Today, Alpha Telecom launched "plug and play" VoIP gateways that let enterprises migrate to IP Telephony using their existing Centrex/Digital PBXs and speaker phones.

Enterprises wanting to take advantage of the communications cost savings of IP telephony without changing out their Centrex systems or Nortel or Lucent digital PBXs and expensive digital desktop phones now have a solution - a cost-effective, high-performance, plug-and-play VoIP gateway from Alpha Telecom, Inc. USA that saves most of the capital equipment cost and all of the ancillary retraining expense and time associated with a new network infrastructure. Already chosen by leading North American service providers, Alpha Telecom's broad range of next-generation, carrier-class managed customer-premises equipment (CPE) supports most PBX and managed IP-Centrex platforms.

Alpha Telecom's Arion series VoIP gateways migrate an enterprise's legacy telephones into the service provider's system, enabling the carrier to offer Centrex features over its IP backbone and to seamlessly provision, configure and manage VoIP service without user intervention; the service provider merely ships the Arion units to the customer for plug-and-play attachment to individual phones by the enterprise's IT department or by the users themselves.The IT department can also deploy an Alpha Telecom element management system (EMS) for provisioning, mass configuration, troubleshooting and mass upgrades.This EMS does not require individual user involvement, nor does it require them to load software on a PC.

"With our VoIP gateways, an enterprise can protect their capital investment by extending the life of their legacy system on a per-user or per-workgroup basis," said Alpha Telecom President Sid Sung."Of course, they could do a 'forklift' change to a brand new state-of-the-art PBX that's already VoIP capable, but that entails changing all their handsets - which can cost up to $600 each - reprogramming everything, and then training everyone on the new system because all the features are different."

An added benefit of the Arion series gateways is that organizations can enjoy the advantages of IP telephony with their existing digital speaker phones, where the quality is far superior to that of a dedicated VoIP speaker phone. Moreover, because the plug-and-play VoIP gateways reside at the customer site, they support portability.This allows an enterprise's IT department to avoid carrier service-order changes and gives it control to balance user requirements for high functionally with the benefits of streamlined management and reduced facilities costs.