IP Communications Featured Articles

Bring your own device (BYOD) has become a trend for a reason; we want to access everything in our lives as conveniently as possible, and being able to manage our work and personal information on a single device allows us to do that. Mobility innovations takes that a step further, allowing us to access e-mail, voicemail, documents and other data seamlessly across different devices, but making it appear to all be from the same number.

AireSpring (News - Alert) plans to deploy Metaswitch Accession, an application suite that allows service providers to harness the power of multimedia devices and unleash an immersive calling and content-sharing experience that mitigates the threat from over-the-top competitors, on its AirePBX product, a cloud-hosted PBX (News - Alert) service. Accession Communicator will allow subscribers to make high-quality voice and video calls from their smartphones and tablets over 3G, 4G of Wi-Fi networks, all from their enterprise phone number.

The deployment solidifies AirePBX as a true multimedia telephony solution, allowing subscribers to seamlessly move calls in progress over their iPad, iPhone, Android (News - Alert) or PC devices and their desk phone or cell phone, review and forward visual voicemail, video mail and fax messages and configure their call management rules.

“AirePBX is one of our fastest-growing products. We are proud of the rich feature set and ease of use. Accession will further enhance and distinguish the product by making communications truly mobile across all devices,” said Daniel Lonstein (News - Alert), AireSpring chief operating officer. “Combine unbeatable features with AireSpring’s fully managed IP network and AirePBX instantly proves itself as the standout among would-be competitors.”

AirePBX includes some very top-notch features for business communications, like the popular find me/follow me system and advanced call routing options that make it easier for callers to connect with specific members of the business, a measure that's great for businesses with large sales forces. AirePBX even comes standard with an auto-attendant system complete with interactive voice response (IVR) and several different dialing services, including name and extension dialing, as well as support for department dialing and even hunt groups, allowing customers to be more readily funneled to their most appropriate contact.

Click-to-call functionality is also available, making contact with a business as easy as adding a button to e-mail or a Web page, allowing those who want to reach a business to just click that button and make the call direct from their computers.

Let’s say you make a regular call over the cellular network, but then you move within range of a Wi-Fi network and want to move the call over with you. Accession can allow you to do that with just a touch or two of the device interface.

“Metaswitch’s Accession portfolio makes mobile unified communications deployable as a genuinely usable business service,” said Al Cook, vice president of business services products at Metaswitch. “Our focus on voice and video quality, battery life management, and platform independence makes this a real solution for customers’ modern business environments.”