SIP Communicator has been designed as an end-to-end service and is ideal for small start-up SMEs and multisite operations such as retail branch networks or small businesses employing home workers. Where a business has home workers or workers in many different locations, then SIP Communicator provides real business and economic benefits because staff can call each other free of charge and incoming calls can be routed to any location.
Snom handsets are provided, which include an LCD display, speakerphone and message-waiting indicator. Alternatively a Counterpath Softphone client can be installed on a PC or laptop for use with a headset and microphone. There is a monthly service charge but the costs are estimated to be about fifty percent less expensive than a conventional phone system based solution.
SIP Communicator offers all the usual phone system features of holding and transferring calls, but has a number of additional benefits. The system can be configured via the Internet, allowing change of feature set-ups as and when required, without incurring any engineering charges. Multiple hunt groups can be set up for incoming calls to ring telephones simultaneously or sequentially. SIP Communicator also provides voice mail, auto-attendant and conference call functionality.
Users can be located anywhere and provided with phone numbers for any location, so an employee based in Glasgow can have a London phone number and vice versa. (Spitfire can provide geographic numbers for any area in the UK, as well as non-geographic numbers such as 0800 and 0845 if required).
SIP Communicator requires no capital outlay or in-house technical expertise and the service is very flexible - an important consideration for start-up and expanding companies that anticipate frequent moves in premises during the early growth years. For organisations with a staff working partly or entirely from home a hosted telephony service is ideal, because it allows users to communicate easily with each other free of charge, while also providing a professional response to outside callers.
Commenting on the launch of Spitfire’s service, Tom Fellowes, Sales Director says, “Hosted telephony is the way forward for telephony in the SME sector. Uniquely Spitfire offers an end-to-end service providing all the elements required to ensure delivery of business quality service levels. The use of Spitfire’s own circuits ensures that we have complete control over service delivery standards. We anticipate huge demand for SIP Communicator.”