Which TA Vendor Has the Best Hosted VoIP Solution for SMBs?

Posted 10/21/10 By Dan Baldwin, TA Executive Director, 951-251-5155 email 

While TA vendors Alteva, Smoothstone and Telesphere certainly seem to have a comfortable lock on the hosted VoIP market for enterprise-class customers, high quality Fortune 5,000 leads are kinda hard to come by for some of us lowly agents scratching out a living with our SMB ("small and medium-sized business") customers and clients.

As a matter of fact we're awash in opportunity when it comes to business customers that have smaller locations that can't cost justify a business-class T1 connection or are perfectly happy with their DSL or cable connection for Internet. 

These "low end" hosted VoIP or hosted PBX prospects are often called BYOB ("bring your own broadband") prospects because they want to use their existing DSL, cable or even wireless Internet connections to connect their hosted VoIP phones together. There's an awful lot of these prospects out there and they want access to hosted VoIP's promise of unified communications (or cheap replacement phone systems) just as much as their enterprise-class business customers?

So which TA vendors do the best job of delivering solutions to the SMB/BYOB crowd?

TA's "First Friday Solution Shootout" on November 5th aims to answer that question. All TA vendor members that have hosted VoIP solutions are invited to participate by presenting their case in a 25-minute webinar that TA members can listen to and that TA will record.

If you're a TA vendor with a BYOB hosted VoIP solution and you'd like a 25-minute slot to present why your solution is the best please contact Dan Baldwin at dan@telecomassociation.com and make sure you have "BYOB" in the subject line.

All 25-minute presentations need to follow the following guidelines:

1. Provide your own webinar bridge and access instructions.

2. Present a Power Point presentation or similar webinar.

3. Address the following:

    A. What sort of business customers (size, verticals, geography, etc.) are most attracted to your solution? How many customers do you have and what has been the "evolution" of the solution?

    B. What specific applications or unique features/benefits does your solution deliver that is most valued by your customers and distinguishes you from your competitors in the space?

    C. How is the solution configured, what phones are used, what sort of platform is it riding on (Broadsoft, non-Broadsoft, etc.) and how "big and strong" is the hosted VoIP network?

    D. Anything else that specifically shows how your solution is better or different from your competitors explained in a manner that customers can easily understand and appreciate.

4. Provide links to supporting content like customer PDFs and email blast pieces that TA members can email to their customer base and prospects to generate leads.

You're also invited to present if you're a TA vendor with a solution that compliments a BYOB hosted VoIP solution.

Finally, we'll have a 25-minute session featuring agents and master agents that specialize in helping customers implement BYOB hosted VoIP solutions. If you're a TA member that wants to be featured as specializing in helping customers choose among BYOB hosted VoIP solutions please email me at dan@telecomassociation.com a 5-minute summary of what you'd like to share (who you use, lessons learned, marketing angle, etc.)

All TA recorded presentations will be archived and published by TA to TA's 3,800 members. TA will create an "moderator's write-up" to go along with the presentations and will invite TA's members to vote on the best solution presented.

Again, if you're a TA vendor with a BYOB hosted VoIP solution and you'd like a 25-minute slot to present why your solution is the best please contact Dan Baldwin at dan@telecomassociation.com and make sure you have "BYOB" in the subject line.

NOTE: This shootout is only for BYOB hosted VoIP solutions. We'll have a separate shootout for higher end hosted VoIP that REQUIRES a QoS enabled MPLS network or similar. We'll also have a separate shootout for premises based IP-PBX solutions. If you want to pre-reserve your spot on these December or January shootouts please email me at dan@telecomassociation.com and make sure you have "MPLS VoIP Shootout" or "IP-PBX Shootout" in the subject line.

PS. The "private labeled" audio and web conference solution presentations from the October shootout is almost ready and will be published next week.

Comments

[J.R. Cook]

Great Topic. I am going to throw an interesting twist to this. New Edge Networks does not do Hosted VoIP, but our ability to provide MPLS with COS over multiple access types, including ADSL, makes us a great carrier option for Hosted VoIP customers.

Our recent release of our AX program is kind of a BYOVoIP (Bring Your Own VoIP) solution. New Edge allows multiple VoIP providers to connect directly into our private MPLS network, ensuring COS to prioritize voice packets, and allow all traffic between customer locations to never leave the NEN MPLS network.

New Edge has done this successfully with such respected VoIP providers like 8x8; AccessLine; Broadsmart; One Source Networks; SimpleSignal; and Xcast Labs. It also allows the Agent to choose the best VoIP provider for the specific customer needs, from POTS Replacement to more complicated IVR solutions.

This allows Agents to provide thier favorite Hosted VoIP solution across a network that can consistently support that application.