David Thorn, CEO at Telstra told Comms Business Magazine:
“We have been using VoIP ourselves for some time and have deployed the application in our new Cambridge Data Centre. We have alpha customers now and are planning a channel roll out at the end of March for a hosted IP PBX service.”
Channel Manager Ben LeFeuvre added, “We have deliberately held back a bit because we know that when the products go to the channel, who have a lot of traditional PBX experience, we don’t want to go to market with anything that is less than fully prepared and viable.”
Thorn concluded, “With a lot of this stuff, as it is all built in software, it is only when you actually try it and use it that you find out what bugs are in there. For example even on the handsets we have found ‘speaker bleed’ so we have looked at this as well as volume on hunt groups, the amount of messages you can leave on voicemail – this is the level of detail we have gone into before we push the service out to the channel as we do not want to have a failed launch.”
Telstra are using Cisco and Mitel IP Phones but will be bringing in low cost devices. Additionally they have a Softphone option.
The hosted services will be available on a per user per month charge.