Audio Conferencing

PTCL relies on Future Technologies solution on Aculab's Prosody X for massive conferencing system

Future Technologies was contracted to provide a 4000 port audio conferencing platform to Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited (PTCL).  The system had to provide flawless service to corporate clients for both scheduled and reservation-less conference applications.  While this was a complex project, Future Technologies had enough confidence in Aculab’s products and support that it pledged to deliver this massive system in only 60 days.

 “When combined with our own technical expertise, understanding of user requirements and 15 years of experience, Aculab’s unmatched dedicated support made this project a reality,” said Ali Baig, CEO of Future Technologies.

“PTCL is using the Future Technologies Audio Conferencing Platform for our enterprise and corporate customers,” said Nauman Ashraf Khan- Senior, Manager Product Development at PTCL.  “Future Technologies delivered as promised and have been supporting the system for over a year. All of our multinational clients, including Fortune 200+ companies in Pakistan are currently using the PTCL Audio Conference offering. We have successfully launched two products using this platform, Corporate Audio Conferencing and Personal Collaborator for on demand meetings.”

“After extensive research, we determined that Aculab and its Prosody X media processing platform was the best fit to meet our requirements for a number of reasons,” said Owais Ali Shah, Future Technologies’ Chief Technology Officer.  “The Prosody X platform is extremely flexible, giving us a number of options to build solutions to our customers’ specifications. Aculab is also very easy to work with. They listen to our challenges and issues, and are more than happy to make suggestions to best leverage the technology. Our company has been building products for the telecom market for more than 15 years.  Selecting Aculab to provide the foundation for our solutions was the best decision we ever made.”

The conferencing platform delivered to PTCL can scale from just a few participants up to some 240 parties on a single call.  Future Technologies has integrated several advanced features into this solution, like a web-based subscriber management tool that enables subscribers to schedule calls from remote locations and on the fly.  Another key feature is the ability to dial-out and add conference participants as needed.

Audio conferencing system features promoted by PTCL include:
•    On demand meetings
•    Scheduled meetings
•    Web interface
•    Online recording
•    Presentation
•    Flexible billing options
•    Statistics
•    Polling
•    Customized IVR

Prosody X is Aculab’s award winning media processing platform, which delivers the largest selection of audio codecs in the marketplace.  A fully featured Application Programming Interface (API) is also available for developers to access the powerful and flexible resources of the Prosody platform.

The Future Technologies audio conferencing system used the ISDN PRI ports of the Prosody X boards to interface to the telephone company’s circuits, while the unmatched DSP resources and core conferencing functionality provided the raw materials needed to create the full-featured system that was delivered.  Up to 128 PRIs can be equipped in a single system to support the maximum number of conference callers.

“Since many telecom systems have unique local or regional requirements, the Prosody X API provides a powerful tool for developers to customize the core functionality available to satisfy these local specifications,” said Andrew Nicholson, Aculab Product Manager.   “Aculab is also unique in that it readily supports customization efforts, even including modification to the core operational code.  Future Technologies took advantage of these services to ensure that the final system was an exact match to PTCL’s requirements.”

“We were extremely impressed with the responsiveness and effectiveness of Aculab’s engineering response,” said Gulzar Hussain, System Architect at Future Technologies. “We requested modifications to the standard API, and required a new driver. Aculab delivered the updated software with the speed-of-light, and the modifications were exactly what we needed.”

Aculab’s responsiveness, coupled with the Prosody X media processing resources and API, all contributed to Future Technologies fulfilling its commitment to deliver the conferencing platform in 60 days.

Focused on continued development, Future Technologies is also continuing to work with Aculab on other projects, including the enhancement of its highly successful centralized telecom customer services package.  

“We have standardized our development on Aculab platforms,” said Ali Baig, Future Technologies’ CEO.   “When we need something new, Aculab gets the first call.  Their expertise and experience in telecom, their responsiveness, and the quality of their products gives us the confidence to continue to expand our technology partnership with Aculab.”