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BT aims at small business market with new mobile service
SMEs may be pleased at BT's announcement of a new service that allows them to channel all phone calls into one line.
BT has launched a fresh attack on the business telecoms market with a cloud-based service for small businesses. The average working person has at least three phone numbers to worry about — their extension, work and mobile, a tangle that BT says it can fix with its new One Phone product.
It links all these different numbers to one mobile handset so whether somebody calls their landline, work extension or mobile, all of the calls go to one phone. According to BT, it works with a full range of mobile phones by adding a BT One Phone SIM.
The service allows inclusive 'on-net' internal calls between users within a business, a choice of company shared bundles or unlimited voice and text tiers. It also includes access to what BT describes as "in-depth billing data" to help customers control their costs effectively.
As it is a hosted solution, there is limited upfront investment and BT said there is no separate maintenance contract. As the system is cloud-based, all of the feature-rich call management services of a phone system, such as call forwarding and hunt groups, typically available on a desk phone, are now available on a mobile.
To install the service "in most cases" BT will build a dedicated mobile network in a customer’s premises which promises call quality equivalent to a landline.
Any phone with a BT One Phone SIM automatically connects to the dedicated mobile network as soon as it’s in range, and when an employee leaves the office there’s a handover between their dedicated mobile network and the BT Mobile national network.
BT has a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement with EE under which EE provides access to 2G, 3G and 4G services.
"Missed calls mean missed business," said the CEO of BT Business Graham Sutherland. "Today’s announcement, combined with the upcoming launch of our 4G services demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the increasingly mobile UK workforce."
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