I’m calling you from my iPad at 30,000 feet. This could be how you start your next phone call.

Apple’s iPad doesn’t technically offer the ability to make phone calls, but SimpleSignal has figured out a way to make the iPad talk using our virtual PBX technology.  And now that Wi-Fi is being offered by most of the major airlines for longer flights you can do VoIP over Wi-Fi just about anywhere, on the ground or in the air.

SimpleSignal is constantly looking for ways to increase its ability to offer our customers the opportunity to work and communicate anywhere, any time. Now mobile workers can manage work calls through the “cloud” so they can make and receive phone calls from anywhere in the world from the coolest mobile device to hit the market…Apple’s iPad.  As a matter of fact, you can use any Internet-connected device, including cell phones and computers, as if the call were going through your office line. You can also start a phone call on one device and seamlessly transfer it to another device mid-call. How does this work? Let’s say you are on a conference call at your desk. But it’s 6 PM and you have to go pick up the kids at soccer. Just press *11 on your SimpleSignal office phone system and you can transfer that call to your cell or iPad and you are off and running. Seamlessly the call is transferred from the office LAN onto the cellular network. That’s voice engineering magic!

The iPad has an excellent speaker microphone making the iPad perfect for conference calls. People can remotely dial into a meeting even if the room it is in doesn’t have a conference calling system.  The app is still in its early stages, but once iPads have the ability to perform multiple tasks at once, as Apple just started allowing on the iPhone, it could become an ideal device for looking at slides, or manipulating shared documents while simultaneously taking a call.

It’s all part of our effort to make our voice technology work for business. We say that we’ve developed a phone system that works for you. It “gets” you. It knows how you want to work. It knows who you want to let through to you and who you’d rather push to your voicemail and deal with later. It knows when you are available or when that call can go to your assistant or co-worker.

By enabling the iPad for voice, Simplesignal gives its clients yet another option for fielding their phone calls. Besides, it has a very high “cool factor”.  Amaze (or annoy) your friends on your next flight!

Users can control Hosted PBX phone features from the desktop without accessing a web portal. The SimpleSignal Call Control Toolbar enables SMBs to take advantage of productivity enhancing VoIP features.

Dana Point, CA (PRWEB) October 26, 2009 — Voice over IP (VoIP) technology innovations have endowed today’s business phone systems with advanced features and tools that can radically enhance and simplify communications–but many users don’t take advantage of them. Today SimpleSignal introduced its Call Control Toolbar, a breakthrough application that makes advanced VoIP calling features easier and more convenient to use.

Hosted PBX carriers provide access to their IP phone features through a web browser or web portal, which requires that users log in, enter a password and risk losing track of their portal page URL. In contrast, SimpleSignal’s Call Control Toolbar is an elegant, Adobe Air-based application that floats anywhere on a user’s desktop for instant access to a range of calling feature controls. The Call Control Toolbar does not require users to launch a web browser.

“One of the biggest challenges we discovered in our customer research was that our Hosted PBX customers were not using incredibly efficient calling features like simultaneous ring, remote office and voice messaging, or even more basic functions such as speed dial,” said Dave Gilbert, founder and president of SimpleSignal, “either because they didn’t know how or didn’t want to be bothered with logging into a web portal to set up or change their IP phone settings.

“The SimpleSignal Call Control Toolbar eliminates these hassles for users,” Gilbert continued. “The controls are user-friendly and always available in the background on a user’s desktop, so it’s easy to make quick, on-the-fly changes to IP phone settings. ”

The SimpleSignal Call Control Toolbar also features call notification screen pops. When a user receives an incoming call, a small window pops up at the bottom of the user’s computer screen with complete caller ID information. Users can also answer the call directly from the screen pop.

The Call Control Toolbar is provided free of charge for SimpleSignal’s Hosted PBX customers.

SimpleSignal will unveil the Call Control Toolbar to the industry during a workshop at BroadSoft Connections 2009: Voice & Vision, October 25 – 28, at The Phoenician in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Features that can be managed by the toolbar include:

•    Simultaneous Ring (http://www.simplesignal.com/feat_Simultaneous-Ring.php) for up to six numbers
•    Remote Office, which displays your office number on caller ID regardless of which phone is being used
•    Outbound Dialing by entering the phone number or copying and pasting into Toolbar window
•    Speed Dial for six numbers
•    Sequential Ring for up to six numbers
•    Voice Messaging Control (http://www.simplesignal.com/feat_Visual-Voicemail.php), including email notifications and transfer upon dialing “0″
•    Call Forwarding Always
•    Call Forwarding Busy
•    Call Forwarding No Answer
•    Do Not Disturb

For more information about the Call Control Toolbar, go to SimpleSignal.com/toolbar.

About SimpleSignal
SimpleSignal is a Cloud-based (also known as Hosted PBX) Unified Communications service provider that also offers SIP Trunking services, advanced Voice Apps and Polycom IP Phone equipment. The company is one of the top BroadSoft switches in the U.S., providing IP Phone applications and services to thousands of satisfied customers throughout the U.S. and Canada, with a growing list of multi-office clients in many international locations. SimpleSignal dependably provisions off-net, which means that customers can bring their own bandwidth and still use the SimpleSignal Hosted PBX system without overhauling their entire IP infrastructure.  SimpleSignal, Inc. is located at 34232 Pacific Coast Highway, Dana Point, CA 92629. Find us on the web at www.simplesignal.com. For sales, call 866-434-4404. Read Dave Gilbert’s Blog: http://www.simplesignal.com/blog/.

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This article was front page news at VON.com.  This is a major breakthrough for the entire VoIP industry!

Philadelphia, PA and Dana Point, CA – October 22, 2009 – Alteva, North America’s largest enterprise hosted VoIP provider, and SimpleSignal, a facilities-based complete network provider of business VoIP, today announced the successful completion of an IP peering relationship that will integrate disparate VoIP Service Providers to improve voice and video communications and allow advanced feature integration.

Currently, most calls are placed through the traditional PSTN controlled by legacy carriers, which defeats many of the current quality improvements available with High Definition (HD) IP communications. When VoIP service providers peer with each other, users on either network can connect directly over IP and bypass the PSTN. This allows the user to experience all the quality and features available through HD IP voice and video communications in a cross-platform call. The technology being used is an innovative and new approach of “fabric-based peering,” in which carriers can easily and reliably route communications based traffic between customers or end users regardless of who they use for their services.

Following this year’s CTO Summit, held at the VON Conference & Expo in Miami Beach, Florida, Alteva and SimpleSignal became the first VoIP Service Providers to take the dramatic step towards improving video communications and HD voice communications.

“The roadblock to enhanced communications services continues to be the limitations of the PSTN networks that interconnect all carriers,” said Mark Marquez, VP of Technology at Alteva. “Alteva believes that ‘a high tide raises all ships’. By working with SimpleSignal, we are able to provide end-to-end IP-based communications that allow for enhanced video conversations, as well as high-definition voice. We hope this will encourage other carriers to follow suit.”

“The SimpleSignal and Alteva alliance proves that HD voice and exceptional video quality can happen completely outside of the traditional PSTN,” said Ujjval Karihaloo, VP of Engineering at SimpleSignal. “By removing the barrier of the PSTN and peering with other service providers, IP communications can be all that it was created to be. Alteva and SimpleSignal users can now talk to each other using HD voice technology without any per minute charges.”

Some of the benefits of a nationwide IP peering fabric could include: nationwide HD-to-HD calling between different service providers, the ability to pass video from one carrier to another, and more overall cost-effective peering relationships for service providers and their customers.

“The recent growth in SIP trunking will quickly advance new IP-based communication applications like video conferencing,” said Seamus Hourihan, executive vice president of marketing and product management for Acme Packet. “Acme Packet’s Net-Net Session Border Controllers provide the foundation for service providers like Alteva and SimpleSignal to deliver trusted, first-class communications and offer new business tools to more effectively meet the needs of their enterprise customers.”

Alteva and SimpleSignal will demonstrate their peering relationship at Acme Packet’s Interconnect 2009 conference (November 8-11th) in Miami, Florida. The demonstration will include HD voice and video communication between Alteva and SimpleSignal, two of the leading hosted VoIP carriers in North America.

With the evolution of powerful VoIP Phone technology, business phone systems have become sophisticated and feature-rich…so much so that many users don’t take advantage of a fraction of the game-changing communications tools they now have at their fingertips.  Here at SimpleSignal we’re out to solve that problem by developing new communications software apps that simplify the interaction between users and their IP Phone technology.

One such breakthrough is our new SimpleSignal Call Control Toolbar.  The majority of Hosted PBX providers provide access to their IP Phone calling features through a web browser, after logging in with user name and password, and often users lose track of their portal page URL. This elegant little call control toolbar, built as an Adobe Air application, floats anywhere on a user’s desktop for instant access to a host of Internet Phone calling feature controls without ever launching their web browser.

One of the biggest challenges we discovered in our customer research was the fact that our Hosted PBX customers were not using incredibly efficient calling features like simultaneous or sequential ring, remote office, call forwarding, visual voicemail messaging, and even more basic functions such as speed dial, either because they didn’t know how or didn’t want to be bothered with logging in and out of a web portal to set up or change their IP phone settings.

The Toolbar changes all of that immediately.  The controls are easy to understand and always available in the background of a user’s desktop, making quick, on-the-fly changes to their IP phone settings a non-issue.

Another practical feature of the Toolbar is the “call notification screen pops”.  When a call comes in, a little window pops up in the bottom of the user’s computer screen with complete caller ID information, letting the user decide what to do with the call, without ever taking their eyes off their screen.  By the way, the call can also be answered directly from the screen.

The Call Control Toolbar is provided free of charge for our Hosted PBX customers.

Features include:

• Call Forwarding Always
• Call Forwarding Busy
• Call Forwarding No Answer
• Simultaneous Ring (Six Numbers)
• Remote Office (Shows your office number from any phone you select)
• Do Not Disturb
• Sequential Ring (Six Numbers)
• Speed Dial (Six Numbers)
• Voice Messaging Control including email notifications and transfer upon dialing “0”
• Call Notification Screen Pops
• Outbound Dialing (Enter phone number or copy and paste into Toolbar window)

More voice services and voice applications are under development for the Toolbar, and updates will be available as new versions are released.

For more information on our new Call Control Toolbar go to SimpleSignal.com/simple_toolbar.

Unified Communications (UC) has come of age. We’ve been talking about the power of Unified Communications now for years but now business is experiencing first hand the value of having the new voice applications at work in their office. I was inspired by an article I read written by Khali Henderson in Phone+ Magazine this week that mentioned SimpleSignal. I’ve pulled out sections of her article and written this blog entry around them.

Businesses have begun to adopt a business strategy that includes voice applications at a stunning pace. Market projections show significant adoption over the next five years. Here’s some stats:

In its worldwide forecast published in June, Wainhouse Research found hosted Unified Communications will grow from $200 million today to $1 billion in 2011 and more than $5 billion in 2014. A competitive report, released by Radicati Group Inc. in May, similarly projected the market would reach nearly $5 billion by 2013 while its 2009 estimates are at $2.9 billion. North America Hosted Unified Communications revenue is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 400 percent between 2009 and 2013. That is actually a very small number since most true hosted Unified Communications deployments started only last fall; thus the incredible revenue growth rate projection. Hosted Unified Communications seat growth for North America has a similar trajectory, climbing 273 percent over the forecast period.

Based on interviews with analysts and service providers, Unified Communications at a base level must include three elements — telephony, messaging and presence — integrated into a single interface. Beyond those core capabilities, consensus breaks down. The most common add-ons mentioned are mobility (i.e., fixed mobile convergence or FMC), collaboration and conferencing, and integration with business software applications, such as CRM.

The pitch for Unified Communications must necessarily go beyond the cost-savings discussion that has been fairly successful at convincing companies to migrate premises-based point solutions like IP PBXs and e-mail to hosted versions. Communicating the business benefits of Unified Communications is key.

While cost may not be the only reason for outsourcing hosted Unified Communications, there’s a great story to tell here, providers say, and it’s resonating well with companies of all sizes during the recession. Simply put, it just costs less money to install a hosted Unified Communications solution than buy a piece of equipment and put it in a closet in your office.

For instance, Microsoft’s OCS requires 12 servers by itself without tying it to a PBX. Adding other applications, such as Web conferencing and secure chat, only serves to drive the cost higher. The capital requirements are massive if you want to take this on, this doesn’t even address the soft costs of personnel to manage and maintain it. And the demands for knowledgeable IT staff don’t end once the system is deployed. Depending on the vendor of your Unified Communications platform, you do need a level of expertise to appropriately manage it, and that level of expertise increases as your enterprise size increases as well. Using SimpleSignal takes the worry away. Our highly trained technical staff manage all the complexities of running the Unified Communications platform. So outsourcing hosted Unified Communications can not only offer a company the benefits of the technology faster, it can offer the scalability required to meet growing —or shrinking—needs.

Another consideration is the cost of having a backup location in support of business continuity. SimpleSignal’s Unified Communications applications include all the accoutrements of a data center, including backup power, site redundancy and high-capacity bandwidth connectivity.

An additional “hidden” cost is keeping up with technology migration. New revs are coming faster and faster — not all of them are software, some are hardware — and those costs are unpredictable about when they are going to come and how much they are.

Wise companies are considering the reality that because technology is changing so fast, companies are increasingly worried about taking on the “capital risk” of a hardware solution and looking for ways to “future proof” their voice infrastructure.

The opex picture for hosted Unified Communications also looks pretty good when considering that just subscribing to point solutions like Web conferencing alone can be $60-plus per month per employee. Compare that to SimpleSignal’s fully loaded $59 per month per employee price tag for a hosted Unified Communications configuration including unlimited voice calls, conferencing, PBX, unified messaging and hosted Exchange server (email).

Money isn’t the only thing businesses need a lot of to implement Unified Communications on their own. Deploying a best-of-breed solution takes expertise in spades, and since it’s newer technology, that means research and time. A hosted Unified Communications provider has brought together myriad solutions, such as Microsoft OCS, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, integration with CRM like ACT! and Salesforce.com, Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps and more.

What SimpleSignal really does is solve the complexity issue. We’ve made it “simple” for a business to deploy Unified Communications. When you go with a hosted solution, it really is an on-demand type of relationship. We can have a full Unified Communications application in a four-week period instead of an 18-month period (for an on-premises solution).

This mind shift along with increased resource (people and cash) restraints due to the recession may be the reason that increasingly larger companies are moving to hosted Unified Communications.

This past weekend I met with the CEO of Broadsoft Mike Tessler. He shared with me that he knows of very large multi-location customers have started to dramatically change to the hosted model. This trend for hosted to go “upstream” is new in 2009. We’ve not seen that before. We were mainly focused on small and medium businesses (under 50 employees).  Now, the very large customer who, because of these economic times, are forced to focus on a smarter, more efficient, less capital-intensive way to get their voice and Internet services are considering SimpleSignal.

It seems that our biggest problem is awareness. Most businesses aren’t really aware, especially if they are smaller companies, that hosted Unified Communications is an option. Now is the time for our great company to come to the aid of our country.

This past year or so will go down in history as some of the most economically challenging times in the history of America. And… we are not yet out of it. To survive, businesses of all types are trying to reduce expenses and strive for profitability. The ones that survive will be lean and strong. They will have learned to do more with less. They will have sought out every available tool to increase sales and decrease costs. However, many of these tools are capital-intensive and capital is expensive and hard to come by.

A “cloud” or “hosted” telephone system offers affordable, trusted, reliable and flexible cloud based telephone systems that deliver dramatic leaps in productivity and profitability. What is the “cloud”? In computer network diagrams, a cloud graphic is used to depict the “web” or the “internet”. Our telephone system has it’s core in our secure data centers, not in your office and is connected over the web not telephone wires. This relieves your enterprise from the capital investment and the burdens and risk of running your own communications equipment. Businesses that have partnered with the SimpleSignal cloud now have a game-changing, VoIP communication features that create an opportunity to grow sales, cut their telephone bill, and improve their voice quality. Businesses of all sizes are finding our value proposition to be compelling as evidenced by our rapid success and growing subscriber base.

In the past, to have features like ours at work in your business it meant you’d need to make a big upfront investment. Not today. Not in times like these. A cloud based telephone system provides an easy, scalable, and reliable way to provide business enhancing features without needing to make big and risky upfront investments.

Explore our features to maximize your benefits

Our platform of products & services helps thousands of businesses achieve greater productivity every day—without requiring costly new phone equipment or changes to business processes. Our full range of features is available to your business anytime, anywhere and from any phone. Our software integration means that you can click to call right out of the programs you work out of all day.

Grow your business from anywhere on one platform

Our cloud telephone system works with all your devices. You can be connected to your business network no matter if you or your co-workers are talking on an analog line, a cellular phone  or an IP softphone or land line. Even if they are separated by oceans and time zones they are all on the same telephone system and have access to the same feature set.

Cut your costs

Many business have experienced cost savings greater than 50% when changing over to our service. In addition, there is far less capital outlay when there is no system to buy, no PBX equipment to install or maintain, no dedicated electrical circuits, no risk of obsolescence and no risk of out growing the system as your business recovers and grows.

Flexible pricing

Our service is affordable with pay-as-you-go small monthly fees that can fit any budget. No long-term contracts required, and we give you a 30-Day Money Back Guarantee

Improve your voice quality

SimpleSignal’s Hosted telephone system is a HD voice, high capacity carrier-class computer platform.

So easy to use

Our phones are shipped to you pre-configured. Plug them into the ethernet and in just minutes you’re talking on net. Our unique business communication solution allows you to update settings on the fly. Need help? We are always just a phone call away, ready to support you.

Bottom line? A telephone system that is controlled in the cloud can make your phone system do more.

Contact us and tell us about your business—chances are that our sales consultants have worked with someone in your industry in the past and we can help you use our technology to design a better business process using today’s communications technology.

Where do you draw the line between quality and cost savings?

At SimpleSignal, we try to draw that line as close to the cost savings, without compromising quality, which is our number one priority. I find that when a small business or large business is selecting a new phone system, there are several criterion they consider, features, functionality, potential for productivity, quality of service, and everyone’s biggest consideration, cost savings. Through my years of purchasing different products, no matter what they be, I have found that there is a big difference between cost and value.  Personally, I am always willing to invest a little bit more on the front end for a quality product, if it will hold up and outperform on the back end.  Do you buy quality gardening tools at a cheap discounter store? No, they break the second you do any heavy work, not unlike many phone systems.

I believe it is worth more to have SimpleSignal’s outstanding quality hosted PBX that makes my employees more productive, which in turn pays off for my company in many ways.  My employees are happy with their advanced features, our response time to clients has decreased, we have better inter-office communication, and most importantly, it’s an extremely reliable service with great support if needed.  Another benefit is that, as a SimpleSignal client, you get a customized solution for your business, as opposed to the “bundle version” you receive from a large, impersonal company.

At the end of the day, it’s all about what makes sense for your business, and how you can maximize your potential for growth.  With a Hosted PBX system from SimpleSignal, you can quit worrying about your phone system, and continue to focus on your bottom line.

Check out Bradford’s incredible video on the SimpleSignal video wall at vimeo.com

Why would a business go to the expense and hassle to change out their old PBX phone system and install a SimpleSignal Hosted VoIP small business phone system? Let me share with you a quote written by Jeff Sexton (a new SimpleSignal employee) about why he can’t live without the simultaneous ring feature.

“Simultaneous ring keeps me connected…How many times have you stayed in your office for lunch because you had a client who was supposed to call you back, with no specific time in mind? Like you, I am a busy person and cannot spend my entire day in front of an office phone. However, the fear of missing that valued customer’s call has often kept me from leaving the office. Simultaneous ring has not only freed me from the office, but also saved my customers from not being able to reach me and calling a competitor. No matter if I am in the car, at home, or out to lunch, my clients can always reach me. With simultaneous ring all my calls to my office phone will automatically also ring my cell phone. Wherever I am, my clients can get in contact with me. Isn’t that the point of a cell phone in the first place?”

Thanks for sharing your experience with us Jeff. If simultaneous ring keeps you connected and therefore saves you just one deal a year, you could see how a business can justify its hosted VoIP small business phone system from SimpleSignal several times over. By the way, you can contact Jeff and talk with him directly or email him at jeff.sexton@simplesignal.com.

• HD Voice
• Easy FMC access on smartphone
• Easy transfer to/from mobile/desktop (Call Swap)
• Video capability
• Email to Voicemail mailbox
• Voicemail to text
• UM (unified messaging)
• Simultaneous ring
• User portal
• Click to call
• and more business changing features

Alex thinks that VoIP service providers are getting better at delivering IP PBX phone systems. I think that most still suck at it and it is costing them a fortune because of their high acquisition cost and failed installations. Add to that a fortune more in brand deterioration when people get frustrated with the experience.

There are very few “Purple Cows” (Seth Godin’s book about truly remarkable products) in our industry. And if you think you are one, I suggest you talk to your customers. Why? Because while you may think you deliver a great service, your competitors are taking your customers and winning them over.

You’re absolutely right Alex – there are very few value-add hosted voip provider that are delivering dial-tone to the enterprise and voice as a feature rather than the traditional voice as a service. Discover true voice 2.0 at simplesignal.com. Please feel free to contact me directly at dave@simplesignal.com