Fixed Cellular Terminal
Fixed cellular terminal solutions in Qatar
What is a Fixed Cellular Terminal (FCT)?
Have you noticed that some landline calls arrive as cell phone numbers in your cell phones? There is a good chance that their enterprise PBX dialed through an FCT. A Fixed Cellular Terminal is a device that allows the enterprise PBX to make/receive calls over the GSM/CDMA networks. The FCT can hold one or more GSM/CDMA SIM cards and connect as “Trunks” on the enterprise PBX’s trunk ports. The PBX (which can have a combination of wireline trunks and Fixed Cellular Terminal trunks) can decide which network to route the outgoing calls. Generally, the PBX chooses this based on an LCR (Least Cost Routing calculation). If the calls from your company landline are to mobile phones, they could probably be routed through the FCT as mobile to mobile calls are cheaper. If the needs are to other landlines, they could be routed through the telephone company’s regular analog trunk lines. FCT supports one GSM/CDMA SIM card to 8 GSM/CDMA SIM cards or even more, depending on the manufacturer. FCT is a simple device but could produce some serious cost savings. Please check below to find the applications of FCTs:
Applications of Fixed Cellular Terminals (FCT):
Remote Location connectivity
Suppose a company has a branch atop a hill or a remote village/ inaccessible location where the telephone wired lines cannot go but has GSM/CDMA cellular coverage. The PBX in that branch could use an FCT as their trunk lines to send and receive calls. Here it doesn’t save cost but helps give basic connectivity to remote locations.
Reduction of Charges when dialing to the cell phones of company employees
Think of this: A company generally has a corporate connection with a cellular provider, which means that generally, all the employees of the company use the same service provider for the cell phones. Mostly, the employees’ calls (in the company) are free of cost or have a very low tariff. But the fact is that the help desk representatives or receptionists or even employees call other employees from the landlines. So, if you configure your PBX to send all these calls through the FCT on the cellular network, there would be good cost savings. This could be extended to other cellphones, too, as cellphone-cellphone calling is cheaper than landline-cellphone calling.
Cheaper One Number service
Many PBX support what is called a one-number service – they forward all the individual employee calls to the landline in the mornings and to the cell phones after the evenings. Some PBX also supports parallel ringing – Which rings both cell phone and landline, whichever connects first and transfer the call to that. But there is one issue with this service – when the call is forwarded, there are charges to the cellular network based on the number of minutes. This, for an incoming call! So, when FCT is used with a GSM/CDMA SIM card of the same cellular service provider as the corporate cellular service provider when the calls are forwarded, there will not be additional charges / minimal charges as the mobile SIM card is calling the same mobile SIM card (from the same cellular service provider) and both are having a corporate connection. This makes this service cost-effective and useful.
