I Have Seen The Future Of Telecom, Thank You Ericsson

BY RICH TEHRANI 

It’s my job, but my eyes still glaze over when I hear IP PBX companies tell me about their different phone models. This IP phone has a three-line display, model number X101CFP, that one does color and has two speed dials, etc. It can get excruciating. While IP phones are great, they are pretty similar these days unless they have bright color screens. I may be a bit jaded, but then again, I may have also seen every IP phone that there is to see.

So I would like to thank Ericsson (news), a maker of IP PBXs, for not focusing on how many lines their phones have on the screen but instead, for waking me up in a meeting by telling me something I never heard before and frankly never thought of. Not that I am a genius or anything, but I do sit around in my spare time and think about telecom and what products would be great to have. Call me bizarre, I just hope it makes me better at what I do.

First, a note on Ericsson. They were a leader in the IP PBX space around 1999 when they acquired a smaller company, TouchWave, that made an IP PBX (review). After about a year or two, Ericsson seemed to slip off my personal IP PBX radar. While promoting themselves in other countries, they seemed to fade quickly from the US . They are now back and they say better than ever.

One of the reasons for this newfound optimism about the US is that they have a new master distributor here, MarketShare Telecom who will work with existing resellers and look for new ones as well. If you are a reseller, give them a call.

So, assuming you believe Ericsson will be a force in the IP PBX space, read on and see how they differentiate themselves from all of their competitors. Ericsson also sells mobile phones and while these phones seem to be disappearing from the US market, SonyEricsson (news), a joint venture between Ericsson (news) and Sony (news), is doing quite well. I use a SonyEricsson phone, the T610, and my last phone was from the company as well. While I have written a scathing article about the service and support from the company, I consistently marvel at the leading edge devices they produce.

We are becoming a more mobile planet and yet corporate PBXs still haven’t learned that they need to be more accommodative of us mobile workers. Ericsson is bridging this crucial gap between mobile workers and PBXs by allowing the mobile devices and PBXs to be tightly integrated.

This is not something to just gloss over; it is a revolution in PBX technology. It is something we will take for granted in the future. It is something that road warriors will all need… Like a Blackberry or similar device today, you can’t afford not to be connected to your office. Finally, there is a way to connect to the telephony portion of your work.

Many of you managing PBXs and mobile workers probably don’t even realize you have a problem as your mobile workers have cell phones. This is not a solution, as it means the immediate loss of corporate control over communications. First of all, you aren’t able to play a standard corporate greeting or on-hold message and worst of all, if an employee resigns and you don’t get the cell phone back, you have to deal with reprogramming another phone or somehow ask the customer to call the corporate PBX instead.

Using SonyEricsson’s P900 phone and other IP devices you can take advantage of something called Mobile Extension which gives mobile users more than 500 PBX features on these devices. Using a secure connection, you are able to access short numbers, conference calls, diversion and attendant support.

You can log into an ACD and become an agent if you like. You can access DNS and do a directory search over GPRS. You can transfer calls and take advantage of presence. Currently this only works with Ericsson PBXs, but they hope to make it more broadly available in the future.

My friends, I have seen the future of telecom and it is the tight coupling of mobile devices and back office PBXs -- and it is here today. See http://www.ericsson.com for details.

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Rich Tehrani is TMC's president. He welcomes your comments. Participate in our forums.