able to provide the scope, flexibility, speed, capacity, and economies of the digital alternative as businesses now rely heavily on the Internet. The switch-over will be spread over four years. Provided that there is adequate information and support given by the regulator and BT Openreach, and coordination among communications service providers (CSPs), and adequate advice and help for downstream providers, then change should be manageable, and disruption should be minimised.

Particular attention clearly needs to be paid to those sectors and organisations (many of which are vital to UK business and infrastructure) that still rely on some attributes of the PSTN that may not yet look as though they can be fully replicated in VoIP-based platforms. With this already being acknowledged and working groups already planned to tackle the issue, a smooth transition looks more likely.

The pandemic has increased the digital transformation of many businesses and the advantages of the switch to VoIP and digital appear to be in-keeping with this, and look likely to benefit businesses going forward.

More information about the switch and what to do about the migration can be found here: https://www.bttcomms.com/phasing-out-and-switch-off-of-isdn/.  Also, Ofcom provides some useful information about its plans for the switch-over here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/137966/future-fixed-telephone-services.pdf.

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Why Are The Panasonic PBX Telephone Systems Discontinued?

In recent years Panasonic has worked hard to find a way to continue the business by making their organization and its relationships with partners as sustainable as possible. However, it has become apparent that this is not possible to continue given the current business environment based on the limited capability of factory resources as described below.

• A sharp decline of the market and rapid shift to cloud-based solutions.
• A technological mismatch between factory and future market needs and trends.
• Lagging behind their competitor’s R&D activities.
• A constant financial deficit due to the reasons above.
• Shift to new types of demand (Teams, Zoom, etc.) significantly accelerated by Covid-19 which makes the future of the Panasonic business untenable and unpredictable.

I Have A Discontinued Panasonic PBX Telephone System What Can I Do?

Step 1) Get in touch with Mear Technology

Step 2) Have one of our consultants discuss your business needs

Step 3) Accept quotation let us take care of the rest.

Mear Technology has a number of solutions to help find the right fir for your business. All we want is the opportunity to engage with you.

The pandemic is not a reason to not move forward. We have helped may business move during the Pandemic lets see what we can do for you and Your business.

When Are The Panasonic PBX Telephone Systems Discontinued?

In 2 years time, the Panasonic PBX telephone systems will be discontinued. Panasonic PBX telephone system parts will be discontinued and will become hard to source. Repairing old PBX and SIP telephone systems will be even harder once Panasonic discontinues these items. Users need to source alternative communications solutions once these items are no longer supported, before the year 2023.

What will happen to my Panasonic PBX Telephone Systems when it is Discontinued?

Nothing it will carry on working. If you are unfortunate enough to have a fault or a vulnerability is discovered there will be no support available and parts will become increasingly harder to source.

Will there be much disruption if I switch from my Panasonic Phone system to one of Mear Technology solutions?

No, Mear Technology will manage the process for you provide training and keep your disruption to a minimum.

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Technician view of live chat on Mobile.

For many businesses our website are brochures, a modern day shop window. Offering a gimps into what our business can do for them. Getting visitors to your site is one thing but how do you get them to move beyond just browsing your page to actually walking in and buying something.

Simple! Talk to them. Adding a live chat to your website is nothing new but for many businesses the technical restriction of implementing such a services as well as the financial obligations makes this a non starter.  With 3CX your business communications can flourish during normal business operations and under more strenuous times like remote working under covid-19.  3CX is a business phone-system that can be ran on-premises or in-cloud or provided as as service. 3CX unlike most phone-systems goes beyond just delivering VOICE. It enhances your business continuity and communication.

• Work at home – NO PROBLEM
• Conference rooms – NO PROBLEM
• Webinars – NO PROBLEM
• LIVE CHAT with free calls and webchat – NO PROBLEM
• STAFF meetings and collaboration – NO PROBLEM

With no extra charge you can add a very powerful live chat to ANY website. Take a enquiry from a website visitor over the option to move beyond live chatting to a in person chat via the web browser or even convert to a video call.

To find out more why not visit our website for a free chat. Try our live chat and speak to one of our helpful staff.

 Useful links

• 3CX Live Chat information

#3cx #webmeeting #livechat #VOIP #Phonesystem #website

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What risks are your business subjective to

• Individual staff quarantined.  An interview with Matt Hancock (See here). Advised the government have the power to force individuals in to compulsory isolation to  help control the spreading of this virus.
• Key personal being off ill.
• Large quantities of staff being to ill to work.
• Staff too scared to come into work.
• Sick family members requiring staff to take time off?
• Childcare issues. An outbreak at a school could result in local authorities closing schools. Staff with children could have no child care.
•  Those who do get into the office could contaminate other staff.
• Suppliers being unable to function due to staffing issues.
• Delays, due to disruption in the supply train, quarantined freight, quarantined countries causing lengthy diversions to couriers and haulage.
• Disruption of public transport, preventing staff getting to work.
• Mandatory isolation. Matt Hancock also eluded that the UK government would consider any necessary action to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.
  Matt Hancock on isolating cities: “We don’t take anything off the table at this stage” (Source BBC)

How can business protect itself,

• If it is essential staff come in to work. Then ensure that staff
  • Wash hands frequently
  • Catch coughs and sneezes in a disposable tissue.
  • Throw away used tissues and then wash hands.
  • Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
  • Avoid close contact with unwell people.
• Encourage staff to work from home.
  • Use a VOIP phone system and ensure that staff have the training and facilities to use their extension from home.
  • Ensure that staff have a laptop or can securely work from their home computer without breaching GDPR.
  • Ensure staff have access to all the systems they need from home.
  • Ensure those staff who don’t normally work from home have the capability to work from home.
  • Use a staff collaboration tool such as  Teams or Slack.
  • Cancel/postpone upcoming projects.
• Provide disinfectant/Hand Sanitisers

How can Mear Technology help.

Mear Technology provide a range of services to help you staff work remotely. 3CX VOIP system allows your staff to work remotely using their office phone, Office 365 and Sharepoint setup correctly can provide your staff with great collaboration tools and the flexibility to work wherever they have an internet connection. For those with more traditional infrastructures Mear Technology can deliver VPN connection to remote staff.

But every business is different we would like the opportunity to  discuss your businesses individual needs. Call us on 01506 668 613 lets see how we can help.

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Improved server side CRM integration

Server side CRM integration makes the PBX admin’s life so much easier. How? You no longer have to integrate each extension from the 3CX client but can easily do so from within the management console.

• Added support for:
  • AmoCRM
  • ExactOnline
  • ZohoV2
  • EveryoneAPI
  • Vtiger
• Improvements to the integrations with Salesforce, Freshdesk & Connectwise
• Ability to upload and test custom CRM integration configurations from the console.
• Updated the document on how to create CRM integration. Learn how to create your own in just a few hours by watching the video and reading the guide!

New Trunk / DID report

A new type of report has been added, the trunk/DID report which allows you to see the number of calls to a trunk and to DIDs associated with it. A new filter has also been added to all call reports, which allows you to filter out calls which are less than X amount of seconds.

Multiple queue reports

Another feature added to Update 5 is the ability to generate reports on multiple queues and merge all the data into one report. See how.

Call recording features

With Update 5, the administrator has more control over call recording:

• Enforce call recording – control whether the user is able to stop/pause recordings or not.
• Ability to record external calls only (i.e. avoid internal calls being recorded).
• Save recordings in ADPCM format, which saves disk space.

Watch the video to see how these settings can be configured.

Emergency dialing (911)

V15.5 already supported emergency dialing, with this update we have made the following improvements:

• Configure per group – or range of extensions – which emergency number they should use in the outbound rule. This greatly simplifies configuration.
• Emergency calls no longer go against the license limit – they can always be made (providing your SIP trunk has the capacity).

Setting this up is easy. Watch the video.

Forgot password

With so many passwords to remember, it’s common for PBX administrators to forget their password to the management console. We have added a forgotten password feature which allows a password to be sent to the administrator’s email address.

Replace license key

You’ve tried out the free license key and have decided to upgrade to a commercial one. Prior to Update 5, you would have to reinstall the PBX if the key was not upgraded. Now you can simply replace the current key with the purchased key and retain all user settings. Watch the video.

Blacklisting improvements

For security purposes 3CX blacklists IP addresses that are repeatedly entering wrong user/password combinations. Before update 5, it was not easy to figure out which device or who was the culprit. We’ve added better notifications which allow the administrator to quickly find the guilty party and block the IP or fix the issue.

Other improvements

• Administrators can now switch off chat for all users system-wide
• Backup to Google Drive – we have updated to the latest Google API (1.32) which improves performance and reliability
• Updated to .NET Core to 2.0.7 – this fixes issues with processors that do not support AVX extensions like Intel NUC, Celeron processors and anything not in this list
• Improved Email Notifications to admins to be clearer and explain what to do.
• Increased number of available internal parking slots to 250
• Default configuration now allows up to 1024 calls
• Fixed an issue in the reporting of the attended transfer duration
• Improved voice mail delivery
• Improved “P-Asserted-Identity” support
• TLS 1.2 support – 3CX is fully PCI compliant with TLS 1.2 support. Note that provisioning of some older legacy devices and clients will fail. It is therefore possible to revert to TLS 1.0
• Backup to FTP now supports EPSV
• Yealink T4X template can now provision more than one EXP40 sidecar
• Improved PUSH functionality (more improvements to follow in update 6)

Watch the video to see What’s new in Update 5.

For a full list of changes see the change log.

Download links

Go to the updates section on the dashboard of the management console where you will see a release update 15.5 SP5. Click on the update and SP5 will be installed. If you want to download a new installation you can download the Linux version or the Windows version.

• Windows: https://downloads.3cx.com/downloads/3CXPhoneSystem155.exe
• Linux: Download 3CX ISO from here and read this guide.

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What Kind of Assistance?

The idea is that the digital assistant can use its AI to pick up on what is being said in a Skype chat and then help to provide relevant information on that subject. This could be anything from (depending on the content of the chat) relevant restaurant option suggestions, movie reviews, and suggestions of smart replies and responses. According to Microsoft, Cortana will enable users to respond to messages in Skype without needing to type.

Your Digital Secretary

The addition of Cortana to Skype means that it will also be able to pick up on conversations about scheduling events, and will then be able to set up a reminder that can be sent to all of your devices. This will see Cortana acting like a kind of virtual secretary, able to ‘listen’ to and take note of all of your plans. This could have obvious benefits in making sure you don’t miss important appointments / events, and that you are able to improve business planning and organisation.

Cortana As Your Contact

The Cortana / Skype bundle will also mean that the digital assistant can be added as a contact in Skype. This means that you will be able to chat with it as you would other contacts, and use it to answer questions, suggest restaurants, check flights, give the weather outlook, and other information.

Setting It Up

Users will be able to easily set up Cortana in Skype on mobile devices by tapping Cortana on their chat screen, and by agreeing to allow Cortana to use the user’s location and IM conversations in Skype.

The Rollout

According to the Microsoft blog, Cortana in Skype will be ‘gradually’ rolled out, starting from 9th October, to Microsoft’s Android and iOS customers in the United States first.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This alliance of Cortana with Skype is another important competitive step in the battle for leadership in the voice-controlled / ‘Voice First’ market and will help Microsoft to achieve its aim of making Cortana available for its customers everywhere and across any device.

In September, Microsoft also announced that it was working in partnership with Amazon in a bid to put a lot of pressure on competitors, gain distribution and overlap, and to enable their respective AI digital assistants to work together in a move to create an open way to communicate and interconnect with AI platforms.

As consumers, figures show that over a one-third of us (in the US and the UK) use digital assistants weekly (the equivalent to Netflix’s adoption level). This is a trend that is set to continue. For example, Ovum forecasts the native digital assistant installed base to grow from 3.6 billion (from last year) to 7.5 billion active devices by 2021. As long as digital assistants are able to add and provide real value, and tangible benefits, more people will be willing to try them, and to integrate them willingly into their business operations e.g. Skype calls. The market is still in the early stages though, and with Google currently predicted to dominate, we are likely to see many more announcements for many more applications and integrations of digital assistants into devices and platforms in the near future.

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Additionally, this new update includes major improvements to the audio quality of your remote extensions for both Windows and Raspberry Pi Devices and adds multi-threading to the RPi version allowing you to handle more simultaneous calls and extensions with BLF keys. 3CX SBC for Raspberry was tested to support 20 extensions behind the SBC and each extension was configured with 10 BLF Keys.  (Assuming SBC->PBX link has proper network conditions).

This release also includes the following:

• Support of Debian 8 x64 OS
• Audio Quality improvement
• Added multi threading feature (RP2 and RP3 models only)
• RTP via UDP to eliminate jitter
• Improved encryption mechanism and fixed some issues related to this
• When public IP of SBC changes, the SBC is automatically updated
• Fixed automatic re-connection bug
• RTP Voice threads are given top priority (highest)
• Improved keep alive messages
• Fixed issue causing a spam of UDP traffic

Supported Raspberry Pi Devices:

• Raspberry Pi 1 Model B, B+
• Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B

Differences between V14 and V15 SBC

• Audio Quality improvement
• 4x more extensions for Raspberry (5->20)
• Support of Debian OS
• More Security
• Automatic re-connection
• Stability

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