Back in May we reviewed Yealink’s innovative T5 smart media phones. Now, Yealink has introduced the Version 40 firmware upgrade for these phones, adding to an already impressive arsenal of features and functionalities.

Almost 90% of businesses in the United States have fewer than 20 employees, according to the United States Census Bureau. To get VoIP service, companies of this size typically use a hosted VoIP service rather than having an on-premise IP PBX. With Epygi Technologies, however, the on-premise solution becomes cost-effective, even for a micro-business with a single employee. How does Epygi do it? We had a chance to ask Mario Cuello, CEO of Epygi Technologies, about what makes them unique in their ability to deliver robust, feature-rich systems at such accessible prices.

Five Essential Sales Metrics

By Mike Schmidtmann, Trans4mers 

Many telephone dealers and ITSPs aren’t growing because they are breaking fundamental rules of sales. They don’t even realize it! How can you break the rules when you don’t know the rules? 

Here’s a metaphor to illustrate this problem and the solution. Imagine playing golf without a scorecard. Now imagine playing without knowing what “par” is for each hole. Wouldn’t that be a bit odd? Disorienting?

Your score in golf is always compared with par. If you shoot a “4” on a hole, you don’t know how good that is until you know what the par is. It could be fair, good, or great depending on whether it’s a par 3, 4, or 5. Of course, if you post a “Snowman," (an 8), that’s bad no matter what the hole is!

Many resellers play a version of this game with sales. How do we know if we are shooting bogies, pars, or birdies? Below, you will find five invaluable metrics that should be on every sales scorecard.

Review of the EdgeMarc 2900a and 2900e Enterprise Session Border Controllers

Update: Since this article was published, in 2018, Edgewater Networks was acquired by Ribbon Communications.

Edgewater Networks has added to its line of enterprise session border controllers (eSBCs) with its EdgeMarc 2900A and 2900E models. These are designed to enable enterprises and service providers to future-proof their SIP trunking and Unified Communications (UC) deployments. With built-in mechanisms for both QoS and security, they provide intelligent mechanisms allowing for both hosted PBX services as well as SIP trunking applications.

They have several features that differ from other EdgeMarc SBCs.

Key trends for WISPs from WISPAPALOOZA

Wireless Internet Service Providers or WISPs constitute a growing industry in the United States and worldwide. The WISP Association (WISPA), an advocacy organization for WISPs in the U.S., has over 650 members and 200 vendor associations. WISPA organizes an annual event called WISPAPALOOZA for the purpose of bringing together WISPs and vendors from all over the country.  Last week, Anthony Morris and Trey Smith were speaking with people about our wireless networking and telecommunications solutions at the TeleDynamics booth.

Here we cover some of the key trends this year that affect WISPs.

AstriCon, the longest-running event devoted to the Asterisk open-source communications framework, celebrated its 14^th year in Orlando last week. Todd Baca and Mark Parker were there at the TeleDynamics booth speaking with Asterisk experts and telephone systems professionals.

According to the Asterisk website, more than a million communications systems in over 170 countries are based on Asterisk, and “almost the entire Fortune 1000 list of customers” use Asterisk. So, if you are in the telecommunications business, you need to know about Asterisk!

If you weren’t able to attend Channel Partners Evolution last week in Austin, fear not: here are our top takeways from the event.

Product Review

Companies are continually striving to discover new workplace philosophies that will maximize the productivity of their employees. Google, Apple, and Facebook are just some examples of organizations that are introducing innovative workspace and workplace designs. Most of these are moving away from the traditional “employee tied to a desk” standard by freeing up their staff and providing for mobility within the workspace.

Yealink’s W60B DECT IP Phone Base Station is an ideal ally to aid any small- to medium-sized business in achieving such employee mobility. Since it is easy to deploy, flexible in its functionality, and rich in features, it provides for all the requirements of any internally mobile workforce.

IP telephony and its related technologies have matured over the past decade. As competition grows among IP telephony vendors, product designers are packing more options, functionality, and bells and whistles into their products. This sometimes results in making IP telephones and their accessories more complicated to operate. 

Yealink seems to have cut through the hype of multi-functional devices by designing and offering a simple, intuitive and easy-to-use device that performs specific and specialized functions, and performs them flawlessly. This is definitely the case with Yealink’s new CP920 touch-sensitive HD IP Conference Phone.

Even in this digital age, your business can’t afford to ignore voicemail

There’s a lot of talk out there about the obsolescence of voicemail. But companies that don’t give importance to voicemail do so to the detriment of their customers' experience.

CRM.com reported that small- and mid-sized businesses experience up to 75% voicemail abandonment, referring to the people that call the company but hang up without leaving a message when transferred to voicemail.

This startling statistic is in part fueled by a lack of responsiveness on the part of the voicemail recipient. According to Nuance, 27% of those surveyed reported that when they get a voicemail, they feel burdened by the process of retrieving and listening to it, and 19% said they actually get annoyed when they receive a voicemail!

Luckily, it’s possible to have the best of both worlds and reap the benefits of voicemail while removing the hassle for company associates.