Elevate, a wholly owned subsidiary of Highland Business Services, announced the launch of a new digital phone service designed for small and medium-sized business (SMB) markets.

Foxee, the new digital phone service, is designed to address the challenges of “scaling communications infrastructure and its associated costs” associated with SMB customers.  

“It's a huge problem in a huge market, and we've got a solution of which we are very proud," says Wright Thurston, chief executive officer of Elevate, in a statement.

The company has been taking their residential VoIP service to market through a channel comprised of small businesses for years now, so they are familiar with the challenges faced by local startups and small shops. Foxee is an improved version of these offerings, company officials said.

Much like its residential offering, the Foxee digital phone service uses next-generation hardware to convert analog conversations into digital information that can be cheaply transmitted over the Internet.

The difference, however, is that Foxee comes with business class communication features, integrated software applications, and national and international rate schedules that enable them to perform communications functionalities at a fraction of the cost of traditional phones.

Bryan Ferre, Elevate CMO, says Foxee is more than just a piece of hardware. "It's a cloud-based platform on which we can deploy new features and applications as we develop them - from Integrated communications tools to relationship management applications to back office accounting and personnel tracking add-ons.”

Elevate provides data, voice, video, mobile and security solutions in 22 major markets. In May the company announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire RiteWire, a commercial voice, video, data and security integrator.

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