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A couple of years ago I saw a picture of a desk with a strange looking phone on it. The phone had a keypad and a bunch of buttons but the weirdest thing about it was that it had two handsets. I thought maybe it was so two people could listen and talk on a conversation without being in speakerphone or a way to share a phone between two people. In the last few weeks I discovered that they're called trading turrets. Here's an example of really nice one. I've become obsessed with learning about these things and I've discovered two things: they're very expensive and there aren't many soft versions of them. They have all kinds of interesting functions like hoot and holler, intercom, multicast, and other stuff. I've read that these turrets can end up costing $10,000 per seat sometimes, inclusive of hardware and support software and licenses. I've been able to find a single provider of a trading turret softphone from this company. It looks old and costs $1,000 for the software. Can someone tell me more about these turrets or if there are cheaper alternatives to the professional grade versions sold to financial companies?
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Jan 31, 2017 04:06
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:42 |
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Jerk McJerkface posted:Really helpful and interesting information. I don't have a background in telephony or computers so bare with me. I'm wondering why there isn't an exclusive IP-based turret system that uses a company's existing internet connection. Why won't SIP work? If more bandwidth can be had, why can't more simultaneous connections be had as long as a system is designed with an efficient codec? It seems like moving the concept from analog to digital would reduce overhead by enormous amounts, with virtualized servers and web-based dashboards instead of these dedicated pieces or hardware. If Mumble and Teamspeak can host hundreds of people on a single channel, why can't a soft trading turret?
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Feb 1, 2017 23:41
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1. So is a hoot-n-holler channel (or room? What do you call an instance of a hoot-n-holler?) effectively, but not technically, the same as a mumble or teamspeak channel? That is to say is it simply a collection of users where anyone can speak and everyone will hear them? 2. Are hoot-n-hollers reached with phone numbers or are they hosted on a server with some other way to gain access to them? 3. Do turrets and their associated software and servers perform a similar function to a conference call hosting service? I never really thought about it, but the reason why people have to dial in to a conference call is because no single person's phone can handle 20 or 30 people calling in so the conference call service has the hardware and software to make it happen, correct? For the sake of the next few questions, let's assume there are ten hoot-n-holler rooms each with 50 callers on each for a total of 500 lines of activity. 4. Are there eventually 500 physical phone lines for all of this activity when all is said and done? Does each call from the turret to the hoot-n-holler number need its own line? 5. Do high volume turrets have dozens of physical lines dedicated to that individual turret so a trader/analyst/whoever can be on the ten hoot-n-hollers and make multiple calls at the same time? 6. Do all of the lines to a turret have their own number or do they only have a single number so the back end will pick an available line when the one number is dialed? 7. Is it correct to say that the bottleneck to achieving the same goal with IP is processing power and bandwidth? Which one is more important?
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Feb 4, 2017 22:12
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Jerk McJerkface posted:What's your end game here? Are you trying to code your own system or something and hope to leverage line Asterisk or FreePBX to break into the lucrative turret or ringdown market? Kind of. I'm wondering if there would be a market for a cheaper, lighter weight version of this for smaller businesses or industries. A way for offices to have hoot and hollers with each other or simply a nice soft phone that can hold entire company's worth of contacts so they can be called quickly, plus all the nice merging and swapping features that come on turrets. If it could be done off an open-source system, even better. I have a feeling you're about to shatter my dreams with reality.
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Feb 15, 2017 03:58
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Jerk McJerkface posted:Describe exactly what you want to happen. Sell me this idea. Forget the technical details. Assume it all exists and works and I own a company you'd expect to sell to. Why should I replace my CCM with whatever this mess you are selling is. You're a small or medium-sized business. The product is a soft-phone that has a very similar interface to a trading turret. Pages of contacts, the ability to have more than one handset, the ability to swap or merge active calls, the ability to have a hoot-n-holler between users (maybe two people in the same department at different offices who would benefit from having and always-on connection), the ability to record calls, the ability to stream TV or news within the phone client. All done on IP so there is no investment in analog phone lines or paying for the expenses that go along with them. Maybe I'm looking at it wrong. Maybe what I have in my mind is more a soft-VOIP phone that shares some features with a turret and not a turret that is all IP-based.
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Feb 18, 2017 18:10
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 01:42 |
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Jerk McJerkface posted:All these features you describe are present in most major IP phone systems. Avaya does it, cicso does it. The only bad idea in your lot is the ability to stream TV since I'm already at a PC so why have video streaming in my phone. It's redundant. I checked out Cisco and Avaya's soft phones and they look pretty archaic. I'm guessing the phones are relatively cheap while the services provided are very expensive. I'm wondering if there would be a market for this type of thing using open source products like Asterisk with a similar interface to a turret. What would your opinion be after seeing the business from the inside? And what do you do now?
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Feb 19, 2017 15:25
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