IP Communications Featured Articles

I’m going to be honest: I despise talking on cell phones, and I accept that this will forever limit my ability to be successful in the business world. I hate dropped calls. I hate when the person I’m talking to interrupts their sentence to tell me about the guy who almost pulled into their lane. I hate when their voice fuzzes out and I wonder how long I have to wait before interrupting to tell them I can’t hear them. I hate the call latency that makes us talk over one another, then pause, and then both say “Haha, you go first.” And I especially hate knowing that I’m expected to be available for every call because I have a cell phone. But that’s just me, and I’m a failure at modern day business. (I respond very quickly by email and carrier pigeons.)

For those who thrive on turning calls over 24/7, a new addition to AireSpring’s (News - Alert) lineup of unified communications (UC) solutions promises to make life infinitely better. The company’s Accession Communicator uses fixed mobile convergence (FMC) to make users truly mobile, allowing active calls to be transferred from desk, to PC, to mobile, to tablet without interruption. Since the call resides on AireSpring’s managed cloud infrastructure, busy professionals can take a call at home, talk on the drive to the office and transfer the call to the desk seamlessly. A call can even be transferred between mobile and video.

Fixed mobile convergence is a step up from simply connecting a mobile device to a PBX (News - Alert) system as an extension, which would require putting the call on hold and transferring. True FMC allows the call to be redirected and connected seamlessly, with no detectable drop in service or transmission quality.

Accession Communicator is a subscription service, and with an iOS or Android (News - Alert) app, users can pair their contacts across devices and manage all communications from a central call manager. As part of the AirePBX system it also comes with a range of features, including HD voice, auto attendant, simultaneous ring, conferencing, fax to email, visual voicemail, and virtual extensions. Personal devices can be easily integrated into the system to facilitate a simple BYOD policy.

For anyone in sales, it’s easy to see why these features might be beneficial, but it is also helpful for jobs like healthcare, wherein a doctor on-call could take a call on a home line and transfer it to a mobile phone while driving to the hospital. That skirts the problem of leaving the mobile ringer on all night, when anyone might call and disturb sleep for any reason, by only providing an emergency overnight number to people who really need it. It also allows travelers to take advantage of Wi-Fi call services, like Skype (News - Alert), when they’re available to avoid costly cell minutes, or for people who work in low cell-signal buildings to receive calls on a wireless office network, then leave the building and stay connected by switching to the cell network.

“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.”