A ring down conference is used for bringing a group of first responders into an audio conference very quickly. Traditional ring down conferencing equipment makes use of analog FXS ports. For example such a system may be deployed at an airport or an Air Force Base. These systems are also called CrashNet Emergency Conferencing systems. The emergency ring down phones are clearly designated and located in specific areas. A person wanting a ring down conference simply has to go ‘off-hook’ on one such phone. The conference bridge detects the off hook and then immediately rings other phones connected to the bridge – hence the term ring down. As people pick up other phones they are placed into a conference with the initiator.

XOP Networks has extended the ring down bridging concept to VoIP based networks. It’s  <strong>SIP/VoIP based Ring Down bridge</strong> (Enhanced Firebar application running on SIP based USN) works in conjunction with an IP PBX. A person can go off-hook on pre-designated IP extension. The IP PBX will be programmed to send a SIP INVITE (equivalent to seeing an off-hook in the analog world) towards the XOP bridge. Based on that message the XOP equipment will immediately ring other pre-designated IP phones and upon off-hook place people into an audio conference.

Voicemail is one of the value added services that is offered by Independent Telephone Companies to their residential and business customers. A typical rural phone company has few thousand subscribers. These subscribers may be spread across multiple switches. In order to offer voicemail service, the phone company typically has to deploy a voicemail system per each switch that they have. So if phone company has four switches they typically end up having four voicemail systems. Consequently the phone company ends up with unused capacity on each voicemail system that they deploy. XOP Networks Voicemail System (Voicemail application running on the Universal Service Node platform) allows use of fractional T1/E1s. The objective is to share the T1/E1 span of the Voicemail system between multiple switches. Using this approach, a phone company can use one XOP Networks voicemail system and serve the needs of voicemail subscribers that are connected to different switches. In addition to the fractional T1/E1, the XOP USN also supports SIP Trunking. This further allows the phone companies to migrate their voicemail subscribers to the next generation pack network as phone companies replace their circuit switched central office switches with packet based soft switches. A white paper is available on XOP Networks web site that explains the value proposition of the XOP Voicemail solution.

Traditional Firebar equipment is deployed on the line side of a central office switch. It terminates individual copper pairs to/from a special ‘red phone’ deployed at a voluntary fireman’s home. The phone companies are migrating their networks towards packet based networking technologies as opposed to the current circuit switch environment. This process typically involves replacing the current copper based loop plant with fiber based Digital Loop Carriers. Because of this the Firebar service that relies on individual copper pair terminations cannot work. XOP Networks Enhanced Firebar equipment (Firebar application running on the Universal Service Node) is designed to be placed on the trunk side of the switch instead. By placing the Firebar equipment on the trunk side a phone company can deliver the Firebar service to Firemens regular land line phones. The XOP Networks Firebar equipment is capable of remembering multiple phone numbers (landline phone, cell phone, office phone etc.) belonging to a fireman. These days majority of people carry cell phones. Therefore having separate ‘red phone’ just for emergency purposes is not really necessary or desirable. The XOP Networks Firebar approach makes it more flexible to reach out to a fireman at one of his/her multiple numbers when actually needed.

A meet-me conference is the one in which all participants dial in. A Firebar conference on the other hand refers to a conference where the conference bridge dials out to fellow participants. As people pick up their phone calls, they are placed into a conference. This type of conference service is provided by rural phone companies to voluntary fire departments through out United States.

for a audio conference, the current practise is for employees in India to dial into bridges in US. These calls require expensive international toll calls. A much cheaper arrangment is via bridge-to-bridge calling. In this case employees in India call into a bridge in India and employees in US call into a bridge in US. Then the moderator in US dials out from the US bridge and into the bridge in India. With this method one international call replaces multiple international calls and hence the savings. Based on the size of a conference, a typical customer can easily save 50+ % on the international conference calls with India.

XOP Networks equipment supports special bridge to bridge conferncing capability that can reduce the cost of international conference calls by 50+ percent. There is a white paper posted on XOP site that is very informative.

http://www.xopnetworks.com/literature/white-papers.html