Guide To Reducing Call Costs

LCR (least cost routing) is the ability of a telephone system to be able to intelligently work out the cheapest method of connecting calls. For example, if you have a private digital circuit for communications between two or more remote offices a telephone system should be able to identify dialled numbers associated with those offices, block the call being made over the public network (time and distance related variable cost) and divert it to the private circuit (fixed cost). If your PBX also has ‘Alternative Carrier’ features where you can connect more than one network operator then LCR should also be able to identify that Carrier A is cheaper than Carrier B to certain destinations at certain times of the day.

Why have it?

Well, it’s all about saving money and effective use of resources. There’s no point installing and renting private circuits if your staff insist on dialling over the public network.

Changing to Least Cost Routing (LCR) can be a straightforward procedure without the need to change your existing telephone number or line. Just contact an alternative carrier and ask them for a quote.

Some Guidelines on Selecting a Carrier:

Check with your existing supplier first to see if they have an alternative plan that would suite your business. Ask them to quantify in their opinion what the savings would be.

If you decide to explore the alternative carrier market a good place to start would be their web sites to familiarise yourself with the terminology and the products and services on offer.

Apart from standard call services check if the carrier can do nongeographic numbers as well (0800, 0845) as there may be some savings to be made there too.

In the last 12 months the adoption of broadband has reached a significant level in the UK. It is often price advantageous to users to source broadband and dialled calls from the same supplier.

It’s worth asking for a couple of references. Please phone them to make sure the service is acceptable in terms of reliability, fault clearance times, quality of the calls and billing.

Don’t fall for single tariff deals. For example, 5p a minute to the USA. Frequently the lines will be busy, the quality poor and often all the other destinations you dial really expensive.

Carrier Pre-Selection (CPS)

Since late 2002 a new service has been enabled for users called carrier preselection. Until CPS, if you’ve wanted to make your calls with someone other than BT, you would have had to dial a prefix code before every call, or installed automatic equipment to do this for you.

CPS works by placing your order with an alternate carrier who will then advise BT they are now carrying the calls and then bill you accordingly. BT supply a date that you will be routed through the alternate carrier and write to you separately to advise that from that point they will only be providing your line rental and any other agreed services.

Costs: The trouble here is in comparing like for like offerings from the different carriers. One of the yardsticks we would recommend is to determine the cost of a national call at peak rate. Some operators are offering such calls at well under 2.0p per minute which can represent a considerable saving over ‘standard’ tariffs.

Alternative Technology

If you have an IP PBX then why not also consider using IP trunks instead of ISDN lines. IP Trunks work out cheaper. You need to make sure that your PBX is compatible and that the network provider has what is called QoS (Quality of Service, pronounced Kwoz) which prioritises voice calls over data communications used on the same network.