Philamlife

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Philamlife sets the pace in communications technology through Voice over IP (VoIP) with WeSolv

The Philippine American Life and General Insurance Company, or Philamlife, accounts for more than 30% of the local life insurance market. Because of its market leadership, changing economic conditions, and fresh opportunities emerging in the Philippines, Philamlife is committed to set the pace in product development in the fields of medical insurance, and financial services. It is also a leader in the application of communications and networking technology to support its daily operation, which is heavily dependent on its information systems.

The Challenge

According to Floro P. San Juan, Vice President of the Data Center Division of Philamlife, the company was looking for a way to arrest its spiraling telephone communications costs while providing extra call handling capacity. "We had several instances wherein the volume of calls far outstripped the capacity of our telephone trunk lines, preventing us from making calls to our other offices," he points out. Moreover, the transfer of the company's top executives, and sales and investment personnel from its United Nations Avenue headquarters in Manila to the Philamlife Tower on Paseo de Roxas Avenue in Makati City has generated a lot of additional voice and data communications traffic, further exacerbating the problem. "The major challenge facing this project is the limited budget," says San Juan.

The Solution:VoIP

Philamlife's network planners identified Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology as an appropriate solution. Using VoIP, Philamlife would shunt its internal, office-to-office phone calls away from the "traditional" telephone network to its corporate data network. This strategy would free up precious trunk line capacity and preclude the need to order more trunk lines.

Floro San Juan, VP of Data Center Division at Philamlife To implement this strategy, Philamlife turned to Cisco's versatile networking products and WeSolv Open Computing, Inc.

Telephone calls are traditionally made over the Public Switched Telephone Network, or PSTN, which was designed from the beginning to support voice communications. Data networks, however, are packet-based and were not originally designed to support voice transmissions. Therefore, to be able to transmit voice over a data network, several things must be done: First, the voice signal needs to be converted into a stream of data packets. Second, the packets must be transmitted over the network and be made to arrive at their destination with very little delay. And third, at the destination, the packets must be rearranged into the correct chronological sequence and converted back into a steady stream of voice signals.

VoIP is a technology that accomplishes all of the above, thereby allowing voice to "ride" on a data network. A voice signal enters a data network via an interconnection between a telephony device, such as a phone, fax, or PABX, and a data networking device, such as a router. The router uses VoIP to convert voice signals into IP data packets. These packets are assigned a high transmission priority within the network to ensure a speedy arrival at their destination. At the receiving end, the router (also using VoIP) converts the packets back into normal voice signals and passes them onto telephones, PABX's or the PSTN. By allowing telephony devices to communicate with each other via an existing data network, VoIP eliminates the need for a separate set of transmission lines dedicated to voice communications.

VoIP consumes only a small portion of a data network's bandwidth. Typically, one conversation takes up only 11 kilobits per second (kbps) or less. Furthermore, network bandwidth is consumed only while the call is in progress. San Juan says that the company can now use their corporate data network for videoconferencing and other multimedia applications.

Bobby M. Galinato, Adviser of Technical Support, adds that communications within their company is done through file transfers, email and phone calls. "And sometimes, we would require a faster leased line connection than what the local carriers can offer. Early on, we planned on implementing a conventional network using an E1 leased line with time-division multiplexers that allocate portions of the bandwidth to data and voice channels. But that set-up would not have allowed us to make full use of the available transmission bandwidth. Hence, we decided on Voice over IP," Galinato says.Philamlife purchased Cisco multi-service routers capable of supporting data, voice, video, and dial integration. These were installed at the U.N. Avenue office and at the Philamlife Tower and at Philamlife's call center in Ortigas. In addition, the company purchased Cisco Catalyst switches for its data communications requirements.

Bobby Galinato, Adviser of Technical Support at Philamlife "These multi-service routers now provide connectivity between the PABX's serving the three offices. This setup supports up to sixteen simultaneous voice calls between U.N. Avenue and the Tower, and eight at Ortigas," Galinato says. "We found that the voice traffic over our PSTN trunk lines was reduced significantly-down to less than 60 percent of the original load! It was a winning situation at all the Philamlife sites," emphasizes San Juan.

Expansion Plans

"We now have four VoIP locations and plan to deploy this technology at all the major remote offices. We expect our VoIP network to grow to around 15 to 20 locations in the next two years," says San Juan.

San Juan adds that all of Philamlife's communication requirements will use IP. "Where there is a situation that results in a substantial volume of toll charges, we will transfer it to VoIP as part of the strategy. But in terms of data, we will use IP as our main transmission protocol."

Galinato says the company would like to expand the VoIP implementation to the four major regional offices in the south. "The company is also looking into videoconferencing using the equipment via E1 and ISDN lines. Cisco is coming out with convergence of video, voice and data. The Philam Group will be very interested in these future projects."

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