Work from office, home, mobile, or customer site while still on the
system
Why would I subscribe to this? What is the value proposition?
Answer: This service allows small and medium businesses and multi-site
enterprises to gain control over communications expenses and management
difficulties associated with PBXs and IP/PBXs by migrating to a new
network-based solution. VoicePoint has all the features and functions
of a very robust PBX system, yet it has better user interfaces and features
than most PBXs on the market today. This promotes capital expenditure
savings and on-going cost savings due to on-net calling between offices
and bundled applications that businesses usually purchase separately.
What does VoicePoint actually do?
Answer: VoicePoint offers a new fully hosted VoIP service that
replaces the need for a premises-based phone system and the multiple
vendors required to provide popular applications. The features and applications
are not only delivered to a customer's phone via a single dedicated
Internet access pipe to the business, but the service can be individually
customized by you.
What is the difference between voicemail and Unified Messaging?
Answer: There are two options for messaging: 1) standard voicemail
solution is hosted and accessed verbally though your phone keys as most
systems work today, and 2) Unified Messaging allows you to access your
voice messages through e-mail, and you can send voice messages through
e-mail.
What about conferencing?
Answer: Conferencing offers you an on-demand conference service
and the ability to schedule conference calls via the PCM. Its unique
Web-enabled features such as question queue, voting, text chat, volume
control, conference record and playback, and many other additional features
enhance the conferencing experience. Conferencing is capable of hosting
48 active participants and 400 passive, or listen-only, participants
per conference call. Conferencing is offered as an addition to VoicePoint
or VoicePoint Hosted.
What about redundancy and fail-over capabilities?
Answer: The service is engineered to be as reliable as any other
carrier-grade network product. Since all of the data is stored in the
network, the data itself is intact. The system has been tested to have
"five 9s" reliability (99.999% availability), including (and especially)
customer data.
What happens to the voice quality when several users are using
their phones, and several other users try to do large data transfers?
Answer: When you evaluate the service with us, we will determine
what the correct bandwidth will be required for the number of employees,
as well as an evaluation of your LAN. So the system will be provisioned
and installed to ensure voice quality, and the number of users and/or
data being transmitted won't have an effect on voice quality.
Will voice quality degrade when the network or Internet is
busy?
Answer: Not with VoicePoint Hosted. We perform traffic engineering
on a per-customer basis. In addition, VoicePoint is transmitted over
a managed IP network, not the Internet. This network is engineered for
voice traffic. If the Internet is busy, it will only effect the response
time of your PCM, which you do not need in order to use your phone and
make calls.
What equipment/services do I need?
Answer: Customers will need to go through a qualification / provisioning
checklist to determine what specifically will be needed, including selecting
the most appropriate service packages for the business. Once this is
complete, the customer may only need new phones, or you may need additional
cabling, a router and/or Frame Relay termination device, and phones.
What phones are supported? Is any additional equipment necessary
to attach those phones to the service?
Answer: The service will work with any analog phone (no LCD support
possible), Cisco IP phones, and Polycom IP phones. All phones sold by
Access Point, Inc. are certified on our VoIP Network. If using IP Phones
not provided by Access Point, Inc. they will need to be pre-certified
prior to service activation. To avoid any service interruptions, it
is highly recommended that only one Manufacturer's IP Phone be used
per location.
What about security? Could someone "hack into" my network?
Answer: The hosted communications servers are fully secured in
the network, thereby ensuring that only authorized end users and network
servers can access the system.
What if I have a firewall? How would it work?
Answer: You have multiple approaches for delivering IP telephony
while keeping the firewall intact. The solution operates outside of
the firewall and can utilize a Network Address Translation device (NAT)
that only allows voice calls to the specific IP addresses through the
firewall.
In case of failure of any component, is there any impact on
service?
Answer: In the event of a failure, the impact on service is very
limited, if at all perceptible. In fact, the system was designed to
isolate failures, so any calls that are in progress will remain "up"
in the event of a failure. Extensive network monitoring ensures that
any local failures (for example, phones or LANs) are minimized when
they do occur.
What kind of savings can I expect?
Answer: This depends on the size of your business, the type of
service you currently have, and other solutions you are currently considering.
Generally, since you do not have to purchase or manage any premises-based
hardware, the savings will be dramatic and compelling.
What about 800 Service?
Answer: You will be able to keep this as you do today.
What about call accounting codes and billing codes?
Answer: The Enterprise-level service has the ability for you
to assign as many codes as you like, based on users, projects, and clients,
for example. At the end of the billing cycle, these calls can be separated
out by account/billing code, so you know where these calls are to be
charged.
Call us at 1-888-533-3429 to find out more about
these services or e-mail us at salessupport@accesspointinc.com
