External Phones

[TzarElectric]

Hello Vicidial Enthusiasts,

I am trying to connect remote agents to my Vicidial. And I need your expertise.

By "remote" I mean at-home agents, not vicidial feature Remote Agents. I am running the outbound
campaign.

Created a phone with the Protocol as "EXTERNAL"
Dial Plan Number: Here I entered the Remote Agent`s cell phone
The remote agent can log in as an agent with a cell phone ( Instead of Zoiper or Brea). and his/her cell phone starts to ring.


The question is:
Is the traffic will be dialled over (SIP provider) trunk to reach or the cell phone provider?
The agent will be in the other country, and it will in the outbound campaign.
The reason why I am asking is to prevent agents to be charged from their cell phone providers.

Of course, it would be easy to open up TCP/UDP ports 80 and 5060, forward them to my server,
and have the agents connect to the dialer using the Vicidial server's IP address.
But that is not always the best settings.

Any thoughts greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[MJCoate]

Your question really depends on the agent's cell plan. Your right in that the traffic goes out your trunk and eventually through their carrier. There's actually two parts to billing here: you're being billed by your SIP trunk provider for the call the dialer places to the cell phone and your agent is potentially getting billed for that call when it comes in to their cell. But again, you have to check with the agents to find out what their cell plan is.

[TzarElectric]

Thank you very much! Appreciate your thoughts!
As for now, most of the agents I will connect agents to the server.

[williamconley]

Note that there are some cell-phone transmitter boxes that allow sip-cell conversion specifically designed to allow you to generate a cell call from your Asterisk-based PBX. The reason is that in some calling plans, cell-to-cell is free. This creates a significantly less expensive call path when using a dialplan that routes all Cell calls to that device.

There are various reasons for doing this of course: Agents using cell phones and Prospects who have cell phones being the big two. Less scrupulous call centers try to take advantage of "unlimited minutes" cell phone plans.

But this is not normal technology, and likely doesn't apply if your local cell tower is in a different country and on a different carrier than the person you're calling.