Voipfone

Infobox Company
company_name = Inet Telecoms Ltd
company_type = Limited liability company
foundation = July 1, 2004
location_city = London
location_country = United Kingdom
industry = Telecommunications
services = VoIP for home and business
products = Voice over IP
homepage [http://www.voipfone.co.uk www.voipfone.co.uk]
key_people = Colin Duffy - Chief Executive Officer
Lee Rose - Chief Technical Officer

Voipfone is a UK (London) based Internet Telephone Service (VoIP) provided by InetTelecoms Ltd. It develops standards based, telephony services using Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Voipfone builds hosted PBX services for small business also known as IPBX - TelephoneExtensions, Call Queues and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. Otherstandard features of their service include Call Transfer, Music on Hold,
Call Waiting, Call ID, Voice Mail, Voicemail to email, Fax to email, Call Conferencing,
Three Way Calling.

They peer with other open VoIP networks, [cite_web | title = Voipfone About Us Page | url = http://www.voipfone.co.uk/About_Us.php ] .

They provide preconfigured SIP hardware from Linksys, Snom, Siemens and
UTStarcom.

Voipfone is a founder member of Internet Telephony Services Providers’ Association (ITSPA) [cite_web | title = ITSPA Members | url = http://www.itspa.org.uk/members.htm|http://www.itspa.org.uk/members.htm] .

Telephone number availability and usage

Voipfone provides UK and International Geographic numbers. Like other VoIP services, calls to Voipfone numbers from other Voipfone customers are free. They allow peering with other VoIP companies so that calls are free between them also. With Internet Telephony, telephone numbers are independent of the town or city that the area code relates to. This means that a VoIP telephone can be taken anywhere in the world, plugged into a broadband network and calls to the number will be routed directly to it – wherever it is. This obviously has the added benefit of making office relocation simple, in telecommunication terms at least

Calls to Emergency Services

Voipfone provides access to Emergency services (999,112).

However, the location independent nature of VoIP (see above) creates problems for all VoIP operators as this is normally available to the emergency service operator from CLI information. Voipfone partially overcome this restriction by allowing customers to update their location information themselves as necessary

Virtual PBX, Centrex or Hosted PBX

Telephone Switchboards or private telephone exchanges (PBX) have been used by large corporations for many years but have always been unavailable to smaller businesses for cost or technical reasons. VoIP technology allows the services that blue chip corporations have taken for granted - telephone extensions and the ability to transfer calls between them, Call Queuing and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems - to be provided on a self service basic to small and even micro businesses.

Small businesses can pick the services they need off a list and configure them in real time from Voipfone’s web site. Because the system is hosted on their network and shared between many thousands of users it can provide sophisticated services at extremely low cost – usually just one or two pounds per month.

The use of term Virtual PBX in this article violates the trademark of "Virtual PBX" which is a registered trademark of VirtualPBX.com

List of PBX Services

Voipfone’s PBX extensions have a suite of features including - Call Transfer, Music on Hold, Call Waiting, Call ID, Voice Mail, Call Conferencing, 3 Way Calling, Free Calls between extensions (wherever they are), business hours and line presentation.

Regulation of UK VoIP services

Voipfone conforms to all UK VoIP regulations as issued by Ofcom (Office of communications)

References

* Citation | last1 = Warren | first1 = Pete | last2 = Streeter | first2 = Michael | title = London calling?
journal = The Guardian | date = 2005-11-03 | year = 2005 | url = http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/insideit/story/0,,1606956,00.html
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* Citation | last = Warren | first = Pete | title = Calling time on phone bills
journal = The Guardian | date = 2006-04-27 | year = 2006 | url = http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1761691,00.html
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