Hosted and virtual PBX systems – similar but not the same

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rpm

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Hosted and virtual PBX systems – similar but not the same

Hosted and virtual private branch exchanges, better known as PBXs, share some of the same technologies but are operationally very different. South Africa has lagged in the development of hosted and virtual PBXs because the carrier, voice over IP (VoIP), was illegal for many years. It was only legalised on 1 February 2005 after many years of agitation by the industry.
 
There's a lot more to the choice these days and Hans is right to read more.

My concern is that security risks are seldom mentioned and yet I experienced so many customers and operators being hacked and losing thousands of rands in VoIP fraud that I started an additional, focused business to focus specifically on this scourge.
 
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After ignite buying DFA I think I might take up their offer for the cloud pbx
 
gfmalan said:
I wouldn't, IS/Ignite has no service.
They not only bought DFA, but MWEB Business too, maybe that's the problem.

Give Euphoria/Freshphone a try.
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Their pricing is unmatched so far.
 
I moved all my services that I had with them away (With IS from 1997), last 3-5years service went to s...

Their voice solution has a delay issue for us here in CPT, some calls sound like you speak to someone in Europe in the 1980's

Good and well to pay cheap, but if you have call issues daily, then you loose more business than what you save on your bill.
 
gfmalan said:
I moved all my services that I had with them away (With IS from 1997), last 3-5years service went to s...

Their voice solution has a delay issue for us here in CPT, some calls sound like you speak to someone in Europe in the 1980's

Good and well to pay cheap, but if you have call issues daily, then you loose more business than what you save on your bill.
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What was your last mile access? I'm not saying that was the issue but just curious.
 
Chris.Geerdts said:
There's a lot more to the choice these days and Hans is right to read more.

My concern is that security risks are seldom mentioned and yet I experienced so many customers and operators being hacked and losing thousands of rands in VoIP fraud that I started an additional, focused business to focus specifically on this scourge.
Click to expand...

Great idea. Companies sign up with a voip provider and next thing they owe thousands for fraud they weren't warned about.
 
gfmalan said:
I moved all my services that I had with them away (With IS from 1997), last 3-5years service went to s...

Their voice solution has a delay issue for us here in CPT, some calls sound like you speak to someone in Europe in the 1980's

Good and well to pay cheap, but if you have call issues daily, then you loose more business than what you save on your bill.
Click to expand...
I'm going to see how it goes but with a 100Mbps Fiber connection I doubt there will be issues

That said if it sucks I jump. I have no brand loyalty
 
gfmalan said:
2mb Diginet
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Ok. Yes, that should be fine - if it still gave poor quality when no-one else was on the line then it it's definitely an IS issue.

I have, fairly recently, done some traceroutes for customers using IS connectivity and seen packet loss on the network between them and the VoIP switch. Also, IS doesn't support open peering, which will almost guarantee poor quality calls to a range of destinations.
 
entrepr said:
Great idea. Companies sign up with a voip provider and next thing they owe thousands for fraud they weren't warned about.
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Yup, companies have no idea how to deal with it and I've spoken to operators who've lost a million or more in one attack.
 
markings said:
How is this fraud perpetrated?
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Countless ways, but the most common is to hack into the pbx and make lots of expensive calls.

It's easy to go to a mobile operator and set up a premium service (like a competition line - a premium number you call to enter a competition) and then the operator shares the call revenue for all calls going to that number. Those are the types of lines that have for Big Brother or Idols.

A criminal can set up this revenue share with the operator on a premium line, and then hack systems to call into his line, so he get the revenue from the line.

So (as a crook) you go to an operator like Econet in Zimbabwe and set up the revenue share, and then hack a pbx in South Africa to call that number in Zimbabwe, and clock up thousands of calls (as many as you can pump on the pbx before the credit runs out) and then Econet shares the revenue from those calls with you.

That is a common fraud, called toll fraud.
 
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