What is Bulk Voice Call ?

Bulk Voice Calling is broadcasting of pre-recorded voice message to many telephone numbers simultaneously or sequentially. It is voice or IVR version of SMS ( Short Message Service) broadcasting which is now a days widely used for various purposes. Bulk voice calling is also known as call blast, voice broadcasting, Automated Voice Campaigns, Voice SMS etc.

Bulk Voice Calling is picking up

Bulk voice broadcasting is normally a hosted IVR solution or part of any IVR system.

How does it work ?

Bulk Voice calling is essentially an outbound IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System with one specific function, that is to dial telephone numbers from database or a list, and play a pre-defined programmed recorded audio file and play it when the called party picks the call. It also has to keep record of all success calls ( outbound calls which were picked by the called party and heard the recorded voice message) or abandoned calls which were not picked by the called party.

It is easy to develop a bulk voice calling system. One can use either modem or analog CTI cards or digital CTI boards. The CTI board must be capable of CPA ( Call Progress Analysis) to detect call pick up, detect answering machine, voice mail or human.

To provide professional bulk voice service, one needs to have lot of telecm infrastructure :-

1. In order to make simultaneous calls, many PRI/E1 lines are required. Correspondingly, one will need digital CTI boards.

2. One must have web-based control panel to allow users access the reports, trigger bulk message etc. API ( Application Programming Interface) is also desirable to give white label solutions.

3. Finally, intelligent outbound IVR software.

Few essential points one should look for in a Bulk Voice Call providers:-

1. How many simultaneous calls possible at one point of time.

2. Since audio needs to be played real time, so duration of the recorded audio file is the duration of each calls. So, one should know how one call is counted, in 30 seconds pulse of 60 seconds pulse.

3. Online and live reporting of calls and reason for any call failure.

4. Refund policy for failed outbound calls, call attended by answering machine, voice mail etc.

5. Caller ID for making outbound call whether it is dynamic or fixed caller id.

Usage of Bulk Voice Calling

Now a days, bulk voice calling or call bast is being used in many ways.

1. Alert System/Reminder system
2. Pill remainder System
3. Electioneering
4. Automatic registration welcome and verification of phone number
5. Payment remainder
6. Promotion and advertising
7. Appointment remainder

and many more!

Bulk Voice calling can be used just like SMS is being used! Using Bulk voice calling has few advantages over SMS blasting like live monitoring, delivery report and instant monitoring!

Recently, I have come across some interesting outbound IVR ( Interactive Voice Response System) implementation. While it may not be the best outbound IVR arrangement, but it sure is the cheapest and most reliable in the circumstances in India. Just to mention, majority of the outbound IVR applications dial out a number, plays a recorded message and disconnect. It does not capture any response from the called party.

OUTBOUND IVR Implementation in India

How is this outbound IVR implemented ?

It uses a EPABX ( Electronic Private Automatic Branch Exchange ) which has minimum one PRI card in it as well as few FXO/CO lines. Then it uses normal SIM ( Subscriber Identity Module) of all available GSM operators available in India ( GSM Cards available on many EPABX models in India). There are also few equipment called “E1 PRI ISDN GSM Gateway” which allows connecting multiple SIMs at one end and E1/PRI link at the other.

Apart from this, it uses normal CTI board with E1/PRI connectivity and one smart outbound IVR with database connectivity.

Now, the role of the smart outbound IVR is :

1. The outbound IVR is designed such that it is able to detect the operator once it picks the phone number from database to make an outbound call.

2. Once it detects the operator, it seizes a channel from CTI board which corresponds to the SIM of the same operator in the “E1 PRI ISDN GSM Gateway”. So, it uses the same operator SIM to make the outbound call. If it is landline number, it uses the FXO/CO line to make outbound call!

So, at the end, it is just a very smart ‘least cost routing’ feature available in many EPABX models!

How does t benefit ?

In India, operators have various tariff plans where one can make unlimited calls anywhere across the country in its same network. For example, an Airtel Mobile subscriber can make unlimited number of calls to any other Airtel number all across India. If it is not unlimited, then it is very big number for a fixed cost.

Whereas, if one uses normal PRI or E1 links from telecom operators, they do not have this kind of tariff for users. So, making he outgoing calls from SIMs than PRI lines are much cheaper than making outbound calls from PRI lines.

Big call centers or hosted IVR providers may subscribe to PRI lines from all telecom operators, but the the hardware and software cost will also be enormous, apart from maintenance problems. So, it is observed that, many people are using this kind of arrangement for making outbound Bulk voice calls.

While talking to some telecom operators, they have no idea about this practice. Some people had told me about demerits of using SIM to make calls like network congestion, signal problems etc!

This is quite interesting implementation of outbound IVR in India!

I keep getting feedback/inquiries from various people asking about prices of CT(Computer Telephony) boards in India. Many people seem to quite puzzled to learn huge price ranges for similar boards with similar basic functionality. For example, depending on the manufacturer, one entry level model of one PRI ( E1) with 30 channels may cost anywhere between Rs. 10,000/- to Rs. 180,000/-.

Here is a price comparison :

CTI Board Street Prices in India

Though, I am unable to list prices of some other vendors here as well as CT boards with various capacities/configurations, but I hope the above list would be quite indicative. Dialogic with highest price tags still has the largest market share in a price sensitive market in India.

So, why is the price between the lowest and the highest CT Board is almost 10 times ? After all, a CT board is not ‘end product’ itself and it requires IVR applications or voice applications to provide the final solution.

Previously Chinese manufactured products were thought to be cheaper than products manufactured in other countries. But, Sangoma is Canada based company. Most probably, the basic difference between Sangoma and other boards is, Sangoma boards use processing power of HOST computer while other boards have on-board DSP ( Digital Signal Processors) to process various telecom protocol related functions. Many might argue that, with increasing MIPS in PCs, one should really not bother much about HOST PC processing for the CT boards too.

When one compares price of Dialogic boards with other cheaper cousins, one may wonder how can Dialogic survive in any price sensitive market ? I think here are the reasons :-

1. Dialogic has a huge developer base all around the world. After all, it is the oldest and biggest CTI company after merging with all its nearest rivals. It has very well documented APIs for all computer operating systems and lot of documentations available in internet for beginners.

2. Many RAD tools like VBVoice, OmniVox3D, Osidial etc. supports only Dialogic boards.

3. Most probably, Dialogic has the best support in CTI industry at present. They have very good support for both installation as well as developers.

The other cheaper alternatives like Sangoma, Digium etc. uses open source platform like Asterisk which has large developer community on net and growing. But, with almost 90% PCs in the world running on Windows Operating System, support of Windows is definitely a plus and with many RAD tools providers are surely competing well with Asterisk. For example, VBVoice is a toolkit which uses .NET! Now there must be millions of .NET developers in the world and when they find out VBVoice, they all become IVR developers overnight ( almost) and loyal fan of Dialogic boards as well.

Many people who are interested in IVR system, back out once they learn about the high price of CTI boards along with IVR software. The big price differences among similar boards confuse them more.

I have also attended mails from many engineering students interested in learning/doing college projects in CTI field and whenever I tell them price of 4 port Dialogic board, they always get discouraged. And when they ask for alternatives, I explain them about Asterisk based on Linux, they again get discouraged. Not many of them want to install Linux on their PCs. Almost everyone is very happy with their Windows machines.

So, I feel, Donjin and Synway are uniquely placed with their competitive pricing, good C++ Windows Based API. They have reasonably good support for developers.

CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) Boards, Also known as CT Boards (Computer Telephony boards), is the interface between various IVR software running on the computer and the telephone network. It is normally a PC add-on boards which is installed inside PC/Server Chassis and which is connected to telecom network physically with through E1 or Analog FXO.

With introduction of VoIP communications, CTI is no longer just hardware based, it can also be software and using existing network interface cards in the server of PC. For example, Dialogic HMP 3.0 is software CTI like solution for VOIP or SIP phones. With 3G being introduced, we might see end of CTI boards!

Indian CTI market is getting crowded with new vendors now a days. Gone are the days when CTI boards mean Dialogic. We now have almost all vendors opening shop in India from all over the globe. Many Chinese companies have opened office in India and selling low cost CTI boards in price sensitive market like India.

Here are few new players which have become quite active lately in Indian market:-

1. Sangoma is a Canada based company which has 2 port analog USB based cards to 8 E1 PRI boards. They have also recently launched SS7 boards. They support Asterisk as well as has own API for developing voice applications. Alliance Infotech is their Indian distributor along with ForeMost Systems. All computations are done on the Host PC making their board sizes small. But it also increases CPU usage of the Host PC. Another disadvantage is, they do not provide Echo Cancellation and CPA ( Call Progress Analysis) as a default feature.

2. Synway is Chinese company which has large range of products beginning with 2 port analog USB boards to high density server based media gateways with 64 E1 connectivity! They have low cost, high performance and feature rich boards. They claim, they are now number one for voice logging products in India. They have products supporting both Asterisk as well as own API for developing IVR applications.

3. Donjin is another Chinese company which has analog CTI boards as well as high density KeyGoe Series of products which has 48 E1 connectivity per system! They support Dialogic APIs for their voice boards upto 8E1 which is a major advantage for them as there are many Dialogic based voice application developer in India. Their boards are feature rich as well as much cheaper than Dialogic.

4. Aculab is UK based company and they sell both CTI hardware as well as voice applications. They are not very cheap, but their boards are most suitable for voice portal applications. Recently, India has witnessed rapid growth of voice based value added service (VAS), and Aculab has potential to grow here. ForeMost Systems is their Indian distributor based in Mumbai.

5. OpenVox is another Chinese CTI board manufacturer which are Asterisk based. They have both analog and Digital voice boards. They are also very competitive. ForeMost Systems is their Indian distributor based in Mumbai.

6. AudioCodes is Israel based company which provides TDM and IP based telephony servers for value added services.

Apart from these foreign companies, there are few home grown CTI board manufacturer who provide complete solutions from CTI boards to Voice Applications. Few Indian companies who provide CTI boards are:

1. ExtendIVR : ExtendIVR is majorly known for their IVR platform ExtendIVR, but they also have CTI boards.

2. OZONTEL : Ozontel Systems, based out of Hyderabad has come out with a dual port E1 PRI CARD. It was integrated with Asterisk and comes atleast at half the price of cards which are being imported. Its manufactured within India and hence support is available for both s/w and h/w out of India.

3. Punjab Communications Limited is one of the oldest IVR companies in India which has their own CTI boards.

Though Dialogic is still the biggest CTI vendor in India, but with these new CTI companies, we can expect dominance of Dialogic will reduce and IVR users will have more choice. As per Dialogic, they will soon come out with voice products specific to India which will be aggressively priced keeping mind of these competitions.

Donjin DN300 is equivalent of Dialogic D300-JCT board. It has one E1 connection ( RJ48 ) and 30 voice resources. Recently, I had an opportunity to test a DN300 board with our EPABX of Coral make DX2000. We used our Predictive Auto Dialer Application, written for Dialogic Digital CTI boards.

Donjin DN300 Board

1. Much like its Dialogic counterpart, it has one E1 with RJ48 connectivity for 30 voice resources and built in signaling protocols.
2. It supports ISDN PRI ( widely used now a days), R2MF. It also supports SS7 ( MTP, TUP, ISUP, SCCP) good enough for any voice portal or intelligent IVR applications.
3. It can work with any other voice boards. For example, it can work with Dialogic boards installed in the same machine. It can be very advantageous for upgrading a system with existing Dialogic boards with new Donjin boards.
4. It is quite cheaper than Dialogic equivalent board. Its market price is around Rs. 120,000/- only and if some one buys from www.ivrsworld.com, he will get another 5% discount. You may buy Donjin DN300 Board from here.

We were provided one DN300 board by Donjin India distributor Sunshine Telesoft (P) Limited, Mumbai. We used Coral DX2000 EPABX with E1 ISDN PRI (EURO) protocol.

We were also informed that it we just need to recompile our Dialogic C++ application using Library files of Donjin NADK SDK. So, first we tried to recompile our Dialogic Application! And wow, we got almost 2500 errors! On investigation, we found out that Donjin NADK does not have any C++ header files for its Library files (They use Dialogic header files only)! Also it uses different names for its Library files than Dialogic ones! Technical support team from Sunshine Telesoft has been quick enough to point me out my mistakes and correct them. And next instance, our code for Predictive Auto dialer Application were rebuilt successfully for Donjin board! It took hardly one day!

Next task was to integrate Donjin DN300 board with DX2000 EPABX! It took pretty long time but it was not fault of Donjin DN300 board, but a fault from EPABX. Finally after many days ( almost 40 days), EPABX guys could find a small programming error due to which calls were getting disconnected! Finally they agreed with our ISDN trace ( Donjin has very powerful and easy to use ISDN trace logger, unlike difficult to use Dialogic tools). Changing parameters like CRC status, Trunk mode/Network Mode in Donjin DN300 boards are quite easy compared to that of Dialogic Boards! Once Donjin DN300 with successfully integrated with DX200 EPABX, we run our application for 48 hours.

It made total 600 outgoing calls. Purposefully we made 10 destination numbers busy, 10 destination numbers which did not exist, 10 destination numbers with CRBT(Caller Ringback Tone), 10 numbers on call waiting. Donjin DN300 board could give all status 100% accurately! So we were very happy with Donjin DN300 performance.

Many people may be skeptical about quality of Donjin boards for it is being priced low or it is a Chinese product, but I did not find any problem when it worked for 48 hours. According to me, if it works for 48 hours, it could work for 48 days together. Very soon, we hope to deploy one predictive Auto Dialer System with Donjin DN300 board and would like to update this post with my experience with it.

Contact address for Donjin Boards, in India :-

Manager (Sales)
Website:www.sunshinetelesoft.com
Sunshine Telesoft (P) limited
Suite # 513, Laxmi Mall, New Link Road, Andheri (W), Mumbai, India – 400053.
Tel: +91 22 40 365 365.
Fax: +91 22 40 365 300.

Without doubt, interactive voice response (IVR) has become the ubiquitous technology in telecommunications applications. IVR solutions have a myriad of uses that are mostly taken for granted, however, the essence of an IVR system is its ability to offer ‘self-service’ for the user, thus it can help to reduce cost and improve the customer experience.

Since introducing the world’s first ‘all-in-one’ voice board in 1998, Aculab has been setting the standard of enabling technology components – e.g., CTI cards – for IVR applications. Whatever your needs for advanced IVR functionality, Aculab has the media processing technology and APIs – voice, fax, call progress, etc. – to drive your success.

Beneficially, Aculab is able to offer a choice; from its range of IP-centric, DSP-based Prosody X boards to its host-based (SoftDSP or HMP) option, Prosody S. And you can use Prosody X for converged or mixed IP/TDM environments, where you still need E1 or T1 PSTN connectivity.

Additionally, Aculab\’s VoiceXML/CCXML interpreter set offers a powerful and scalable design option for platform vendors and service providers alike. It is the fastest, most cost-effective, high performance solution available today, which is an effective combination in any language.

IVR system features and capacities vary depending on the market segments they target. Small to medium enterprises (SMEs) may look to enhance their IP-PBX with an IVR-based auto-attendant using Prosody S, while larger companies will require a Prosody X board-based solution for a hybrid contact centre or voice portal, perhaps also using automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text-to-speech (TTS). Carriers and service providers need IVR to provide a wide range of subscriber messaging and large scale, hosted or VAS and mobile VAS service offerings. And, undoubtedly, TEMs (of all descriptions; Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.) and platform vendors supplying these user communities will also benefit from Aculab’s board and software options.

Check out Aculab at http://www.aculab.com/solutions/IVR-solutions.asp

After more searches and after getting comments about more CTI Companies,

[With the price hike in Dialogic, many of my clients have been asking me about alternatives. I have also started searching for some alternatives of Dialogic. I will be building a list and comparative article on them. Kindly send me any company.]

Here is another company I am looking at
TelcoBridges :

TelcoBridges is an innovative provider of enabling communications technologies for telecom system integrators, solution providers, and telecom equipment manufacturers worldwide.

TelcoBridges’ hardware and software products support VoIP, TDM, and IVR technologies enabling the rapid development of carrier-grade telecom systems.

Founded in 2002, TelcoBridges and its customers have deployed systems in more than 30 countries for some of the world’s largest telecom operators.

Technology
Supporting the most widely accepted industry standards and protocols, our technology is integrated by our system integration partners to build the industry’s most cost-effective, high-performance telecommunications systems marketed to fixed, mobile, and IP-based telecom operators.

Architecture
TelcoBridges delivers scalability, high-availability and unmatched redundancy into the design of carrier-grade telecom solutions by its solution partners.

Platform
Using our development tools our customers minimize development costs and reduce their development cycle, bringing innovative telecom solutions to market in record time.

Headquarters
Headquartered in Montreal, Canada, where TelcoBridges performs its R&D and production activities, the company has further sales representation and technical support staff in three regional offices: USA (San Jose, CA), China (Hong Kong), and Korea (Seoul).

The most essential requirement of an IVRS is that it has to work 24 hours a day, 364 days a year! It is not an application like your MS Word or Outlook Express that you run them when you need! Also IVRS does not have any User Interface. The reason for not having User Interface is obvious! It interacts with human through voice and telephone instrument keypad. (These are actually DTMF Digits. I will explain about DTMF, Pulse dialing in another post.) So, a typical IVR application does not require to be executed manually, it starts as a service in Windows Operating System as soon as it boots up. ( Or same way in Linux)
So, in order build an IVRS Application, the following are essential

1. How many channels to be used? How many calls it should handle simultaneously?
2. How should it be connected to PSTN Lines? Connection may be in two modes, analog and digital.
3. Type of Hardware used. It requires two kind of hardware – a. A PC or a Server b. CTI hardware.
4. Voice prompts Recording or TTS (text-To-Speech) Engine.
5. IVRS Software.
6. Power supply and wiring arrangement.

Number of channels greatly depends on number of calls the user is expecting. For example, if it is public utility (Like 100, 101, Railway enquiry etc), the number of calls will be high. If it has to handle large number of calls (more than 16 numbers), it should be connected using DIGITAL technology. And you will have to use a digital CTI cards too. Digital Cards are more expensive than analog CTI cards and they start with minimum channel count of 30. If you are going to use a Digital card, use a Server. There are many CTI cards, both analog and digital, available in various configurations.

Then the voice prompts! These are voices you hear as soon as you dial the IVRS telephone numbers! These are pre-recorded voices which are played as soon as your call is established. Normally one should get recorded the voice prompts and for any dynamic content or data, TTS may be used. But the voice quality of TTS is still poor specially it may be difficult to understand to people whose mother tongue is not English.

Once you finalized the above, it is time to develop your IVRS Software or find a IVRS Software development company! There are many IVRS Software development companies in the world. Many IVRS Software are developed on various platforms, using different languages. The best IVRS (in terms of robustness, features, easy to configure and maintain) are the IVRS software which are developed in C++. If you intend to develop a IVRS Software on your own, buy the CTI hardware, and read the APIs. Also you need to have thorough knowledge of PSTN exchange. Specially to configure DIGITAL CTI card using SS7, MTP3 ISUP, R2MF, ISDN PRI etc are time consuming and let me warn you, they are not easy! Also you have to have these infrastructure to your testing purpose! ( How many of you have an exhange with SS7 ?) So, best advice is, attempt build your own IVRS if you have to use analog CTI cards, and for DIGITAL CTI Cards, better contact some IVR Companies!

Keep reading this for CTI cards, IVR Software, IVR Companies and most importantly, how you can make money through IVR! It’s a hot thing