6 posts tagged “voip”
Skype is now a viable VoIP solution for a small office. Here's why:
- Very low cost flat rate plans for unlimited national calling (~$3/month). Also great international rates and calling plans.
- Voice messaging. Also email notification that a new voice message has arrived.
- Remote retrieval of voice messages
- Call forwarding to up to 4 other phones simultaneously (in other words you can use Skype as a "universal number" follow me type service when you are away from the office)
- Supports call transfer between office numbers
- Management portal for office accounts
- Get phone numbers assigned easily (local, or from other cities)
- Good range of supported devices -- like my wireless headset!
If you have a good broadband connection, then you should find Skype to be sufficiently reliable. It's been a long time since Skype has had a major service issue. And in the last year, we haven't had any issues. That said, I would recommend keeping at least one "plain old telephone service" (POTS) line up and running in the event that something wierd happens.
To set up Skype at your office, follow these steps:
- Download Skype on each PC. (It's a safe program... they're owned by Ebay.)
- Set up a free Skype seperate account on each PC.
- Using the business owner's account, sign into the Skype website at https://secure.skype.com/account/main-page and set up a "Business Control Panel"
- Sign into the "Business Control Panel" at http://www.skype.com/business/ and follow the steps;
a) add members,
b) purchased credits (I recommend; needed for forwarding...),
c) allocated subscriptions, and
d) assign phone numbers.
We've been using Skype for the last year with no issues. Key benefits for our office have been:
- Easy to set up and use
- Low cost solution
- Easy for virtual / remote office
- IM feature is useful in the office
Oh, by the way, some of my other favorite communications apps for the office are:
- MyFax: instead of a dedicated phone line for the fax machine, we subscribe to "MyFax" for $10 per month for inbound faxes, and put the fax machine on one of our standard phone lines - for out-going faxes. That's cheaper and more useful that having a dedicated line. Plus, I can get my faxes when I am working from a virtual office, or traveling...
- PBworks: dead simple Wiki that I use as an "intranet" in our office (basic version is free)
- TokBox: for video conferencing with candidates (free app)
- Mozy: free easy online backup (up to 2GB is free)
Side note: Worth mentioning is that there are a couple of "Skype Extras" that can be added on to offer more capabilities. For example On-State Call Center - for those with call center needs.
Jon Arnold wrote a very informative review of Jazinga, the Canadian firm with a super easy voip-based telephony solution for small offices:
I’ve been trialing Jazinga for a while now and have waited for the most recent updates to get this review done. I’m really enjoying using it, and it’s become my default telephony system. I use that word loosely, since I work solo, and am not exactly a typical PBX user. I don’t have anyone to transfer calls to, but there are many other features that make my life better and my work day more productive. .....
As reported by Rich Karpinski:
As rumored, BT has acquired alternative phone platform Ribbit Corp. for $105 million, saying it will help the service provider speed development of its 21CN platform by tapping the expertise and innovation of Ribbit’s Silicon Valley home.
Launched less than a year ago, Ribbit centers around a Flash-based development platform and call termination network that lets developers easily add voice and automation features to their applications. To handle the telephony call control and routing side of the equation, Ribbit built — and is hosting — a SIP softswitch (which the company claims it even put through some switch testing with Lucent). The switch is located in Northern Virginia and hosted at managed hosting provider Opsource (which even has a small case study on the set-up), with VoIP peering handled by IntelePeer.
I had a good chat with Crick Waters, their VP of Strategy and Business Development at the eComm 2008 event earlier this year and was very impressed with their platform and strategy (click here to see Crick's presentation at eComm). I think BT will be able to leverage Ribbit's technology to create a compelling VoIP solution for the SME market and for companies looking to embed VoIP in their Web 2.0 apps.
Jazinga offers a very interesting small-office phone solution. They've integrated data networking, traditional telephone service and low-cost Voice-over-IP (VoIP) service into one simple solution for small business and homes. It looks like an affordable, do-it-yourself appliance with auto-provisioning capabilities for phones and phone service, and a wizard-driven installation process that requires little or no technical expertise.
Looks like Jazinga can help make you look like a bigger company to the outside
world with features such as automated attendant, company directory,
individual voice mailboxes, voicemail to e-mail and the ability
to integrate remote users. I'm checking them out in more detail. If you've trialed their product, or are currently using, please let me know what you think.
Robin Good recently reviewed the new version of GoToMeeting -- version 4. The new version comes with some a couple of significant new features like Mac compatibility and VoIP support. Looks like GoToMeeting has been carefully watching Skype and Yugma in their rear view mirror. Skype provides free and low cost VoIP for Windows, Mac, and Linux) and Yugma provides free and low cost desktop sharing tool for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
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