- How It's Done

How Janitorial Contractor Grupo Valdez Swept Across Europe.
The non-sanitized version

Victor Gevalia took charge of voice communications for Grupo Valdez the way he had done with their time-logging, bookkeeping VPN. He started by reevaluating the Valdez LAN and preparing it to give right-of-way to voice traffic.

Gevalia knew that Valdez could simply create accounts with an Internet telephony service provider (ITSP) using phone numbers that could be dialed as local in other cities, but he had a plan that offered more business value.

He set up an account with an ITSP that sold bandwidth throughout Europe. He had checked references and felt confident the supplier provided reliable, securely encrypted voice traffic. They also enhanced data packet shaping for reassembly by the receiver to improve quality of service.

A clean arrangement

Meanwhile, Jorge Valdez made agreements with office maintenance contractors in target cities. Part of his unique franchise-like arrangement specified that each contractor would make space for a small gateway appliance with access to a DSL connection and one regular telephone line.

The DSL line created a high-speed connection for the Valdez VPN and doubled as the digital voice connection back to headquarters in Barcelona. The appliance was an Epygi Quadro Gateway FXO.

The plan hinged on a gateway.

The gateway bridged the connection between traditional telephony signals and analog voice and the session initiation protocol (SIP) and digital voice of the IP data world. In addition, it served as router with firewall at the contractor's premises directing traffic to phone and PC.

Incoming calls on the phone line would be forwarded via wide area network (WAN) to the Valdez warehouse facility in Barcelona. There, a Quadro IP PBX 4x would recognize the call's origin and route it to the appropriate account manager. These calls arrived in Barcelona for little or no cost.

Meanwhile, the Valdez contractor received a VoIP number that could be dialed as a four digit extension from headquarters.

That number could be programmed to ring on the contractor's cell phone for dispatching or customer service. Barcelona's conversations with the remote Valdez contractor were always free of LD tolls.

The Valdez system was almost fail-proof. Since each Quadro Gateway was connected to the public telephone network, calls could be forwarded to the contractor if the network were down for any reason.

I came, I saw, I emptied waste bins.

With the cost savings, the new hardware paid for itself in a matter of months. Grupo Valdez expanded to major markets all over Europe and began eyeing the rest of the world.

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