Category: Blogs

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Providing Solutions in an Emergency: XOP Networks and the Camanche Fire Station

In emergency situations, having a dependable communication system in place is crucial– missing a call could mean someone not receiving vital help when it is needed the most.

David Schutte, Fire Chief of Camanche Fire Station, had been working with the local telephone company for a number of years, using their Tellabs 291 Firebar Conference system.

Schutte was informed by the phone company that they would no longer be able to provide them with the dial out conferencing service (also known as Firebar service) — as Tellabs the manufacturer had stopped manufacturing the Firebar equipment.

As the volunteer fire department relied on this service, Shutte started looking for alternate solutions immediately.

“I did a bit of online research and found that XOP Networks provided what looked to be some feasible solutions,” says Schutte.

Firebar is used to inform and bring a group of first responders into an audio conference very quickly. It has been relied on as a very fast and efficient way of informing and engaging the first responders. XOP Networks provides its Ringdown Firebar Conference Server (RFCS) product to the phone companies which is a functional replacement for Tellabs 291/292 equipment.

Schutte contacted XOP Networks and was pleased to find out that their Firebar solution was more than equivalent to the Tellabs 291 based Firebar service that their local phone company had been providing.

“And from what I could find, there weren’t any other solutions that made sense for us at Camanche,” Schutte explained.

Implementing the service via an easy-to-use web portal was painless and quick, and XOP Networks worked with Schutte to configure his end of things. The Camanche Fire Station has been using the XOP Networks’ Firebar solution for over 3 years now.

“It’s been a pleasure, being a customer of XOP Networks. They’ve given me a solution – one that is cost-effective and efficient and works well for my 35 member volunteer fire department.”

 

You can listen to a recording from a Camanche Volunteer Fire Department First Response call here.

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Role of WebRTC capable Audio Conference Bridge in Virtual Call Centers

In a typical Call Center an Automatic Call Distributor (ACD) routes in coming visitor calls to support Agents based on their skill set, availability etc. In case of a Virtual Call Center the agents work from their home office. In this case the Virtual Call Center then has to make long distance calls to reach the home based Agents. As these calls last for hours, needless to say, the Virtual Call Center ends up with a large long distance bill. A WebRTC capable Audio Conference Bridge can play an important role in this context. The WebRTC technology adds real time communications (e.g., audio, Video calls) capability to a browser itself. A Virtual Call Center can deploy such an Audio Conference Bridge in its network. Using a WebRTC capable browser (e.g, Google Chrome, Firefox) a home based Agent can then simply dial into the conference bridge over the Internet at no charge. The ACD can route the visitor’s call also into the conference bridge thus allowing conversation between the visitor and the agent to occur on the bridge. By removing the cost of long distance calls to home based agents, this approach makes a virtual call center much more cost effective.