It’s startling to realize how quickly IP telephony did get accepted. Even in 2008, when Rajan posted The March of IP telephony – Part 1, the bulk of our clients were using TDM boards. Digium and Sangoma hardware were our go-to choices. Innovators like those two companies were blowing up the market. This allowed Asterisk to continue to build on its foothold. Clients looking for stability were increasingly able to choose Asterisk, but still connecting via PRI. Selecting a quality VoIP carrier was a difficult process for those not sharing a colocation facility with a reputable provider.
With the widespread acceptance of Asterisk as a telephony option, the ability to utilize VoIP grew. Anybody who could install Asterisk could get a VoIP connection and hook up a few phones for an office PBX. Add in the general availability of broadband Internet, ubiquitous network access in the office for IP-based phones, and the maturity of VoIP carriers, and all the pieces were in place for an IP telephony boom.
Somewhere in the last five years, VoIP has been fully embraced, and the number of requests for connections to PRIs has dropped dramatically. Typically, even an on-premise Q-Suite call center software install with PRIs will utilize a PRI-to-SIP adaptor to allow a high-availability solution. Much more common is a dedicated high-speed link that allows a large volume of calls to be transacted between the call center and a quality SIP provider. Such an arrangement is the key driver behind the ready deployment of Cloud-based call center software. It will be interesting to see where the contact center is in the next five years.