March 2nd, 2006 by Justin Oberman
Yes, There Is a Free Sample at the End of this post.
One day, I called the cell phone of a potential client and was shocked when the call was picked up by a PBX system. A kind woman asked “Who may I ask is calling?” After I gave my name she asked me to please hold as she tried to locate the person who I was trying to call. Then I was introduced to some beautiful classical music while I waited. Meanwhile, (and I did not know this at the time) three different phones of my potential client where ringing at the same time with my call. The first phone to pick it up answered the call. My potential client heard who the message was from and luckily decided to take my call.
The service is provided by a company called Phone Fusion and while I have seen and played with other PBX one number solution like services for mobile and or personal use (and played around with a couple at 3GSM)… this is the first solution I have seen that is both easy to use, feature rich and sold directly to the consumer.
I spent a good 3 hours speaking with the companies founder Jonathan Hollander over the phone as he guided me through the service features both online and via phone call examples. If you ask him what telephony category Phone Fusion fits into he will tell you without flinching that it’s all about “Unified Communication,” a category that is more and more needed as more and more modes of communication thrust upon us. The theme and demand for such services and technology appears to be springing up. I mean, think about how many different ways you can be contacted. I know you can Skype me, AIM me, Email me (on 5 different addresses..,. I’m on flickr, myspace, dodgeball and friendster and you can call me on my American cell, my European cell, my LAN line and my VoIP line (not to mention you can also text me on both my cells). I swear, one day I was sitting at home watching TV while working on the computer and was contacted by all of the above within a minute of each other?
Some may argue that cell phone convergence is moving toward a unified solution and they would be right, but this is only half the truth. Cell phone convergence allows me to access my Instant Messaging and email and social networks all on one device but they are still all diversified points of contacts. Plus, the cell phone number (for talking :-)) is only one of the 5 telephone numbers I associate with myself with. Phone Fusion is a first step toward making communication life a little easier. Simply put it’s a simple service that keeps you in control with just one phone number. You are given a permanent telephone number to give to your clients, colleagues, family or friends. Once this number is dialed, PhoneFusion contacts you anywhere you choose to be contacted, whether you are in the car, at home, leaving a client meeting, at the office or anywhere else in the world.
For a busy guy like me, always traveling with multiple numbers Phone Fusion’s “unified communication” concept would allow me to manage all of my incoming calls “like a virtual secretary” no matter what type of phone line (cell phones, land lines, VoIP lines and even faxes) I am on. “It’s cellphone agnostic,” Jonathan jokes over the phone, “even if you live on your cell phone.”
I also think think would be a really nifty tool for political campaigns that are always on the road.
I think that, in the very near future, we will start seeing a lot of “unified communication” solutions from already existing carriers, first targeted toward business men and then eventually even to the general public.
The company offers 4 different plans, a Standard service ($9.95 m), a Deluxe service ($15.95 m), a Premium service ($29.95) and a “Virtual Attendant” service (a virtual PBX like system) which can be added on to any Deluxe or Premium service for an extra 19.95 a month and thus allow business subscribers to sound like a professional company and have phones with all the same features as an expensive phone system for one low monthly payment…without all the expensive equipment.
With any of the services what you get is a phone number in your area code that will find you or follow you wherever you go as well as allow you to upload custom music for when you place your caller on hold, record all calls as well as the ability to transfer a call seamlessly between any type of phone (VoIP, Mobile or Lan) as if it was on the same network. You also get conference calling which allows you to create “virtual conference rooms,” as well as the basics such as voice mail, voice screening Call Guard and Caller ID Announcement. Your Phone Fusion number can even be used to send and receive faxes which are sent directly to your email or can be viewed online as a PDF.
The online interface, besides being a little bit java script heavy, is extremely easy to maneuver around with clear indications on how activate certain functions as well as what certain things mean. Subscribers can forward calls to as many as 4 numbers of any kind of phone (more numbers can be added at extra cost) and transfer freely between them at any time. hone Fusion forward grips the callers caller ID so that if your phone is equipped with Caller ID technology you will see the person calling number on all phones instead of your phone fusion number. Picking up the call on any phone will cause the other phones to stop ringing and at which time you will hear a recorded message of the person trying to contact you. You can than choose to accept the call, send a recorded message back to the person saying that you will call them back in a little bit or send the call to voice mail. And the voicemail feature is really neat in that phone fusion emails it to your desired email address in the form of a wav file. Messages can, of course, be checked using your phone but I kind of like the idea of being emailed my voice mail and having a stored copy of them on my computer (the same service applies for the “recording conversation” feature by the way… all conversations can be recorded up to one hour and then emailed directly to you when finished… large files are automatically divided up).
You can even make outgoing calls from phone fusion. While its still not as simple as just picking up a phone and dialing (with the exception of a certain feature available on the deluxe and premium packages which I will get to in a moment) the most immediate option is to call your own phone fusion number and enter the necessary pin to get into your account. One of the options enables you to enter a number in which to call. Calls can also be made via the web. In the example above, all I did was enter the number of which phone I wanted to use and the number I wished to call and pressed enter. In no time at all, my phone rang and when I picked it up it immediately started ringing the number I wished to call. The number the other person sees on their caller ID, by the way, is your Phone Fusion number and not the number of the phone I am actually using.
Now, it is important to point out that Phone Fusion is a telephony service and that beyond the monthly service fee you must also pay for time spent chatting when a call is connected via Phone Fusion. But these fees are anywhere from 5 cents a minute for incoming calls and 4 cents a minute for outgoing calls (these fees are more if you enable forwarding to an international number). What this means, is that if you pick up with a cell phone you well be using your mobile minutes as well as paying by the minute for fusion. The only exception to this is if you activate international forwarding and and answer a Phone Fusion call on a European cell phone, in which case who will only be paying the cost per minute for Phone Fusion’s international forwarding (which, by the way, is much cheaper then roaming on a GSM American cell phone when abroad. The problem with the international solution, of course, is that it is still not as easy to make a call at Phone Fusion prices. If a subscriber is away from a broadband connection (to instruct Phone Fusion to call your phone to make a call), he or she would have to dial into there American Phone Fusion number and would thus be paying for a long distance call on a international (probably pay as you) number. Jonathan tells me that they are working on a method that would enable a subscriber to have Phone Fusion call them back via a quick call or SMS command.
Now, don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of companies that offer this same type of multiple call forwarding solution, but what differentiates Phone Fusion from the rest (say like Area775) is that it is one of the first of its kind (in the direct to consumer market) to also incorporate (in its Deluxe and Premium packages) a complete VoIP package that concentrates on the theme of “unified communication.” In other words… instead of signing up with Vonage or other VoIP providers you sign up with Phone Fusion and the (pay as you go) number you get with Phone Fusion VoIP is the one number that also accesses Phone Fusions unified communication solution. What impressed me more was to learn that Phone Fusion and its Phone Box Etc technology is partly built upon a customized version of Asterisk, the open open source PBX server software coded by Mark Spencer, which means it lacks the limitations that other corporate built solutions often find themselves stuck in. Using Asterisk and thus avoiding things like pocket switches etc frees up Phone Fusions storage standards and provides them with infinite room for growth. In this sense, Phone Fusion is picking up where a lot of VoIP services leave of (acting a lot like an MVNO) or as Jonathan likes to refer to it, “we are essentially Voice Over IP on steroids.”
What’s next? A Phone Fusion cell number?
For those of you that want to try out the service for yourself, the nice guys at Phone Fusion provided me with a code to give to MOpocket readers so that you can try out the service for one month, free of charge.
Technorati Tags: asterisk, pbx, phone fusion
