Long-Distance Calling

In this episode of the I Can't Sleep Podcast, fall asleep learning about long-distance calling. Phones used to be really boring, but then they got smart. This doesn't mention anything about smartphones. It's all about the olden days of switchboards and operators. Good luck staying awake tonight! Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast,

Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster.

Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled,

Long Distance Calling.

In telecommunications,

A long distance call,

Or trunk call,

Also known as a toll call in the UK,

Is a telephone call made to a location outside a defined local calling area.

Long distance calls are typically charged a higher billing rate than local calls.

The term is not necessarily synonymous with placing calls to another telephone area code.

Long distance calls are classified in two categories.

National or domestic calls which connect two points within the same country,

And international calls which connect two points in different countries.

Within the United States,

There is a further division into long distance calls within a single state,

Interstate,

And interstate calls,

Which are subject to different regulations.

Counterintuitively,

Calls within states are usually more expensive than interstate calls.

Not all interstate calls are long distance calls.

Since 1984,

There has also been a distinction between interlocal access and transport area LATA calls,

And those between different LATAs whose boundaries are not necessarily state boundaries.

Before direct distance dialing,

DDD,

All long distance calls were established by special switchboard operators even in exchanges where calls within the local exchange were dialed directly.

Completion of long distance calls was time consuming and costly as each call was handled by multiple operators in multiple cities.

Record keeping was also more complex as the duration of every toll call had to be manually recorded for billing purposes.

In other countries such as Spain,

Mexico,

Brazil,

And Egypt,

Calls were placed at a central office the caller went to,

Filled out a paper slip,

Sometimes paid in advance for the call,

And then waited for it to be connected.

In Spain,

These were known as locatorios,

Literally a place to talk.

In towns too small to support a phone office,

Placing long distance calls was a sideline for some businesses with telephones,

Such as pharmacies.

In some countries such as Canada and the United States,

Long distance rates were historically kept artificially high to subsidize unprofitable flat rate local residential services.

Intense competition between long distance telephone companies narrowed these gaps significantly in most developed nations in the late 20th century.

The cost of international calls varies dramatically among countries.

The receiving country has total discretion in specifying what the caller should be charged by the originating company,

Who in a separate transaction transfers these funds to the destination country for the cost of connecting the incoming international call with the destination customer anywhere in the receiving country.

This has only a loose and in some cases no relation to the actual cost.

Some less developed countries or their telephone companies use these fees as a revenue source.

History.

In 1891,

AT&T built an interconnect telephone network which reached from New York to Chicago,

The technological limit for non-amplified wiring.

Users often did not use their own phone for such connections,

But made an appointment to use a special long distance telephone booth or silence cabinet,

Equipped with four wire telephones and other advanced technology.

The invention of loading coils extended the range to Denver in 1911,

Again reaching a technological limit.

A major research venture and contest led to the development of the Audion,

Originally invented by Lee DeForest,

And greatly improved by others in the years between 1907 and 1914,

Which provided the means for telephone signals to reach from coast to coast.

Such transcontinental calling was made possible in 1914,

But was not showcased until early 1915 as a promotion for the upcoming Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in the spring of the same year.

On January 25,

1915,

Alexander Graham Bell ceremonially sent the first transcontinental telephone call from 15 Day Street in New York City,

Which was received by his former assistant Thomas A.

Watson at 333 Grant Avenue in San Francisco.

This process,

Nevertheless,

Involved five intermediary telephone operators,

And took 23 minutes to connect by manually patching in the route of the call.

On October 9,

1876,

Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A.

Watson talked by telephone to each other over a two-mile wire stretched between Cambridge and Boston.

It was the first wire conversation ever held.

Yesterday afternoon,

The same two men talked by telephone to each other over a 3,

400-mile wire between New York and San Francisco.

Dr.

Bell,

The veteran inventor of the telephone,

Was in New York,

And Mr.

Watson,

His former associate,

Was on the other side of the continent.

They heard each other much more distinctly than they did in their first talk 38 years ago.

New York Times,

January 26,

1915 On November 10,

1951,

The first direct-dial long-distance telephone call in North America was placed from Mayor M.

Leslie Denning of Englewood,

New Jersey,

To Mayor Frank Osborne of Almeda,

California,

Via AT&T's Bell System.

The ten-digit call,

Seven digits plus a three-digit area code,

Was connected automatically within 18 seconds.

The first subscriber trunk dialing in the United Kingdom was deployed December 5,

1958,

With Elizabeth II placing a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.

International Calling After World War II,

Priority was given by AT&T in the U.

S.

And the various PTT entities in Europe to automating switching on the toll networks in their respective countries,

Initially for operator toll dialing.

Thus,

When TAT-1 was opened for service,

It was connected to international gateway offices at White Plains,

New York,

And London that were already automated for domestic calls.

These were designed to be able to automatically switch outward and inward international circuits as soon as common signaling standards and political considerations could be negotiated.

However,

At the outset,

To set up an international call,

Multiple operators were required,

One to originate the call and one at each national gateway to complete a call via either ring-down to a local operator or operator toll dialing.

International direct dialing from London to Paris was first offered in March 1963,

With Amsterdam following by the end of 1963.

Simultaneously,

Operator-dialed transatlantic calling began March 30,

1963,

With the originating international operator in Western Europe or the U.

S.

Able to complete calls to the terminal station without further operator assistance via the gateway exchanges at White Plains and London.

Operator-dialed trans-Pacific calling to Hawaii,

Japan,

And Australia began with the completion of the Commonwealth Pacific Cable System,

Compaq,

Also in 1963.

By mid-1968,

Transatlantic cable capacity had increased to the point where scheduling calls between Western Europe,

The U.

K.

,

And the U.

S.

Was no longer necessary and calls were completed on demand.

Transatlantic international direct dialing between New York City and London was introduced in 1970,

With service extended to the whole of the U.

S.

And the six largest U.

K.

Cities in 1971.

Collect reverse charge calling Various schemes were devised to allow large organizations to automatically accept collect calls,

Where the recipient pays long-distance charges for any call from a predefined area.

A Zenith number in the late 1950s required an operator manually determine the destination number from a printed list.

The 1967 Wide Area Telephone Service introduced the first automated toll-free telephone numbers,

Terminated on special fixed-rate trunks.

By the 1980s,

Computerization of the system allowed British Telecom,

Linkline,

0800 free phone numbers,

And AT&T 1-800 toll-free numbers to be controlled by a database,

And terminated virtually anywhere with each inbound call itemized and billed individually.

This smart network was further refined to provide toll-free number portability in the 1990s.

Technical Advances Improvements in switching technology,

The development of high-capacity optical fiber,

And an increase in competition substantially lowered long-distance rates at the end of the 20th century.

Using the Internet,

The distinction between local and long-distance communication is fading,

To the point where an Internet call from the United States to Beijing carries a lower wholesale cost than a domestic landline call to a rural independent in small-town Iowa.

Example of Manual Operator Call 131.

Traumatization of an Operator-Assisted Long-Distance Call circa 1949 In the radio series Dragnet,

Sergeant Joe Friday,

Jack Webb,

Places an Operator-Assisted Person-to-Person Long-Distance Call to a number reached via a manual switchboard in Fountain Crean,

Utah,

A town of several hundred people served by an independent telephone company.

In the call,

Friday calls a long-distance operator in Los Angeles and gives the name and number of the called party.

The operator then calls a rate and route operator,

Who responds that the call should be routed through Salt Lake City and Mount Pleasant,

Utah,

And that the rate step for the call is 140.

The long-distance operator would mark her ticket with that rate step and could use it to quote the rate from her rate table,

In terms of the first three minutes and each additional minute if the caller requested the toll.

The Los Angeles long-distance operator then plugs into a direct trunk to the Salt Lake City inward operator and asks her for Mount Pleasant.

The Salt Lake operator rings Mount Pleasant,

Where the Los Angeles operator asks for Fountain Green.

The Mount Pleasant operator rings Fountain Green,

And the Los Angeles operator gives the Fountain Green operator the number and name of the called party in Fountain Green.

The Fountain Green operator rings the number 14R2,

A party line where a specific ringing pattern summons the second subscriber on the shared line.

A man answers.

The Los Angeles operator asks for the called party and states that Los Angeles is calling.

This dramatization illustrates the cumbersome,

Costly,

And time-consuming process needed for long-distance calling before direct distance dialing was available.

Local calls within the Los Angeles area had long been dialed directly,

But a long-distance call to a distant state was a complex manual effort.

The caller would dial the long-distance operator,

Typically 110 or 211 in large bell system cities of that area.

Zero was for local assistance,

And provide the destination city name and called number as well as their own number for billing purposes,

As there was no automatic number identification.

Before the era of operator toll dialing,

Which began in the 1940s,

An operator would first set up the route,

Then ring back the original caller minutes later to announce the call was ready,

Rather than having the caller remain on the line.

Once operator toll dialing was implemented,

The operator would have received a numerical routing from the rate and route operator,

Such as mark,

Other place,

Route,

A ring down,

Numbers,

801 plus 073 plus 181.

Operators 801 plus 073 plus.

This routing would allow the Los Angeles operator to dial via the tandem switch,

I.

E.

Class four telephone switch,

To the Mount Pleasant operator's switchboard,

And have the call come in on a special trunk designated by the 181 code,

Used for incoming calls to ring down points.

Places with manual service whose connection to the national network was via a larger point.

Routing was important,

Even when many medium sized and smaller cities had automatic local service,

But were not yet reachable by the growing numbers of people in cities with direct dialing.

For example,

If by the late 1950s,

Founding Green had upgraded its manual service with an automatic dial enabled four digit number system,

An operator could often dial the call after obtaining the rate and route.

The operator could add the three digit office prefix to the local four digit number,

Which in a few years would become the seven digit number of the recipient.

Regional variations.

The definition of local or long distance calling and the corresponding pricing is largely a regulatory construct,

By which every point outside an arbitrary group of exchange boundaries is charged at a higher trunk call or toll call rate.

The charges often do not correlate directly to either straight line distance or network topology.

Two exchanges 75 kilometers apart may be local in some cases,

While in other cases,

An adjacent pair of exchanges,

Or even two different exchange prefixes on the same physical switch,

May arbitrarily be long distance.

Canada.

In Canada,

Local calls from landline telephones are flat rated even in the largest cities,

Unlike the United States,

Which has metered service in a few of the largest markets.

Local telephone numbers were lengthened to a standard seven digits in all of the largest markets in 1958 to accommodate US style direct dial equipment.

Montreal and Toronto previously had 2L plus 4N six digit local calling.

Smaller communities had four or five digits.

Long distance calling from landlines was open to competition in the early 1990s,

And the use of long distance revenue to subsidize local service was phased out a few years later.

It is not possible for mobile telephone subscribers or coin paid telephone users to select a default carrier,

So long distance calls are often priced higher from these services.

The use of prepaid telephone calling cards is a possible workaround.

United Kingdom.

The regulatory structure in British telecom exchanges differs from the North American system,

As there are no free local calls.

A long distance call is therefore known not as a toll call,

But as a trunk call.

It traditionally carried a higher rate,

National rate instead of local rate,

And requires a trunk prefix and area code be dialed before the number.

A trunk call is prefixed with 0 for national calls and 00 for international calls,

Following the European standard.

It is now normal for local calls to cost the same as long distance UK calls,

And is now common for a small extra monthly charge to allow free calls to landlines within the UK.

This free call allowance does not normally cover calls to the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands,

Which whilst having UK national dialing codes,

Are separate telephone administrations.

International calling from the UK is deregulated in that many alternative providers allow low-cost international calling by the caller dialing and access code,

Usually beginning with the digit 1,

Followed by the full international code.

These services generally use internet-based connections in the same way as computer-based services such as Skype,

Friend Caller,

And many others,

But with the added convenience of there being no need to use a computer.

It is this use of the internet for the calls which allows such low prices.

Often these same services are available from a mobile phone by the use of a special access number,

Though in this case there may be a charge equivalent to that of a standard landline call.

United States The U.

S.

Regulatory structure splits long-distance calls into two major categories.

An intrastate call is regulated under state law.

Federal regulation applies to interstate calls being interstate commerce.

In 1968,

The Federal Communications Commission forced AT&T to allow MCI to connect their own long-distance lines into the Bell system.

During the 1984 breakup of the Bell system,

The Local Access and Transport Area or LATA concept was created to distinguish between in-region calls,

Which were handled by local telephone companies such as the Baby Bells,

And out-of-region calls handled by inter-exchange carriers such as AT&T,

MCI,

And Sprint.

The breakup of the Bell system in 1984 came with federally imposed rules to allow the Baby Bells and other long-distance providers to compete via equal access.

Equal access allows telephone subscribers to choose an authorized telephone company or companies to handle their local toll and long-distance toll,

Including international calls from traditional POTS,

Plain old telephone service,

Wired telephone lines.

Various feature groups were used where equal access is available to allow callers to select a long-distance carrier for each call.

In feature group D,

The current system,

Subscribers may dial the prefix 10 and a three-digit code identifying a long-distance carrier to handle the intra-LATA call.

For example,

10-288 send a call via AT&T,

10-333 via Sprint,

And 10-550 via CenturyLink.

Starting in July 1998,

10 needed to be used before the five-digit carrier selection.

For example,

10-10-288 for AT&T.

Area code 700,

Rarely used,

Is reserved for carrier-specific services.

Each carrier places a recorded self-identification message on 1-700-555-4141 to allow a subscriber to identify the default intra-LATA carrier for their line.

Long-distance calls may be classified into two groups,

Interstate long-distance or inter-LATA interstate long-distance.

The most common group is the one for which long-distance carriers are usually chosen by telephone customers.

Another form of long-distance call,

Increasingly relevant to more U.

S.

States,

Is known as an inter-LATA interstate long-distance call.

This refers to a calling area outside of the customer's LATA but within the customer's state.

While technically and legally long-distance,

This calling area is not necessarily served by the same carrier used for regular long-distance,

Or may be provided at different rates.

In some cases,

Customer confusion occurs as,

Due to rate or carrier distinctions,

A local long-distance call can be billed at a higher per-minute rate than interstate long-distance calls,

Despite being a shorter distance.

Often,

In large LATAs,

There is also a class known by the oxymoronic name local long-distance,

Which refers to calls within the customer's LATA but outside their local calling area.

This area is normally served by the customer's local telephone provider,

Which is usually one of the baby bells,

Despite attempts by some CLECs to compete in the local telephone market.

In California,

In addition to intra-LATA and inter-LATA calling,

There are Zoom zone usage measurement areas within the local service areas.

Callers are usually offered a variety of rate plans depending on usage,

Although which plan is cheapest for a given amount of usage is often not obvious.

Plans may be unlimited,

Or may package any initial number of minutes and charge additional minutes at a flat rate,

And further varieties abound.

Some plans can be compared easily if the number of minutes of usage will be estimated in advance,

But others are not as clearly comparable.

Some of these plans can be found on websites that compare a variety of long-distance phone and phone card options,

Giving consumers useful and timely information.

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol,

VOIP,

Also called IP telephony,

Is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol,

IP networks,

Such as the Internet.

The terms Internet telephony,

Broadband telephony,

And broadband phone service specifically refer to the provisioning of communications services,

Voice,

Fax,

SMS,

Voice messaging,

Over the Internet,

Rather than via the public switched telephone network,

PSTN,

Also known as plain old telephone service,

POTS.

Overview The steps and principles involved in originating VOIP telephone calls are similar to traditional digital telephony and involve signaling,

Channel setup,

Digitization of the analog voice signals,

And encoding.

Instead of being transmitted over a circuit-switched network,

The digital information is packetized and transmission occurs as IP packets over a packet-switched network.

They transport media streams using special media delivery protocols that encode audio and video with audio codecs and video codecs.

Various codecs exist that optimize the media stream based on application requirements and network bandwidth.

Some implementations rely on narrowband and compressed speech,

While others support high-fidelity stereo codecs.

The most widely used speech coding standards in VOIP are based on the Linear Predictive Coding,

LPC,

And Modified Discrete Cosine Transform,

MDCT,

Compression methods.

Popular codecs include the MDCT-based AACLD used in FaceTime,

The LPC MDCT-based OPUS used in WhatsApp,

The LPC-based SILK used in Skype,

And open-source voice codec known as ILBC,

A codec that uses only 8 kbps each way called G.

729.

Early providers of voice-over IP services used business models and offered technical solutions that mirrored the architecture of the legacy telephone network.

Second-generation providers such as Skype built closed networks for private user bases,

Offering the benefit of free calls and convenience,

While potentially charging for access to other communication networks,

Such as the PSTN.

This limited the freedom of users to mix and match third-party hardware and software.

Third-generation providers such as Google Talk adopted the concept of federated VOIP.

These solutions typically allow dynamic interconnection between users in any two domains of the internet when a user wishes to place a call.

In addition to VOIP phones,

VOIP is also available on many personal computers and other internet access devices.

Calls and SMS text messages may be sent via Wi-Fi or the carrier's mobile data network.

VOIP provides a framework for consolidation of all modern communication technologies using a single unified communication system.

Pronunciation VOIP is variously pronounced as an initialism,

VOIP,

Or as an acronym,

VOIP.

Full words Voice-over Internet Protocol or Voice-over IP are sometimes used.

Protocols Voice-over IP has been implemented with proprietary protocols and protocols based on open standards in applications such as VOIP phones,

Mobile applications,

And web-based communications.

A variety of functions are needed to implement VOIP communication.

Some protocols perform multiple functions,

While others perform only a few and must be used in concert.

These functions include network and transport,

Creating reliable transmission over unreliable protocols,

Which may involve acknowledging receipt of data and retransmitting data that wasn't received,

Session management,

Creating and managing a session,

Sometimes glossed as simply a call,

Which is a connection between two or more peers that provides a context for further communication,

Signaling,

Performing registration,

Advertising one's presence and contact information,

And discovery,

Locating someone and obtaining their contact information,

Dialing,

Including reporting call progress,

Negotiating capabilities,

And call control such as hold,

Mute,

Transfer forwarding,

Dialing,

DTMF keys during a call,

E.

G.

To interact with an automated attendant or IVR,

Etc.

Media description Determining what type of media to send,

Audio,

Video,

Etc.

How to encode,

Decode it,

And how to send,

Receive it,

IP addresses,

Ports,

Etc.

Media Transferring the actual media in the call such as audio,

Video,

Text,

Messages,

Files,

Etc.

Quality of service Providing out-of-band content or feedback about the media such as synchronization,

Statistics,

Etc.

Security Implementing access control,

Verifying the identity of other participants,

Computers,

Or people,

And encrypting data to protect the privacy and integrity of the media contents and or the control messages.

VoIP protocols include Sessions Initiation Protocol,

SIP,

Connection Management Protocol developed by the IETF,

H.

323,

One of the first VoIP call signaling and control protocols that found widespread implementation.

Since the development of newer,

Less complex protocols such as MGCP and SIP,

H.

323 deployments are increasingly limited to carrying existing long-haul network traffic.

Media Gateway Control Protocol,

MGCP,

Connection Management for Media Gateways,

H.

248,

Control Protocol for Media Gateways across a converged internetwork consisting of the traditional PSTN and modern packet networks.

Real-Time Transport Protocol,

RTP,

Transport Protocol for Real-Time Audio and Video Data,

Real-Time Transport Control Protocol,

RTCP,

Sister Protocol for RTP providing stream statistics and status information,

Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol,

SRTP,

Encrypted Version of RTP,

Session Description Protocol,

SDP,

A syntax for session initiation,

An announcement for multimedia communications and WebSocket transports,

Inter-Asterix Exchange,

IAX,

Protocol used between Asterix PBX instances,

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol,

XMPP,

Instant Messaging,

Presence Information,

And Contact List Maintenance.

Jingle,

For Peer-to-Peer Session Control and XMPP,

Skype Protocol,

Proprietary Internet Telephony Protocol suited based on Peer-to-Peer Architecture.

Adoption,

Consumer Market,

Mass-Market VoIP services use existing broadband internet access,

By which subscribers place and receive telephone calls in much the same manner as they would via the PSTN.

Full-service VoIP phone companies provide inbound and outbound service with direct inbound dialing.

Many offer unlimited domestic calling and sometimes international calls for a flat monthly subscription fee.

Phone calls between subscribers of the same provider are usually free when flat fee service is not available.

A VoIP phone is necessary to connect to a VoIP service provider.

This can be implemented in several ways.

Dedicated VoIP phones connect directly to the IP network using technologies such as wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

These are typically designed in the style of traditional digital business telephones.

An analog telephone adapter connects to the network and implements the electronics and firmware to operate a conventional analog telephone.

Attached through a modular phone jack.

Some residential internet gateways and cable modems have this function built in.

Softphone application software installed on a network computer that is equipped with a microphone and speaker or headset.

The application typically presents a dial pad and display field to the user to operate the application by mouse clicks or keyboard input.

PSTN and mobile network providers.

It is increasingly common for telecommunications providers to use VoIP telephony over dedicated and public IP networks as a backhaul to connect switching centers and to interconnect with other telephony network providers.

This is often referred to as IP backhaul.

Smartphones may have SIP clients built into the firmware or available as an application download.

Corporate use.

Because of the bandwidth efficiency and low cost that VoIP technology can provide,

Businesses are migrating from traditional copper wire telephone systems to VoIP systems to reduce their monthly phone costs.

In 2008,

80% of all new private branch exchange PBX lines installed internationally were VoIP.

For example,

In the United States,

The Social Security Administration is converting its field offices of 63,

000 workers from traditional phone installations to a VoIP infrastructure carried over its existing data network.

VoIP allows both voice and data communications to be run over a single network,

Which can significantly reduce infrastructure costs.

The prices of extensions on VoIP are lower than for PBX and key systems.

VoIP switches may run on commodity hardware,

Such as personal computers.

Rather than closed architectures,

These devices rely on standard interfaces.

VoIP devices have simple,

Intuitive user interfaces,

So users can often make simple system configuration changes.

Dual-mode phones enable users to continue their conversations as they move between an outside cellular service and an internal Wi-Fi network,

So that it is no longer necessary to carry both a desktop phone and a cell phone.

Maintenance becomes simpler as there are fewer devices to oversee.

VoIP solutions aimed at businesses have evolved into unified communications services that treat all communications,

Phone calls,

Faxes,

Voicemail,

Email,

Web conferences,

And more as discrete units that can all be delivered via any means and to any handset,

Including cell phones.

Two kinds of service providers are operating in this space.

One set is focused on VoIP for medium to large enterprises,

While another is targeting the small to medium business SMB market.

Skype,

Which originally marketed itself as a service among friends,

Has begun to cater to businesses,

Providing free-of-charge connections between any users on the Skype network and connecting to and from ordinary PSTN telephones for a charge.

Delivery Mechanisms In general,

The provisions of VoIP telephony systems to organizational or individual users can be divided into two primary delivery methods,

Private or on-premises solutions,

Or externally hosted solutions delivered by third-party providers.

On-premises delivery methods are more akin to the classic PBX deployment model for connecting an office to local PSTN networks.

While many use cases still remain for private or on-premises VoIP systems,

The wider market has been gradually shifting toward cloud or hosted VoIP solutions.

Hosted systems are also generally better suited to smaller or personal-use VoIP deployments,

Where a private system may not be viable for these scenarios.

Hosted VoIP Systems Hosted or cloud VoIP solutions involve a service provider or telecommunications carrier hosting the telephone system as a software solution within their own infrastructure.

Typically,

This will be one or more data centers with geographic relevance to the end-users of the system.

This infrastructure is external to the user of the system and is deployed and maintained by the service provider.

Endpoints such as VoIP telephones or soft phone applications,

Apps running on a computer or mobile device,

Will connect to the VoIP service remotely.

These connections typically take place over public internet links,

Such as local fixed WAN breakout or mobile carrier service.

Private VoIP Systems In the case of a private voice system,

The primary telephony system itself is located within the private infrastructure of the end-user organization.

Usually,

The system will be deployed on-premises at a site within the direct control of the organization.

This can provide numerous benefits in terms of QoS control,

Cost scalability,

And ensuring privacy and security of communications traffic.

However,

The responsibility for ensuring that the VoIP system remains performant and resilient is predominantly vested in the end-user organization.

This is not the case with a hosted VoIP solution.

Private VoIP systems can be physical hardware PBX applications converged with other infrastructure,

Or they can be deployed as software applications.

Generally,

The latter two options will be in the form of a separate virtualized application.

However,

In some scenarios,

These systems are deployed on bare-metal infrastructure or IoT devices.

With some solutions,

Such as 3CX,

Companies can attempt to blend the benefits of hosted and private on-premises systems by implementing their own private solution but within an external environment.

Examples can include data center co-location services,

Public cloud,

Or private cloud locations.

For on-premises systems,

Local endpoints within the same location typically connect directly over the LAN.

For remote and external endpoints,

Available connectivity options mirror those of hosted or cloud VoIP solutions.

However,

VoIP traffic to and from the on-premises systems can often also be sent over secure private links.

Examples include personal VPN,

Site-to-site VPN,

Private networks such as MPLS and SD-WAN,

Or via private SBCs,

Session border controllers.

While exceptions and private peering options do exist,

It is generally uncommon for those private connectivity methods to be provided by hosted or cloud VoIP providers.

Reviews

Didn’t get to finish it 😭😭 but so interesting love it! Got to sleep so fast!

Thank you for these. They are interesting enough that my brain stops whirling away, but not so interesting as to be arousing. I always fall asleep before the end.

I love a podcast from Benjamin. I think they’re so interesting and amusing at the same time and he does have a soothing voice. Unfortunately, I find his topic so amazingly interesting. Sometimes I find myself listening to the end. But then the more I listen to them it becomes like a children’s bedtime story I know how it’s gonna end and fall asleep so easily.

I think I lasted about 10 minutes before drifting off! Thanks for boring me to sleep! 🤣😂🤗🥰

As intended, I was bored right to sleep. 😊 Thanks!💤 😴