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The enterprise is ready for wireless VoIP. Is wireless VoIP ready for the enterprise?
Wireless finally raises its voice.
Wireless LANs (WLANs) are becoming a fixture in the enterprise and quickly proving their worth. At the same time, many enterprises are adopting voice over IP (VoIP) systems to enjoy lower costs. The two technologies together have given rise to an exciting application: wireless VoIP. Wireless VoIP significantly enhances the value of both technologies by delivering optimum mobility, productivity and ROI. Companies deploying VoIP are universally considering how WLANs can be integrated into the system. As voice over Wi-Fi becomes an increasingly viable option with the influx of new Wi-Fi enabled phones, including dual mode cellular/Wi-Fi phones, wireless VOIP looks even more promising.
While wireless VoIP has been available for a few years now, the current WLAN infrastructure on the market has lacked the scalability, quality and usability needed to support large-scale deployments.
Meru Networks' WLAN System makes wireless VoIP suitable for any environment. Patented technology overcomes a number of performance barriers to deliver unprecedented quality, scale, and usability for a converged voice and data network. Networks built with Meru WLAN products accomplish this with nothing more than industry standard Wi-Fi client devices.
Times, places, and strong cases for wireless VoIP
In today's dynamic work environment, employees are always on the go. Commonly, organizations address the challenge of mobile voice communication by outfitting the workforce with cell phones. However, such solutions can be unreliable due to limited or non existent in-building coverage, expensive, or not practical. Fortunately, a new generation of Wi-Fi enabled phones is available, including dual mode phones that support both cellular and Wi-Fi. With the prevalence of Wi-Fi as an in-building wireless network, voice communications over the wireless LAN are a practical, low cost solution. Wireless VoIP becomes the most viable solution in a variety of environments.
Enterprise
For mobile workers in networked buildings, wireless VoIP is a great solution for enhanced productivity. In addition to accessing the network with wireless VoIP phones, soft-phones enable PDAs on a Wi-Fi network to function as phones. Prices of Wi-Fi client devices are dropping rapidly and giving rise to new generations of practical, productivity enhancing solutions. For example, wireless VoIP technology will also soon allow mobile phones to switch seamlessly between cellular and 802.11, even in the middle of a call.
Healthcare
Doctors and nurses are the quintessential mobile workers. Unlike most other enterprises, it can be critical to reach the right person immediately in a lifethreatening situation demanding the highest reliability in the communication system. However, most hospitals prohibit cell phones due to RF interference. Paging is riddled with delays. Wireless VoIP can provide medical teams immediate, reliable voice communications. Newly developed "voice badge" devices present a hands-free method for communication between health care workers, allowing them to keep their hands free for other tasks. Mobile healthcare professionals can exchange critical information and make more of their time to improve the quality of care they provide.
Warehouse/retail/hospitality
Effective customer service often requires communications between front-line and backroom employees. The service received in hotels, on cruise ships, at amusement parks, or airports, is often a function of how effectively widely disbursed employees can interact. In these and similar environments, wireless VoIP can provide a better means of communications between employees. WLANs can be implemented where wireline networks might be cost-prohibitive due to building design or rapidly changing physical environments such as in retail or conference centers. Highly intrusive intercom systems can be avoided. And connections can be made fast and effectively not only between employees, but also directly between customers and employees, improving service satisfaction.
Education
WLANs are changing the paradigm in education, allowing the Internet and networked resources to be used in many different places: the classroom, gym, lab, library, or dorm. Systems are cost-effective, easy to install, and ideal for open-plan schools or older buildings where hard wiring is difficult. Classrooms often do not have phones, and installing new phone lines is prohibitively expensive in the current economy. To fill that void, teachers often bring their own cell phones into the classroom. This not only places undue burden on the faculty member, the school remains haphazardly connected. Privacy concerns also make it inappropriate for teachers to provide personal phone numbers to coworkers and students' parents..
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