Agito soups up mobile VoIP for the enterprise

Mobile VoIP may have started out as a consumer application allowing cost-conscious roamers to make international calls on the cheap, but enterprises are showing just as much willingness to trim their communications budget.

Agito Networks is hoping to latch on to that trend, announcing today an enterprise unified communications platforms that combines the mobile VoIP calling client with an enterprise unified communications platform.

While Skype and Truphone ply the consumer and prosumer circuits, Agito is tackling the enterprise side of the market, which typically requires that any communications solution integrate with existing business platforms, said Pejman Roshan, Agito chief marketing officer. To that end, Agito has created a mobile VoIP calling platform that acts as an extension of the corporate PBX but permits a number of different calling possibilities depending on the cost and particular condition of any situation. Most significantly, Roshan said, Agito has designed the platform to be transparent to the end-user—a client in the phone does all of the work. The employee doesn’t need to launch any applications or dial into a local number to redirect calls over a VoIP network, resulting in a happy enterprise billed for the cheapest possible call and a happy user, who can make calls as he or she normally would, Roshan said.

“Many of the value propositions we’re talking about are targeted at the enterprise, not the enterprise user,” Roshan said. “A solution has to be intuitive for the enterprise user.”

Agito’s server-client platform, called RoamAnywhere, plugs into the enterprise PBX or is hosted by an operator and into the individual smartphones. When an employee makes a phone call he or she dials the number normally, but the background client evaluates the number dialed and the resources available in the area. If WiFi is available, the client will convert the conversation into IP packets and ship it across the Internet to the enterprise PBX which will route the call normally. If no WiFi is available, the client will follow a set of guidelines in deciding whether to route the call over the carrier voice network or as a VoIP call over the phone’s 3G connection. If a user is roaming internationally, for instance, but has a roaming data plan with the enterprise home carrier, a VoIP over 3G call might be cheaper than paying standard international roaming rates, Roshan said. Likewise, a user in his home market making an international call might find the call rerouted to the PBX over the circuit-switched network only to be turned into a VoIP call at the enterprise. Agito also has integrated instant messaging and SMS into the client, both of which can be redirected over the most cost-effective channel in any given situation, Roshan said.

The VoIP over 3G is the trickiest of the services, Roshan admits. So far Agito is the only provider that delivers VoIP over the wide-area data network, which is subject to much more inconsistency in coverage and capacity than 2G voice networks. But Agito has managed to tweak its VoIP technology to reduce packet loss and account for the lower latency of many 3G networks, improving call quality. Roshan, however, expects Agito’s customers to only use VoIP over 3G when no other options are available or the cost of those options are prohibitively expensive.

“If you were using the solution in Manhattan, given the state of AT&T’s 3G network, you might not want to resort to VoIP over 3G,” Roshan said. “But in Europe 3G would be a good alternative. 3G networks there are a heck of lot better than ours.”