Work from office, home, mobile, or customer site while still on the system
Why would I subscribe to this? What is the value proposition?
This service allows small and medium businesses and multi-site enterprises to gain control over communications expenses and management difficulties associated with PBXs and IP/PBXs by migrating to a new network-based solution. VoicePoint has all the features and functions of a very robust PBX system, yet it has better user interfaces and features than most PBXs on the market today. This promotes capital expenditure savings and on-going cost savings due to on-net calling between offices and bundled applications that businesses usually purchase separately.
What does VoicePoint actually do?
VoicePoint offers a new fully hosted VoIP service that replaces the need for a premises-based phone system and the multiple vendors required to provide popular applications. The features and applications are not only delivered to a customer's phone via a single dedicated Internet access pipe to the business, but the service can be individually customized by you.
What is the difference between voicemail and Unified Messaging?
There are two options for messaging: 1) standard voicemail solution is hosted and accessed verbally though your phone keys as most systems work today, and 2) Unified Messaging allows you to access your voice messages through e-mail, and you can send voice messages through e-mail.
What about conferencing?
Conferencing offers you an on-demand conference service and the ability to schedule conference calls via the PCM. Its unique Web-enabled features such as question queue, voting, text chat, volume control, conference record and playback, and many other additional features enhance the conferencing experience. Conferencing is capable of hosting 48 active participants and 400 passive, or listen-only, participants per conference call. Conferencing is offered as an addition to VoicePoint or VoicePoint Hosted.
What about redundancy and fail-over capabilities?
The service is engineered to be as reliable as any other carrier-grade network product. Since all of the data is stored in the network, the data itself is intact. The system has been tested to have "five 9s" reliability (99.999% availability), including (and especially) customer data.
What happens to the voice quality when several users are using their phones, and several other users try to do large data transfers?
When you evaluate the service with us, we will determine what the correct bandwidth will be required for the number of employees, as well as an evaluation of your LAN. So the system will be provisioned and installed to ensure voice quality, and the number of users and/or data being transmitted won't have an effect on voice quality.
Will voice quality degrade when the network or Internet is busy?
Not with VoicePoint Hosted. We perform traffic engineering on a per-customer basis. In addition, VoicePoint is transmitted over a managed IP network, not the Internet. This network is engineered for voice traffic. If the Internet is busy, it will only effect the response time of your PCM, which you do not need in order to use your phone and make calls.
What equipment/services do I need?
Customers will need to go through a qualification / provisioning checklist to determine what specifically will be needed, including selecting the most appropriate service packages for the business. Once this is complete, the customer may only need new phones, or you may need additional cabling, a router and/or Frame Relay termination device, and phones.
What phones are supported? Is any additional equipment necessary to attach those phones to the service?
The service will work with any analog phone (no LCD support possible), Cisco IP phones, and Polycom IP phones.
What about E-911, Local Numbering Plans and well, just all the "stuff" that goes along with offering a complete solution?
We currently offer the most sophisticated e-911 on the line-side and work with the Class 5 to support the trunk-side, network-facing functions of e-911, LNP, and 800 services. Our e-911 solution has unique capabilities that, for example, address the situation in which a business has multiple locations all served by the hosted service but the business has moved a phone number from one location to another. Since 911 requires the call to be routed to the Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) associated with the physical location, we have a technique that allows us to ensure the 911 call is routed to the correct PSAP with the correct phone number. Here's another example that demonstrates that what we can do with IP is much better than what a business gets with a PBX solution. As far as a local numbering plan, each phone will have a specific DID that does not need to be published in a public directory. In other words, only your main number needs to be published. Dialing plans are available for internal extension dialing, depending on your needs.
What about security? Could someone "hack into" my network?
The hosted communications servers are fully secured in the network, thereby ensuring that only authorized end users and network servers can access the system.
What if I have a firewall? How would it work?
You have multiple approaches for delivering IP telephony while keeping the firewall intact. The solution operates outside of the firewall and can utilize a Network Address Translation device (NAT) that only allows voice calls to the specific IP addresses through the firewall.
In case of failure of any component, is there any impact on service?
In the event of a failure, the impact on service is very limited, if at all perceptible. In fact, the system was designed to isolate failures, so any calls that are in progress will remain "up" in the event of a failure. Extensive network monitoring ensures that any local failures (for example, phones or LANs) are minimized when they do occur.
What kind of savings can I expect?
This depends on the size of your business, the type of service you currently have, and other solutions you are currently considering. Generally, since you do not have to purchase or manage any premises-based hardware, the savings will be dramatic and compelling.
What about 800 Service?
You will be able to keep this as you do today.
What about call accounting codes and billing codes?
The Enterprise-level service has the ability for you to assign as many codes as you like, based on users, projects, and clients, for example. At the end of the billing cycle, these calls can be separated out by account/billing code, so you know where these calls are to be charged.
Call us at 1-888-533-3429 to find out more about these services or
e-mail us at salessupport@accesspointinc.com
