News

BT Release One Phone

Telephony
BT have launched their new BT One Phone, a new service that brings together all of a company’s office phone system and mobile phone needs into a single service, hosted in the Cloud and delivered on a mobile phone.

All of an individual’s numbers are linked to their work mobile phone, so whether somebody calls their landline, extension or mobile number, all calls go to one phone, helping businesses be more responsive to their customers and less likely to miss calls. It works with a full range of mobile phones, by inserting a BT One Phone SIM. Combined with 4G and unlimited access to over 5 million BT Wi-fi hotspots, our customers’ employees now have both the data and voice connectivity to let them be as productive outside the office as they are at their desk.

Graham Sutherland, CEO, BT Business, said: “With an increasingly mobile and demanding workforce, businesses need communications technology that is as flexible as they are. Missed calls mean missed business. Today’s announcement, combined with the upcoming launch of our 4G services demonstrates our ongoing commitment to the increasingly mobile UK workforce.”

As the system is Cloud-based, all of the feature-rich call management services of a phone system such as call forwarding and hunt groups, typically available on a desk phone, are now available on an employee’s mobile, wherever they are.

Businesses can have complete control over their own call settings with the BT One Phone portal. Administrators can add and remove employees as they join or leave, activate or deactivate SIM cards and set and manage call groups themselves, without the need for technical support.

BT One Phone provides inclusive “on-net” internal calls between users within a business, a choice of company shared bundles or unlimited voice and text tiers, and access to in-depth billing data to help customers control their costs more effectively. As it’s a hosted solution, there’s limited upfront investment required, no separate maintenance contract and no need to invest heavily as a business grows or adds new sites.

To install BT One Phone, in most cases BT will build a dedicated mobile network in a customer’s premises. This provides excellent indoor mobile coverage and capacity, and call quality equivalent to a landline. Any phone with a BT One Phone SIM automatically connects to the dedicated mobile network as soon as it’s in range. When an employee leaves the office there’s a seamless handover between their dedicated mobile network and the BT Mobile national network.

Resilience is also a key part of BT One Phone, with a dedicated data transmission link to manage call traffic back to BT’s national network, meaning that neither call capacity nor quality is affected by surges in company data or internet traffic. With full office phone system functionality on their mobiles, employees can carry on working even if they can’t get into the office.

BT will support customers by providing a dedicated project manager to oversee the installation, who will be present on-site when the service goes live and be on hand for two weeks following the installation to help with any other queries. There is a dedicated BT One Phone help desk that provides in-life support.

The new BT One Phone service will be supported by expert regional experience centres, which are being rolled out across the country within the next six months.

BT recently signed an agreement with EE, who provide the best 2G and 3G coverage and biggest 4G network in the UK. BT Business is already a successful mobile provider to SMEs and will announce its new mobile price plans in the next few weeks.