We’re hearing more about VoIP phones – and now VoIP-based hosted PBX (News - Alert).

The latest: London-based Intermedia, one of the the world’s largest Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange hosting providers, has announced the launch of its VoIP-based hosted PBX service.

Integrating with Intermedia’s (News - Alert) hosted Exchange email service, the new service will allow customers to access not only hosted PBX features such as unlimited domestic calling and extension dialing, but also unified communications (UC) features such as “voicemail to email” and “click to call.”

Like other Intermedia services, the new hosted PBX service will be managed from the company’s patented HostPilot Control Panel, which acts as a single point of communications control.

“We developed hosted PBX in response to feedback from our customers,” said Serguei Sofinski, CEO, Intermedia. “Just as they use our Exchange service to avoid the cost and complexity of on-premise Exchange servers, they want a hosted PBX service to avoid the cost and complexity of on-premise PBX systems. By connecting email and voice, we are bringing unified communications -- and all its productivity benefits -- to small businesses that it was previously inaccessible to.”

“Many SMBs who are still using basic telephone service to run their business will benefit from the professional image a hosted PBX service like Intermedia brings. Through the Intermedia offering, companies can set up Exchange-based unified communications -- enabling employees to manage email and voice services from Outlook,” said Michael Osterman of industry analyst firm Osterman Research. “An organization that makes extensive use of e-mail, telephony or real time communications -- or that will want to do so in the future -- will realize enormous benefits from the use of a unified communications infrastructure.”

The hosted PBX service offers a range of features including a voice menu that greets callers and routes incoming calls, quick in-office dialing with extension dialing and voicemails delivered via voicemail-to-email to an email inbox as a .wav attachment.

Every Intermedia hosted PBX account comes with other end user features including a direct phone number, unique extension, E911 Service, caller ID, call waiting, call transfer, call forwarding and 3-way calling.

The service is available at a flat-rate, per-user monthly charges with unlimited calling in the US and Canada. Intermedia is offering hosted PBX at a promotional rate of $25+taxes/month per user for the first three months.

In recent news,Intermedia has unveiled the new hosted SharePoint 2010, Microsoft’s newest SharePoint platform, to customers and partners.