Reducing enterprise telecom costs

The proliferation of mobile phones has freed people from landline tethers as they move from place to place, but this mobility tends to stop at the enterprise door.  Inside the corporate campus, employees are chained to their desks when they want to talk to someone who is not in the same room.

A lot of them turn to their regular cellphones to gain some measure of intra-campus mobility, but this ad hoc solution is both expensive and limited.  Similarly, using traditional mobile phone technology to deploy an in-building wireless voice network requires a massive investment, and leaves telecommunications managers with a separate, parallel network to manage and maintain.

A better approach is to use low-cost Bluetooth technology to augment existing PBX and local area network (LAN) infrastructures with wireless voice capabilities.

Wireless handsets or headsets equipped with Bluetooth transceivers give users the same freedom of movement inside the enterprise, but calls get handled by the enterprise infrastructure instead of going through the wireless carrier’s network.  Calls within the campus never leave the enterprise LAN, and outgoing calls get sent over land lines via the PBX.

What is Bluetooth -- a technology, a standard,  an initiative, or a product? Bluetooth wireless technology is a de facto standard, as well as a specification for small-form factor, low-cost, short range radio links between mobile PCs, mobile phones and other portable devices. --from The Official Bluetooth website Visit www.bluetooth.com

How It Works

Bluetooth technology was originally conceived as a cable-replacement standard that would provide an easier and more flexible way to attach various peripherals to personal computers.  Within a personal workspace, an individual would use it to create a wireless personal area network (PAN) that can span 10 to 20 meters.

Today, a broad range of electronic devices-–including desktop computers, laptops, PDAs, printers and mobile-phone handsets and headsets-–are being equipped with embedded Bluetooth transceivers.  In fact, Allied Business Intelligence Inc. says that shipments of Bluetooth-enabled devices will reach 1.4 billion by 2005.  With very little additional expense, enterprises can provide wireless access to voice and data networks by creating Bluetooth PANs and bridging them to the wired infrastructure.

Bluetooth wireless technology uses the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band of the radio spectrum and currently supports a maximum rate of 740 kb/s, although the forthcoming version 2.0 of the standard will increase the bandwidth potential to as much as 10 Mb/s.  Even then, Bluetooth wireless technology will be no threat to, or replacement for traditional LAN technology.  However, it can already act as an access network, linking wireless voice and data devices into the enterprise network.  The calls go across the existing Ethernet LAN as voice over IP, using the H.323 protocol.

An enterprise Bluetooth system consists primarily of a series of base stations attached to the corporate LAN and a telephony gateway that connects the LAN to the PBX (Figure 1).  The base stations run software that listens for Bluetooth devices entering its coverage area and routes calls to and from them.  These base stations can be either specialized devices, or standard PCs equipped with a Bluetooth dongle that costs about $150.  If the PC has an embedded Bluetooth chip, only the base-station software is needed.  The base stations are managed by the server, which includes the user database and handles the authentication. 

When an employee enters the building with a mobile phone that includes a Bluetooth transceiver, the phone automatically registers with the Bluetooth campus system through the nearest base station.  Calls for the employee that come in through the PBX will get routed to the mobile handset, even as the employee roams among the different base-station domains.

When the employee originates a call, the Bluetooth system keeps it on the corporate LAN if it is to someone within the campus, and sends it out on a land line through the PBX if it is going outside.   Traffic takes the most cost-effective route, traveling for free across the LAN whenever possible, and exploiting the least-cost routing capabilities of the PBX to the fullest.

If employees are using a Bluetooth headset with their mobile phones when they are out and about, the Bluetooth enterprise system can connect directly to it when they come into the office.  Employees can roam around the office with their headsets, and do not need to carry the handsets. 

According to The Gartner Group, investing in a wireless office can boost productivity by as much as 30%.

The same Bluetooth system can also be used to provide wireless personal digital assistants (PDAs) with access to enterprise applications and data.  Employees can check facts or even make transactions as they roam around the campus, without having to go back to their desks.  With wireless voice and data connectivity, they can choose the workplace that best suits a particular task.

Hard Savings/Soft Benefits

A properly designed Bluetooth enterprise system can pay for itself within four to six months by saving on mobile phone charges.  However, this is just the beginning.

Once employees start using Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones as their office handsets, enterprises can reduce some of the capital expenditures associated with traditional PBX networks.  They can get by with fewer PBX handsets, won’t have to do as much wiring, and won’t need as many PBX cards.

Also, the investment in mobile handsets and headsets is easier to justify, because people will get more use out of these devices.  Similarly, the Bluetooth system leverages the existing corporate infrastructure, so enterprises achieve better usage of PBXs, LANs, computers and other assets.

A Bluetooth system can also help enterprises to reduce the costs associated with moves, adds, and changes. The typical employee relocates to a new office at least once every year, and each of these moves adds hundreds of dollars to administrative overhead when the individual has to be changed from one hard-wired phone to another. 

Less tangible but perhaps ultimately more important cost savings will be realized through the productivity gains that come with mobility.  According to The Gartner Group, investing in a wireless office can boost productivity by as much as 30%.

Employees can reclaim dead time they encounter while away from their desks by using it to make or receive phone calls.  They are easier to contact, so there is less time wasted on telephone tag and dealing with voice mail, and the cost of return calls is reduced.  In short, people can get answers to questions more quickly and make more progress with their work.  Employees are happier and customer satisfaction gets a boost. 

A Bluetooth-based system can also help streamline the processes for the hot-desking or hoteling employees who are in the office only occasionally and do not have a dedicated desk or phone line.  Without such a system, the visiting employees typically have to type in an ID code on a shared handset so that a server somewhere knows where they are and can direct calls to them. 

With a Bluetooth-based system, the employee’s regular mobile phone automatically registers itself when the employee enters the campus.  The server and shared handsets are eliminated, the employees don’t have to remember codes and key them in, and the support staff doesn’t have to issue and administer IDs.  Also, the employee is free to roam around the campus instead of staying glued to one of the visitor’s desks.

Farther out, the Bluetooth system will facilitate workflow applications that leverage PDAs and provide mobile access to enterprise resources.  These applications will streamline business processes and reduce paperwork, resulting in additional savings.

Minimizing Operational Costs

To realize all these savings, the Bluetooth enterprise system must be easy to implement and manage.  Ongoing operational costs tend to dwarf the purchase price of information-technology products, and in-building wireless networks have traditionally been very difficult to deploy and run.  Installers make endless field-strength measurements to figure out where base stations need to be placed, and it is very expensive to make changes to the network configuration as traffic patterns and volumes change.

A Bluetooth system can automate much of this process and eliminate a lot of expensive and error-prone human labor.  

Dongle A dongle (pronounced DONG-uhl) is a mechanism for ensuring that only authorized users can copy or use specific software applications, especially very expensive programs. --From WhatIs.com Read more

When base stations are created by adding Bluetooth dongles onto PCs, the system automatically locates them and then derives a network map that shows the coverage each of them is providing.  This information is displayed on a management console to the administrator, who can spot any coverage holes and figure out where additional base stations need to be placed.

The management console also provides the administrator with real-time monitoring information, and can suggest various courses of action.  For example, the management software might notice that people in one part of the network are suddenly making a lot more calls and exhausting the available channels.  The tool can flag the problem and alert the administrator.

When more coverage is needed, it only costs $150 to buy a dongle for a PC and turn it into a base station that is automatically discovered by the system.  This makes it very easy to scale the Bluetooth network as the demands on it increase.

The Mobile Advantage

Employees are already using their mobile phones to call colleagues just down the hall, but the call is being bounced off the wireless carrier network and being charged for accordingly.  With a Bluetooth enterprise system, mobile-phone calls made inside the enterprise can bypass the carrier network and travel for free across the corporate Ethernet LAN.

A Bluetooth-based telephony platform will integrate seamlessly with existing LAN and PBX platforms, enhancing them with mobile wireless access that increases their value and utility.  Enterprises can save on PBX hardware costs while providing an unprecedented mobility that increases employee productivity.  Businesses can also be much more responsive to partners and customers, which is a key competitive advantage in the Internet economy.
David Parsons is Chief Technology Officer for Norwood Systems, Surrey, UK. He can be reached at david.parsons@norwoodsystems.com.

Visit Norwood Systems online.