Learn what "Toll Bypass" is, its benefits and drawbacks along with how it relates to IVP based Voice Services
Overview
Toll Bypass is a term used to describe the practice of routing calls in a specific way to minimize or avoid outbound call charges, typically associated with long distance or international calls.
Historically this was achieved by configuring the company PBX to specifically route calls over an IP WAN to either:
1. Route internal calls to the PBX at the other location where they person they have called is based so they are "Free" or;
2. Route external calls via the PBX / Gateway that is closest to the destination number into the PSTN, where possible making it appear like "local" call to the carrier rather than a long distance or international call that incur more expensive call charges.
In today's world where organizations are rapidly adopting cloud based UCaaS services such as Microsoft Teams and Cisco WebEx that all provide internal "Free" calling between staff, Toll Bypass becomes relevant only for calls made outside the organization.
Drawbacks and Limitations
While Toll Bypass can be quite attractive from a cost reduction point of view, it does also have several limitations to be aware of:
1. Toll Bypass is specifically defined as being explicitly illegal in several Jurisdictions.
2. Outgoing Calls made via Toll Bypass will not present the original Caller ID of the person making the call and will instead show a "local" caller ID that cannot be called back to reach the original caller directly creating potential compliance issues.
3. Call Quality can be impacted depending on the quality of the IP WAN and factors like end-to-end latency or compression that may be used to conserve bandwidth.
Does the IVP support Toll Bypass?
The Intelligent Voice Platform does not support the manipulation of Customer provided Caller ID on outgoing calls based on the destination called or the concept of Toll Bypass in general.
Note: The IVP will accept any valid calling number associated with the service provided on outbound calls and does not perform any validation between the origin and destination.