Industry observer Armando Roggio has a piece in the journal, Practical Ecommerce, where he notes that the telephone, “like it or not,” is “an integral part of every business, whether you're speaking with suppliers about shipments, having a teleconference with your Web developer, or following up on a customer service question.”
Hard to argue with that. Try to imagine running your business without the telephone. See what he means?
I agree with him when he says, “I am not a big fan of telephones – except for the mobile ones – and would much rather e-mail or text than speak on one.”
But as Roggio indicates, it is understood that they are important and have value. Roggio writes of time recently when he had “the opportunity to try out a cost-effective voice-over-Internet-protocol (VoIP) service,” and “jumped at the chance.”
Fonality, the company Roggio took for a test drive, provides business VoIP phone services that “replace landline phones, slash bills, and make it possible for even small merchants to have a first class phone system.”
Fonality (News - Alert) offers a number of service and, therefore, price options, as Roggio notes in his review: “The company's basic plan starts at $30 per user per month and goes up as you add features or complexity. And all calls, local and long distance, are free, of course, since they are made over the Internet, and not over traditional landlines.”
Evidently he liked the system, but wasn’t completely knocked out by it, as he writes, “for being easy to use and very cost effective, I am awarding Fonality three and a half out of a possible five stars” in his PEC Review.
David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Jaclyn Allard