Half off, a 50% discount, sure sounds good. But just what is hosted telecommunications and what does a Virtual Office do that regular telephone service doesn't?
Basically, there are two ways to run a business phone system that consists of more than a couple phones. You can buy the equipment that operates your phones and hire the people to set it up and make changes as they are needed. Or you can have a company that specializes in this "host" the equipment and services at their location. All you need then is to put telephone handsets wherever you want them.
Packet 8 Virtual Office is a hosted telecommunications solution. They have the PBX (Private Branch Exchange) equipment at their headquarters. In this case, it's an iPBX or Internet protocol PBX system because they are leveraging the connectivity of the Internet to make the connections. This is a VoIP telephone system, but without the need to buy and manage network voice equipment at your location.
The Virtual Office is more than just a brand name. It also hints at the difference between this arrangement and a typical business phone system. You can locate your handsets wherever you need them and they don't even have to be in the same building, town or even country. That's right, you can set up a virtual company where your colleagues are all over the world. Yet to outside callers it appears that you are all in one big office.
In fact, to people within your organization it will seem like you are all on the same phone system in one location. You can dial by extension number and not worry where those extensions are physically located. You'll park calls, forward and transfer them at will. There's even a conference bridge included so you can host your own conference calls beyond 3 way calling. Virtual Office integrates with Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook to support your sales and CRM activities.
There's a lot more to this system, so you'll want to learn more about Packet 8 Virtual Office. If you choose to order Virtual Office Unlimited VoIP service with a new IP phone (model 53i, 55i or 57i) and you're a new Packet8 customer, you'll need to enter promo code UEIP25 when going through the checkout process to get the limited time special offer of $24.95 per month instead of the standard subscription rate of $49.99 a month for a full 12 months on a one-year contract. Yes it's really half price, but only from now until December 31, 2008.
