Eyeing a fertile market that brings cost-savings to SMBs, a San Jose, California-based company that owns and operates a massive national broadband network today announced that it has certified IP-PBX (News - Alert) systems from a handful of companies for its so-called “integrated access” service.

 

Officials at Covad say they’ve certified the IP-PBXs from Grandstream Networks (GXE502X all-in-one IP-PBX, pictured below), TalkSwitch (models 244/248vs, 284/288vs, 484/488vs and 844/848vs), Vertical (Xcelerator IP) and Egypi Technologies Ltd (Quadro 2x and Quadro 4x IP-PBX).

 

According to Jake Heinz, vice president and general manager at Covad (News - Alert) VoIP, the Integrated Access service is an affordable, all-in-one phone and Internet service designed specifically for businesses with up to 35 employees per location to simplify their operations by looking to one vendor to provide their phone and Internet services.

 

“This means one bill and one contact for support,” Heinz said. “Certification means Covad has tested the equipment and found it to work well with our Covad Integrated Access service.”

 

The service is delivered over a T1 line and works with customers’ existing phone systems so businesses to leverage their equipment investment, Covad officials say. Also, Integrated Access uses SIP trunking and supports a wide range of IP, digital and analog PBXs.

 

The service starts $435 per month with no installation fees, depending upon contract length and services ordered. Customers can start with as few as four phone lines. New lines can also be added one at a time, rather than in the more typical “blocks.”

 

With this slower economy bringing a focus on how to leverage technology to save money, many IT services providers are taking aim at the SMB market.

 

As TMCnet reported yesterday, Microsoft Corp., has developed and launched a phone system that takes the hassle out of communications, allowing the client to use a phone system that is easy and gets the job done.

 

To learn more about the Microsoft Response Point SMB phone system, TMC (News - Alert) President and Group Editor-in-Chief Rich Tehrani recently talked with Response Point Senior Director of Marketing, Richard Sprague. The two discussed the origin of this Microsoft (News - Alert) Group, the positioning of the phone system and why it is making waves in the industry. Here is the podcast to listen to the interview in its entirety.

 

According to Covad, the new Integrated Access service prioritizes voice traffic and automatically allocates all remaining bandwidth to data traffic, providing maximum call quality and data throughput.