MyVoIPnews

Free phone with VoIP: Now you're talking!

Now this is a VoIP solution: a business VoIP plan that actually comes with an IP phone for each subscriber. NBS president Russell Markman described the “Hosted Seat with Phone” VoIP solution as “a new concept in the evolution of business communications, and is at a price point now where we will begin to witness the proliferation of VoIP within the SMB market,” and My VoIP News may forgive the hyperbole this time.

New York, New York-based NBS, telecom reseller and VoIP solution provider, announced today (yes, on Saturday) pricing for their new "Hosted Seat with Phone" VoIP solution. The hosted VoIP solution works just as Centrex service does, but the difference is in the offer: By offering the latest IP phone models as part of the service plan, NBS Hosted V.o.I.C.E., or Voice over Internet Communications Exchange, eliminates the need for new business telephone purchases.

Users are promised a fully functional VoIP solution, featuring IP phones at each seat. The deal starts at $15.99 per seat, and NBS has priced their service with per minute rates; the company also offers unlimited use plans for pre-specified packages of minutes with lower rates.

Directory listing, 911 services, non-verified account codes and multi-party conferencing on demand are included for the primary seat; voice and web portals for account management are also part of the plan, with voicemail to e-mail integration and advanced call forwarding functions built in.

Founded in 1984, NBS provides a variety of voice, data, internet and business VoIP services to a customer base that includes residential, small business, and large corporate clients. With its own systems for electronic provisioning, customer care, and flexible billing, NBS interfaces with several major carriers including Verizon, Qwest, Covad and Level3. NBS also provides its support and back-office infrastructure to wholesale clients. Its NBS V.o.I.C.E. suite of VoIP solutions is offered in Hosted and Direct Trunking configurations for corporations, as well as in residential form.

New PRG VoIP

PRG Group, Inc., holding company for PRG Systems Inc. and Prime Communications Inc., has introduced its stand-alone business VoIP IPX phone system.

Using advanced routing schemes, PRG’s VoIP system can interface with multiple networks and allow system administrators to reconfigure end-user features and call functions online. Standard features include automatic call distribution, unified messaging, conference services and PBX-driven visual menu systems that provide visual notification of voicemail messages.

World wide webinar

“What,” VoIP solutions provider Pulvermedia rhetorically asks, “do high growth services like videoconferencing, unified messaging, ringback tones, prepaid calling cards, IP Centrex, IVR, and IP Contact Centers all have in common? The answer is that they all need IP-based media processing – the 'behind the scenes' foundation essential for economical and scalable VoIP, video, and IMS enhanced services.”

With this intro, Pulvermedia announced yesterday its up-and-coming webinar entitled “IP Media Processing: The Foundation for VoIP and IMS Services,” which presents a new platform-independent media processing technology designed to cover the entire range of media processing deployment options, from small enterprise point solutions running on Linux-based servers, to solutions running on ATCA-based hardware platforms, up to the largest IMS deployments running on purpose-built hardware.

This secret new technology promises VoIP solution and IMS application vendors, service providers, and enterprises a “one-stop shop” for any IP media processing functional or economic requirement, regardless of hardware platform, control protocol, market, or application.

The webinar is targeted for CTOs, product and network architects, and technical personnel within telecom vendor, service provider, and Fortune 500 companies involved in business VoIP and IMS service development and deployment.

The main speaker will be RadiSys senior product marketing manager Ray Adensamer, a twenty-year veteran of the data and telecommunications industries in the areas of product marketing and business development. The moderator is Pulvermedia’s own Carl Ford, the community developer and VP content.

“IP Media Processing: The Foundation for VoIP and IMS Services” will be held Wednesday, June 27 at noon EDT. To log on for the event, go to www.iian.ibeam.com/events/mult001/22751/.

The VoIP PBX Touch(Star)

TouchStar today (on Saturday – really) announces its expansion outside of the call center industry with the availability of its new business VoIP PBX phone system.

TouchStar’s IP PBX system is software-based and seeks to allow businesses to easily expand, upgrade, and maintain their system to grow with their business. The TouchStar VoIP solution promises “classic PBX functionality” and features such as recording, monitoring, conference bridging, call queuing, and intelligent ACD/IVR. The IP PBX Administrator Application seeks to allow the end user to make moves, adds, and changes with little or no involvement by IT or Telecom staff.

TouchStar is a call center solution provider that offers on-site call center software, hosted call center systems, predictive dialers, automated voice messaging, voice, data and long distance services, and, of course, the VoIP solution. TouchStar acquired Digisoft in 2005 and Sigmaworx in 2006, and has been named as one of the Denver Business Journal’s “Fastest Growing Large Private Companies in Colorado” for four years in a row. TouchStar is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and has offices in Pune, India; Mumbai, India; New York, New York; Davenport, Iowa; Manchester, England; and Manila, Philippines.

Another sign of Intelligence

Network General Corporation, provider of IT Service Assurance solutions, today announced the addition of VoIP Intelligence to its VoIP Forensics solution, a business VoIP solution available from the Network Intelligence Suite.

VoIP Intelligence seeks to provide efficient display of individual call performance and overall VoIP metrics, unique visualization of per-call VoIP performance, and instant correlation of voice and video communications with data traffic patterns.

In connection with the VoIP Intelligence release, a Network General produced video entitled “Unified Communications and VoIP Intelligence” is now available on You Tube, which pretty much guarantees a mention in this blog.

Fer(rier Hodgson) Shore(Tel)!

ShoreTel, Inc., a provider of business VoIP solutions, today announced that insolvency firm Ferrier Hodgson has rolled out ShoreTel’s business VoIP system to 105 users at its office in Sydney.

Replaced in the move was the company’s extant Samsung PABX solution, and the ShoreTellers were pleased as punch to point out that their firm had curried Ferrier’s favor over rival VoIP solutions from Avaya and Samsung and replaced an aging, leased Samsung PABX system.

The ShoreTel VoIP solution includes a ShoreGear-E1 which interfaces over an ISDN network to its service provider, ShoreTel 560 and ShoreTel 230 handsets and two ShoreGear-120 switches capable of supporting up to 240 IP phones. The VoIP solution is managed using ShoreWare Director, a browser-based administration interface.

Established in 1976, Ferrier Hodgson is a top Asian Pacific provider of turnaround, reconstruction and forensics services. The Ferrier Hodgson Group boasts over forty partners and 300 staff. Ferrier Hodgson has offices in Australia’s capital cities, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan and New Zealand.

Founded in 1996, ShoreTel headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., with regional offices in the United Kingdom; Sydney, Australia; and Munich, Germany. ShoreTel can also boast that, for four years running, IT execs surveyed by independent firm Nemertes Research have rated ShoreTel highest in customer satisfaction among business VoIP solution providers.

8x8 = #1

8x8, Inc., provider of Packet8 residential, video, and business VoIP phone services, grabbed a nice industry nod from telecom research firm AMI Partners. In the report entitled, “SMB Interest Perks Up in Hosted VoIP,” AMI ranked the Packet8 Virtual Office service as the no. 1 hosted VoIP phone system choice by US-based small- and medium-sized businesses.

The report sought to provide in-depth analysis of the North American hosted VoIP market, including looks at revenue forecast, vendor market share, and demand drivers. According to the report, 8x8’s business VoIP, Packet8 Virtual Office, boasted some 6,000 customers as of April 2007.

Additional vendors covered in the report include Apptix, Aptela, AT&T, Bandwidth.com, Cbeyond, Covad Communications, M5 Networks, Qwest, Speakeasy, Sprint Nextel, Verizon, and XO Communications.

Funny quote of the week has got to go to Huw Rees, who said, “AMI Partners’ recent VoIP report is a very insightful and comprehensive study of the rapidly growing market for hosted VoIP business phone services…”

(Is he riffing on Oscar Wilde here? “…your appreciation has been most intelligent. I congratulate you on the great success of your performance, which persuades me that you think almost as highly of this play as I do myself…”)

Upon release of the report, AMI Partners’ New York-based vice president for SMB infrastructure solutions Sanjeev Aggarwal said, “the small business segment is forecasted to grow at a spectacular 69 percent on a cumulative basis for the next five years. … The concept of hosted VoIP is analogous to software-as-a-service where upstarts like salesforce.com and NetSuite are gaining rapid adoption…”

8x8, Inc. offers individual residential internet telephony and business VoIP to small- and medium-sized organizations. Packet8 VoIP service plans start at $24.99 per month. Packet8 Virtual Office, 8x8 Virtual Office runs $49.99 per month per extension.

Logic hits no. 125

VoIP Logic LLC, a hosted voice-over-IP infrastructure and VoIP solutions provider, today announced the live deployment of its hosted VoIP services for OneStream Networks. OneStream is a national provider of managed IP networks and enterprise-grade VoIP services based in Rochester, N.Y. This rollout represents something of a milestone for VoIP Logic, as the OneStream job marks the 125th system installation for the company.

Founded in February 2003, VoIP Logic is headquartered in Williamstown, Mass., with hosting hubs in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Among clientele with VoIP Logic-designed and -installed hosted and managed VoIP solutions are Atlanta-based SIP trunking service provider IP Communications; Verssa Communications, a Malaysia-based VoIP peering provider; and Gamma Telecom, one of the UK's largest providers of voice services. VoIP Logic's on demand solutions consist of a comprehensive suite of VoIP infrastructure from vendors including Sylantro Systems, Iperia, Cisco, NexTone, Covergence, Highdeal and IVR Technologies.

Business VoIP for BlackBerry

Mobile VoIP company MINO Wireless has announced what it is touting as “the first mobile business VoIP solution tailored for the BlackBerry.”

MINO Call is based on MINO Mobile software, today used by 200,000 individuals, according to company figures.

MINO Wireless is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and was founded in 2004.

Fonality passes milestone

Open source VoIP solutions provider Fonality recently passed the 1,000 businesses milestone vis-à-vis use of Fonality PBXtra Call Center Edition software; according to company figures, over 20,000 local and remote employees use the software every day.

PBXtra Call Center Edition is a full-featured call center for SMBs that supports agents working on premise, at home or from any remote location. PBXtra Call Center Edition is designed for companies with two to 200 agents and includes capabilities such as branch office agent sharing, on-the-fly recording, barging, monitoring, text whisper/coach, web and phone agent log-in, real-time and historical graphical queues, and agent presence management.