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Easy VoIP for SMBs

TMCnews Featured Article


October 31, 2006

Easy VoIP for SMBs

By Erik Linask, Group Editorial Director


Many large enterprises, call centers, service providers, and other companies have enough employees to justify replacing legacy telephony systems with new IP PBXs — they also have the budget for such investments. But there isn’t a company, small or large, that would turn down a guaranteed cut in long distance calling costs. So how can smaller companies or those with small IT staffs or low budgets experience the benefits of VoIP?


One company tackling precisely this issue with smaller and mid-sized companies is Actiontec Electronics. Actiontec has a product specifically targeting the business environment that enables companies to benefit from the well-known VoIP service Skype (News - Alert). With calling via a broadband connection — both Skype-to-Skype and SkypeOut, which connects via IP to standard PSTN phones — companies can experience significant reductions in their long distance bills. In fact, if they are able to terminate all calls with Skype, they can eliminate long distance costs altogether.

According to the firm, it is the only company that is providing such a simple solution for the business community that also offers such remarkable cost savings. And while it acknowledges it hasn’t tested its VoSKY Exchange with every PBX on the market, the product has been tested with the majority of them, including “the big names” and has passed easily.

“There’s nobody else doing this. SMBs are the cornerstone of our economy, yet they’re often the forgotten child, said Lesley Kirchman, Actiontec’s director of marketing.” “We’re the only one trying to penetrate this market and give them a solution that really makes sense.”

Actiontec’s latest releases, VoSKY Exchange 9040 and 9080, its newest Skype gateways, offer four or eight outgoing Skype lines in a stackable, rack-mountable design, which can be installed in as little as two hours and requires no changes to existing PBX (News - Alert) equipment, phones, or PCs; can be installed in two hours; and allows users to make and receive Skype calls on their regular office phones instead of using a PC and headset.

The ability to integrate the Skype service into the existing PBX system, combined with the low one-time cost of VoSKY Exchange, delivers substantial savings for organizations with multiple locations, remote workers, and/or customers, partners and suppliers in other cities. Skype has no signup or monthly access fees, offers free calls between Skype users, and charges as little as 2 cents per minute for calls to non-Skype users - even for calls to overseas destinations. VoSKY Exchange can pay for itself in as little as four months.

In addition to the obvious cost benefits, VoSKY also is simple to install — it connects to the PBX and to a server running Skype, with very little else to set up. In fact, the training also is minimal. Currently, employees typically dial “9” to access an outgoing telephone line, and then dial the number. With VoSKY, employees simply dial a different number that you’ve selected for an outgoing line and dial as usual. In fact, aside from the person who installs the product, users don’t even doesn’t even need to know they are making calls via Skype.

Businesses with multiple locations — retail outlets, for instance — can put a VoSKY Exchange at each site, which not only saves on outgoing calls to customers and vendors, but also makes intra-office calls Skype-to-Skype, which are completely free-of-charge. The same holds for remote workers, who can use the company’s Internet Phone Wizard in the same way, or, for added IP PBX-like functionality, they can upgrade to a VoSKY Call Center.

VoSKY Call Center not only enables Skype calling from your home phone, but it also has the capability to transfer calls to cell phones and other locations when you are away from your desk.

For administrative purposes, the new Exchange 9040 and 9080 come with upgraded software packages — which also are available to first-generation VoSKY Exchange 9000 owners. The new software includes call log statistics and associated reporting, and can be configured to require end users to input a special ID number for more complex and specific reporting purposes.

The software also enables control of all the Skype lines from a single screen as well as remote management, enabling a single network administrator to add or remove users, adjust settings and troubleshoot VoSKY Exchange devices in multiple offices.
Indeed, there’s a better than average chance that many of the people you deal with on a daily basis are already using Skype — there are more than 113 million users globally — so why begin taking advantage of the savings VoIP offers. Why let the large businesses that can afford their own IP PBX systems reap all the rewards?

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Erik Linask is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY. Most recently, he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication. To see more of his articles, please visit Erik Linask’s columnist page.







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