Optus offers VoIP for small business

Stuart Corner
Monday, 04 June 2007 07:29

Business IT - Technology

Optus has announced availability of two VoIP services for small business, previewed with much fanfare and minimal detail in March.

One service, ipPhone Premier, is in effect, a hosted IP telephony service for a small office supporting up to six extensions (although the fact that the system replaces a small office phone system is not spelt out in the brochure). The other service, ipPhone Express is functionally similar to VoIP services offered by the likes of engin and MyNetFone: it uses an analogue telephone adaptor or IP phone plugged into the customer's broadband modem.

However both services are available only to businesses connected to Optus Business DSL services, and the ipPhone Premier service only to those on Optus DSLAMs, not resold Telstra services.

Both services offer local and standard national calls at a flat 12 cents each. The ipPhone Express services costs $12 per month per line and the ipPhone Premier service $19.95 per service (minimum two , maximum six. Both services offer a range of features including call routing, call transfer, calling logs, line hunt, find me and follow me, call hold, call wait, calling line identification (CLI) and voicemail.

Both services also offer a web interface that enables users make and receive calls via their web browser, set up call handling features and maintain their personal telephone directory Handles. A multimedia pack supports video conferencing, presence, file transfer and web page sharing.

As iTWire reported in March, the underlying telephone switching and under functions are provided by a Nortel CS2000 carrier grade softswitch. IP telephones supplied for use with the service will be Linksys SPA942s.