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.

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.

Answers to the most frequently asked questions about our HD, IP door phone

By Kate Clavet, Content Marketing Specialist, Grandstream Networks

Grandstream Networks recently came out with our first facility access solution, the GDS3710 an HD, IP door phone.  It’s been a huge hit within the industry and we really enjoy using it in our offices, but as with any new product there are a lot of questions. I took this time as an opportunity to answer the most common questions, in one handy spot. Enjoy!

In today’s connected world, it is increasingly common to have workers in different parts of the country, or even different parts of the world, collaborating over the multiple communications channels available to them. Many remote workers use OTT services like Skype to keep in touch with their clients, partners and customers in situations where a telephone call (even over VoIP) would incur a non-trivial cost.

Such calls usually require the use of a computer with a webcam and either a headset or speakers and a microphone. This makes Skype calling more complex than a simple telephone call. Skype-enabled telephony devices remove this complexity by integrating the application with the endpoint, so communicating over Skype becomes as simple as a traditional telephone call. By enabling Skype, these devices also make more features available to the user like instant messaging, presence technology, and file sharing.

In this article we list some productivity-boosting Skype- and Skype for Business-enabled products.

When to use VoLTE vs. an OTT voice app

In a previous article, we discussed voice over LTE (VoLTE) and its implications for the enterprise VoIP phone system. All voice traffic over the LTE (also known as 4G mobile) network is packetized and conforms to modern VoIP standards, making it the first mobile telephony standard to completely circumvent the traditional circuit-switched telephony infrastructure.

In many ways, VoLTE sounds a lot like over-the-top (OTT) voice applications that leverage the same protocols for voice. In this article, we look at what OTT voice apps are, what VoLTE is in relation to OTT, and the benefits of using one, the other or both over an LTE network.

The family of endpoints includes the GXP1760, GXP1780 and GXP1782 models

Telecommunications infrastructure can be one of the biggest costs for a small- to medium-sized company, so it’s critical to find a solution that strikes the right balance between value and cost, while at the same time ensuring scalability so the system can grow along with the business.

IP phones often comprise the bulk of the cost of a business telephone system, so choosing the right endpoints is an important part of the functionality-cost ratio. Developed specifically with growing businesses in mind, Grandstream’s mid-range GXP17xx series IP phones achieve this balance remarkably well.

As investments in the legacy circuit-switched voice network wane, national telephone operators are directing their energies to mobile and IP networks. This focus has brought about many “Voice over X” or VoX technologies over the past few years. While VoIP (voice over IP) is one of the most important ones, many related technologies are also proliferating such as VoWiFi, VoDSL, and VoZigbee. The VoX technology we examine in this article is voice over Long-Term Evolution or VoLTE, which has exciting implications for enterprise VoIP telephone systems.

We had a chance to speak with Tommy Lee, VP of sales at VTech. Before VTech Holdings Limited acquired 100% of the share capital of Snom Technology, GmbH  in a transaction that was completed in November of last year, Tommy was president of Snom, Inc., an American subsidiary of Snom Technology, GmbH.

In this exclusive interview, Tommy speaks candidly about what customers can expect from the two brands post-acquisition.

Part 2 of 2: Cloud communications offer many advantages, but some businesses benefit less than others

In Part 1 of this series, we reviewed some advantages of cloud-based unified communications (UC). Among other things, we emphasized the ease of use, streamlined functionality, and cost savings of this platform as compared with a similar on-site deployment. However, there are situations where cloud-based UC is less advantageous. In this article, we look at the prerequisites for using UC over the cloud as well as some specific examples.

Are you hearing both sides?

By Kate Clavet, Marketing Specialist, Grandstream Networks

The very technology that makes VoIP so efficient can also indirectly cause one-way audio issues.

VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), indicating that the communication travels over the internet in little packets using RTP (Real-Time Transport Protocol). Since the packets are traveling through the internet, they must pass through firewalls and network address translation (NAT). Due to the tricky nature of firewalls, a common complaint of customers and installers alike is that either the caller or callee cannot hear the other party. Although this is a common inquiry and topic for support tickets, it is also rather easy to fix.