Raising its voice
BT's unified communications (UC) platform is called Onevoice. It has announced three new enhancements to Onevoice, which it claims can deliver major cost savings to corporate customers. UC is essentially the convergence of traditional telephony and data communication services into one solution.
BT is obviously coming at UC from position of traditional strength in the telephony sector, but technology giants such as Cisco and Microsoft are threatening to dominate this new converged industry. It's under additional pressure to make a success of products like this after its Global Services division delivered disappointing results last year.
The three additions to Onevoice are:
- Session initiation protocol (SIP) connectivity
- Audio conferencing at reduced, ‘on net' rates
- International mobile voice calls at reduced, ‘on net' rates
Essentially this all amounts to an improvement in the way you can utilise IP networks to reduce the cost of voice services.
"By moving to a converged BT Onevoice infrastructure customers can reduce costs, supplier numbers and complexity, while also ensuring their communications strategy is firmly on track to the ultimate ambition of a complete, feature rich, unified communications environment," said Neil Sutton, VP of Global Propositions & Capabilities at BT Global Services
"The global VPN capability enables organisations to combine next generation services alongside their legacy voice services, all integrated for the user via a single interface and with the potential for major international call cost savings."
