Vodafone New Zealand brings VoIP to mobile plans with Vodafone Office

Vodafone is attacking the business calling market with Vodafone Office, a suite of services that will allow customers to keep their landline number, and answer it on whatever device they have to hand – an IP desktop phone, the mobile phone handset or a softphone program running on a laptop.

As an additional feature voicemail will sit side-by-side with the customer’s email in their Outlook inbox as well as being available through the normal telephone access.

“We’ll bring the best of Voice over IP (VoIP) and mobility together in one offer so customers can get on with their business instead of worrying about trying to stay in touch,” says Kursten Shalfoon, Vodafone’s GM of Products and Services.

Vodafone Office combines full PBX functionality with the mobile so business customers can make and receive calls from wherever they are – at their desk, on the job or working from home on the laptop. Customers can continue to use one landline number as a single point of contact yet get the full benefits of mobility that Vodafone offers.

“As we have integrated mobile voice into the offer there’s no need for expensive LAN upgrades or for new servers to be installed – the software runs on the customer’s laptop, giving smaller businesses full PBX capability, and simple remote support at a really good price.” Services start from NZ$40 per seat per month.

Vodafone Office’s free software package gives the customer the ability to make or answer incoming calls on any device, divert them to voicemail send them on to another extension and a host of other PBX capabilities, without the upfront cost of installing a PBX system.

“Initially we’ll offer Vodafone Office to our existing pipeline of customer select business customers but later this quarter we’ll open it up to all business customers. Phase two will include added functionality, like call centre capability, and will be rolled out later this year,” says Shalfoon.