international telephone system question

[ZippyDan]

i didnt really know where to put this. it's a technical question but i don't know where it fits

we have offices in various locations around the world. let's take two: Atlanta and the Philippines

both sites have a VOIP box managing internal IP phones and external local non-VOIP land lines. normally the boxes communicate with each other via the internet and can be used to transfer calls internally as well as share external non-VOIP lines. but sometimes, there are internet problems that cut off communication between the sites

i'd like to have a 1-800 number that hunts the local non-VOIP land lines at one location and then hunts the non-VOIP land lines at the other location. that way if there is any problem with the lines in one location, or if they are just busy, and the inter-office communication is down, clients can still reach a person at one of the offices as the number will just hunt to the next location

is this possible?

 

[geno]

I think that's all very dependent on the equipment you're using to manage all of this. How about some details about your setup?

 

[ZippyDan]

hmm, that's why i wasn't too sure about where to put this... as far as i knew, 1800 numbers and hunting are something done at the telephone service provider's level and so my equipment should be irrelevant. indeed, if my concern is regarding redundancy in case the equipment at one site or the other goes down, i'm not sure how it is relevant. but i come to anandtech to learn. can you explain to me from a theoretical perspective what can be done here?

 

[ZippyDan]

still need some guidance on this

imagine i have:

Office A at Location A with Landlines A1, A2, and A3
Office B at location B with Landlines B1, B2, B3
Toll Free Number (TFN) 1-800-555-DIAF

My TFN currently hunts in this order looking for an open line:

A1
A2
A3

Is it possible to make the TFN hunt like so:

A1
A2
A3
B1
B2
B3

To add extra difficulty to the problem, Office B is overseas. To me, this seems like a telephone company-level solution, since I have no control over the TFN or its hunting. But just since the last poster was curious: I have an Allworx VOIP PBX system at each location which talk to each other.

My concern is if our telephones go down at Office A, then someone calling the TFN would still get forwarded to the lines at Office B. I'm not sure if that would actually work since I'm not sure how Hunting works... does it only hunt to the next line when it gets a busy signal? Would telephone lines being "down" cause the hunt to proceed to the next line in order? I suppose it would depend on the kind of "down" ? Finally, can a hunting system even do this? It seems so simple in theory and yet AT&T tells me they can only hunt telephone lines that are all in the same location.

 

[hellenpage]

The Unified communication system is an essential tool for success in the business. Toll free numbers get busy because of the huge number of incoming calls. Avail the services of the people in the telecom company. The services of the one I know is very cost effective and could even provide you with virtual pbx system.

 

[GeekDrew]

You're correct - hunting is done on the telco side, not customer. I've never tried hunting across nxx blocks, but it really wouldn't surprise me if it can't (or won't) be done. They might have some other solution that will take care of this though -- call forwarding or selective/busy call forwarding maybe?

 

[Spineshank]

hmm, that's why i wasn't too sure about where to put this... as far as i knew, 1800 numbers and hunting are something done at the telephone service provider's level and so my equipment should be irrelevant. indeed, if my concern is regarding redundancy in case the equipment at one site or the other goes down, i'm not sure how it is relevant. but i come to anandtech to learn. can you explain to me from a theoretical perspective what can be done here?

That actually is correct. This has nothing to do with your setup. Your service provider would have to setup that kind of routing. Probably would be expensive as shit though.

I have it setup here at my work place but our 2 sites are only about an hour drive apart.

 

[Spineshank]

You're correct - hunting is done on the telco side, not customer. I've never tried hunting across nxx blocks, but it really wouldn't surprise me if it can't (or won't) be done. They might have some other solution that will take care of this though -- call forwarding or selective/busy call forwarding maybe?

I dont know if it can be done automatically or not. But i know they could set it up that in case of emergency you could basically flip the switch t0 the other side.