Typically, the best-known applications
of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) relate to cheap or free phone calls. In the consumer and retail markets, broadband and digital phone services seem to be leading a new wave of technology. But in a business context, VoIP means much more than POTS (plain old telephone service).

“Businesses can already get long distance service for as little as two cents a minute,” says Dave Guberman, president of Telexperts. The real advantage that VoIP brings to business clients, he explains, is its ability to cost effectively give a communications system the functionality of a computer.

In the Telexperts demo room, Guberman shows off a software package called “My Assistant” to set up a quick video conference with the receptionist out front. “And you can bring anyone in at any time,” he says, clicking a drop-down menu full of contacts on the program’s windows-based interface. In another instant, he changes his phone’s hold button to the redial button. “Nobody I knew could even program
a phone before,” he says, as he clicks the mouse.

With mobile IP-ready phones and the ability to transfer documents, Guberman talks about one-employee branch offices in Asia and accountants reviewing client reports in real-time from thousands of miles away.

Though big companies have used such tools for years, the tools have been beyond the budgets of most small- and medium-sized businesses. Next door to the Telexperts demo space, in the server room, Guberman shows the guts of an old-style private branch exchange (PBx), used to run a company’s internal phone network alongside the computer system, occasionally crossing the two over with the help of code written by high-priced computer geeks.

A PBx cabinet, about the size of a breadbox, holds circuit cards that each increase phone capacity in multiples of four. So a business with 10 phones needs three four-input cards or two eight-input cards. Bigger users use bigger cards, and cost increases accordingly.

“We had one client with capacity for 192 phones, and they needed a 193rd phone,” says Guberman, remembering the early days of his business. But the client was using all the lines available on all the cards in a full PBx cabinet. They needed a new cabinet, a new card with more capacity than they wanted, and software to run it. “It cost about $10,000,” says Guberman. “It was the most expensive phone in our company’s history.”

Now, instead of phone systems that get added alongside a computer system, Guberman offers phone systems that are converged with the computer system. “You needed customized software for this functionality before,” explains Guberman. “But now you don’t have to build a bridge, because this runs the two systems on the same infrastructure.”

What’s more, the Mitel 3300 server that runs the demo room handles any number of users, from 10 to 10,000. “The costfor growth before was super-expensive,” says Guberman, lauding the advantage of standardized software and the ability to increase phone capacity in single-user increments.

With a range of possible options, available through licensed software, the one machine can be adapted to enterpriselevel business or a small start-up. “Most of the businesses we sell these systems to have nine or 10 phones,” says Guberman, adding that standard functions such as speed dialing, call transfer, and voice mail are all available. “People won’t give up functionality,” he says. “Everything you ever had, you still get.”

Guberman’s company installed its first IP phone system in 2001, targeting smalland medium-enterprises. Now Telexperts has about 400 IP phone customers, and as the function to cost ratio of VoIP systems continues to become more affordable, Guberman expects more. “I didn’t think it would be this good, and this is just the beginning.”