Branding

Like its VOIP competitors, Ecuity also offers a range of single-user, consumer plans, both with Symphone Wi-Fi softphones and the more familiar, one-port terminal adapters for regular analog phones. They badly need to straighten out their branding. I imagine customers will have a hard time understanding which layer of their multilayered service is meant by V-Tone, which is Smart Call, and how the "V-Tone Office PBX" differs from the "V-Tone Centrex." The first, a more sophisticated service, goes for $35 per seat per month and includes a systemwide view of extensions in its Call Manger browser interface, the ability to make certain DID numbers ring multiple extensions simultaneously, and an auto attendant to greet callers from a main office number and forward to four-digit extensions. The V-Tone Centrex, for $25 per seat per month, is a more stripped-down hosted PBX. Avaya is going to provide a VOIP solution at Toshiba headquarters. Click here to read more. Ecuity is very worth watching, as it will make a good working lab for the mobile, multimodal edge of the VOIP frontier, where voice and data flow in two directions during one call. As a regional carrier 17 years old, it may show us where a small ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) can fit between the Big Four RBOCs (regional Bell operating companies) and the MCIs, Sprints and AT&Ts, also going after VOIP. As the company also owns and runs a network of free-to-consumer Wi-Fi hotspots in the Seattle area in local coffee bars and restaurants, it may also show us what there is to gain from Wi-Fi-VOIP synergies. Check out eWEEK.coms VOIP & Telephony Center at http://voip.eweek.com for the latest news, views and analysis on voice over IP and telephony.