VoIP and hosted PBX services are maturing, and countless suppliers and service providers have stepped up to enable businesses to abandon their old telephony infrastructures in favor of subscriptions that allow for the use of both desktop phones and PC softphones that can provide call management, voice mail, call forwarding and many other capabilities at a low cost. However, looking back through the various services that have been available, it's easy to find a lot of dead links and service providers that have gone MIA. And who wants to entrust their business to a place that may be gone tomorrow. But there are providers who offer the benefits companies are looking for who are solid players. Here are seven providers of online VoIP and hosted PBX services that are worth a look.
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Skype (http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home) provides free calls between Skype users, as well as Skype-to-phone calls starting at 2.3 cents per minute. Skype users can also get their own numbers so they can receive incoming calls from anywhere in the world (phone numbers are available for $18 per month with a three-month subscription or $60 per year). Skype also offers video chat capabilities. Business features are also available.
As Google's telecommunications services, Google Voice (http://www.google.com/googlevoice/about.html) provides call forwarding and routing capabilities, but users can combine it with Google Talk to get softphone features. The service is provided for free, except for calls outside the U.S. and Canada.
Intermedia Hosted PBX (http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Cloud-Computing/Small-Business-Gets-Hosted-PBX-Unified-Communications-Service-from-Intermedia-660281/) provides a full hosted PBX solution with pricing at about $30 per user per month. Perhaps the biggest selling point of this versus softphone-only services is that the service enables the use of SIP phones.
DoddlePhone (http://www.doddlephone.com/) uses SIP protocols, but it's key selling point is that it enables end-users to make calls from a browser. Using either Doddle's own VoIP service or linking Doddle to an existing VoIP account allows users to embed telephone communications into any website.
Vbuzzer (http://www.vbuzzer.com/phone/phone_service.php) provides capabilities similar to Skype, with PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calling features. Vbuzzer phone numbers are available for $5 per month. Calling costs start from 2 cents per minute.
Yahoo Voice (http://voice.yahoo.jajah.com/home/index.castle) provides softphone calling capabilities from Yahoo Messenger. As with using Yahoo's IM client, calls between users are free, but a PC-to-phone is available. Phone numbers are available from Yahoo starting at $2.49 per month. Costs for
Logitech's SightSpeed (http://www.sightspeed.com/business/) provides both voice and video calling. The service is geared towards businesses, and seats are sold individually or as part of a multi-seat plan. Pricing starts at $19.95 per month (or $189.95 per year) for an individual seat. PC-to-PC calls are free, whereas PC-to-phone calls begin at 2 cents per minute. The service also comes with several business features, including video and voice call recording, multi-party videoconferencing and in-call filesharing.
Intel Technology Provider Program
Intel Technology Provider Program (ITP) helps resellers better understand Intel products which power the technology they sell, and enables value-add services such as remote manageability or anti-theft tracking. Learn More
WindowsForDevices.com
WindowsForDevices.com is the comprehensive news site covering Windows embedded technologies. Visitors get news, technical white papers, opinion columns and extensive directories covering the products and companies in the marketplace. Click Here
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