VoIP poised for telecommuter rush hour

Network World - With the U.S. reaching its 300 millionth citizen this month, the notion of telecommuting seems more and more like a good idea.

Traffic jams and stressed public transportation systems have already spawned the category of "extreme commuters" who travel more than 90 minutes just to get to work, according to "Commuting in America III," a study written by the Transportation Research Board.

"If you think traffic congestion is bad now, just wait," says Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of The Telework Coalition.

If telecommuting is defined as working from home at least one day per month, the number of U.S. telecommuters is about 24 million, according to a 2004 study of consumers by The Derringer Research Group. The same study says the number of teleworkers supported by broadband connections leapt from 4.4 million in 2003 to 8.1 million in 2004, meaning that technology exists to support voice-over-IP (VoIP) links to corporate private branch exchanges (PBX), as well as simultaneous data connections.

Move to VoIP, now

These are the building blocks of a home-based corporate office, and that means the time is ripe for VoIP supported telecommuting, says Brian Riggs, a principal analyst at Current Analysis Inc. "If you have an IP PBX, you can support telecommuters," says Riggs. "At this point, there's no reason for a business not to use VoIP for telecommuting."

IP PBX features that can be extended to home offices open up the entire voice/data resources of headquarters to teleworkers, he says, and there are financial benefits to VoIP. "If you have an IP line directly via a broadband link to a company 2,500 miles away, you can save quite a bit just on toll bypass for voice calls and routing calls through the PBX to get the corporate rate for international calls," Riggs says.

Concerns about cost, security, features and reliability have been laid to rest, he says.

Steel manufacturer Charter Steel Inc. in Saukville, Wis., has adopted Avaya Inc. softphone software on its laptops to support teleworkers. Before, telecommuters used company-issued cell phones, says Peter Schwie, Charter's telecommunications supervisor. That kept voice and data applications separate and uncoordinated, he says.

The VoIP software clients enable all the call features supported by the company's Avaya IP PBX. With a broadband Internet connection at the home, the telecommuter can blend in Netmeeting, Microsoft Corp.'s conferencing software that supports whiteboarding, chat, text charts and video. "You just have your laptop and you are totally good to go," Schwei says.

The Avaya gear offers the flexibility of using the softphone or using an IP handset that connects to the corporate PBX via an IPSec virtual private network (VPN) connection. This gives end users flexibility and allows them to connect using whatever Internet connection they can get. "They can use a couple of different connections, and that is a beautiful thing," Schwei says.