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Tag: features

  • Cost Savings Drive SMBs To IP Telephony


    Small to medium-sized businesses primarily shift to VoIP services because of the cost savings they offer.

    That’s the conclusion of a new report from Infonetics Research, which also points to powerful features as a secondary motive for SMBs to switch to IP telephony.

    It cites the fact that the growth of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) trunking is outpacing other VoIP services as evidence of the importance of price in enterprises’ decision-making.

    The report found that global VoIP services grew 33 per cent in 2008 to USD $30.8 billion. The researchers include hosted VoIP, hosted UC (unified communications), integrated IP access, managed IP PBXes, residential VoIP, SIP trunking and other types of IP voice access in its definition of VoIP services.

    They found that while business VoIP services represented only 31 per cent of the total, they grew faster than residential services during the year.

    Managed IP PBX, hosted IP PBX and hosted UC services accounted for three-fourths of the business VoIP total.

    Diane Myers, directing analyst at Infonetics, said demand for residential and business VoIP services continues to grow through the economic downturn because of the cost savings they provide.
    She said that as a result, in 2008 the VoIP services market had healthy growth of 33 per cent to USD $30.8 billion.

    "For the first 3 months of 2009, service providers experienced an average of 40-50 per cent year-over-year growth for IP Centrex, indicating the demand for outsourcing and managed solutions remains healthy," she said.

    "We expect hosted UC services to take off, with worldwide revenue doubling between 2009 and 2013, and we forecast SIP trunking service revenue to hit an 89 per cent compound annual growth rate from 2008 to 2013."

    Other highlights of the report include:

    • NTT, France Telecom, and Comcast took the lead as the world’s largest VoIP service providers in 2008
    • Deregulation plays a significant role in the adoption of VoIP in some countries, such as France, where it costs only USD $0.02 per minute for fixed-to-fixed line calls worldwide, making PC-based services such as Skype irrelevant
    • Residential VoIP growth in Central and Latin America has grown stronger in the past year, particularly in Brazil where Embratel ended 2008 with 1.8 million subscribers to its NetFone service
    • In 2008, there were 106 million residential VoIP subscribers worldwide, the majority in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa) and Asia Pacific, where competitive operators and incumbent carriers are in an aggressive battle for subscribers

  • Virtual PBX And Gizmo5 Announce Business Voip Service


    Virtual PBX and Gizmo5 have announced a new collaboration that they claim offers a business phone solution with the industry’s deepest feature set at a price level well below current standards.

    Built on an open-system VoIP peering platform, the new service combines the products of both companies.

    As part of the announcement, Virtual PBX has launched iVPBX, a new product that provides customers with unlimited inbound calling and no per-minute fees at a price of just under USD $10 per seat.

    The company estimates this is about one-fourth to one-fifth the cost of most competing plans.

    Gizmo5 clients who use the new iVPBX product can send calls by IP directly to their Gizmo phones at no cost.

    Virtual PBX’s deeper relationship with Gizmo5 follows on from its open VoIP peering technology announced last November.

    Virtual PBX client companies using the service typically have one main business number for clients to call.

    Virtual PBX takes those calls, answers them with a "virtual" attendant, and then delivers them to employees using any kind of phone, in any location.

    The solution enables small firms and those with distributed employees to portray a professional phone image and get top-end features – without the expense or maintenance hassles of purchasing their own telecommunications hardware.

    Traditional Virtual PBX pricing plans include a varying number of free minutes with a price of 4.4 to 6.5 cents per minute for additional usage, according to a statement from Virtual PBX.

    It said with the new iVPBX product, available now, calls coming in on a local number and sent to a Gizmo5 phone will have no per-minute fee for unlimited use.

    By adding the Virtual PBX service, business users of Gizmo5 gain all the advantages of a high-end PBX, such as an auto-attendant, transferring calls between users, and routing calls to departments though ACD queues.

    Paul Hammond, CEO of Virtual PBX, said the new iVPBX product gives users a very low-cost plan with unlimited usage.

    "And the combination of Virtual PBX and Gizmo5 delivers the best of both worlds at a fraction of the cost of typical hosted IP-PBX offerings," he said.

  • fring Mobile VoIP Gets WinMo Approval


    Microsoft has awarded fring’s mobile VoIP application its “Designed for Window Mobile” certification.

    The approval is the latest for fring, which has been working to develop its popular IM/ VOIP application for different platforms.

    In October, fring was approved by Apple for use on its iPhone and iPod devices.

    The company has also released a new version of fring for Windows Mobile devices (version 3.34), including Sony Ericsson’s new Xperia multimedia device.

    New features include the ability to send files over IP to fring, Skype, MSN and Yahoo contacts at the touch of a button.

    Navigation has been improved with a new ‘Go- To menu’, ‘Privacy’, and ‘Joystick-In’ settings, while Add-ons have been extended and improved and can be managed more easily through a new Add-Ons Management screen.

    Fring for Windows Mobile also allows HTC users to use earpieces for extra privacy.

    The application is available to to download from fring now.