Insurance broker cuts costs and improves service quality with innovative ViBE solution from Powernet

Milton Keynes, 25 May 2011 – Leading insurance broker Ryan Insurance is saving money on line rental and call charges after deploying ViBE, an innovative IP telephony solution from Powernet, the UK’s oldest B2B ISP, to connect multiple branch offices across the UK. The ViBE technology, which supports discrete, non-interfering channels for voice and data on a standard ASDL broadband connection, has eliminated the Quality of Service issues experienced with the insurance broker’s previous IP telephony solution.

Ryan Insurance had originally implemented VoIP to support free calls between its multiple sites, but Quality of Service issues had hampered the adoption of IP telephony by its staff.
Powernet demonstrated the potential of ViBE and, after a brief trial, the insurance broker was convinced that the service had significant cost and call quality benefits for the company.

Trevor Ward, Support Services Director at Ryan Insurance said: “We always knew that VoIP could reduce telephony costs between our business units, but the quality of service provided by our previous solution just wasn’t adequate.  Making more than three calls simultaneously was problematic and we would have to ask people not to browse the web if someone was on a call.  Even the addition of a second ADSL broadband connection failed to resolve the call quality issues.

“With ViBE, we get improved call quality together with scalability at a very affordable price and we have halved our connection costs, since we only need one line.  The reaction from staff has been incredibly positive with more and more turning to VoIP without the concerns over performance that would have plagued them in the past.”

The ViBE solution also enables Ryan Insurance to manage its branch office telephony infrastructure remotely, with a single PBX.  And because up to 60 simultaneous calls can be made via a single ADSL line, the insurance broker can move staff between offices if necessary to meet demand, without any impact on call quality or data traffic.

Tony Tugulu, CEO at Powernet said: “VoIP often gets a bad press in the business community as too many providers are offering a service that is unreliable, absurdly limited in concurrent users or prohibitively expensive. ViBE is a real game changer because it provides the quality that businesses need and expect at a very affordable cost.”

Traditionally, competition between voice and data traffic has made it difficult to guarantee business-quality calls over an ADSL broadband connection.  ViBE overcomes this problem by treating voice data as priority traffic. Voice data packets are compressed and streamed with spacing between packets managed to maintain optimum voice quality.  Because ViBE uses G.729 compression to reduce the bandwidth required by voice data, it allows 28 simultaneous calls, compared to the three that are conventionally possible, without any compromise to data transfer rates.

Trevor concluded: “The service we have received from Powernet has been incredibly impressive. Not only have they been able to supply this groundbreaking technology, which suits our business perfectly, they have always been on hand with advice and assistance to help us navigate through every complex area of our connectivity.”