SMB IT | Curtis Franklin » Whaleback SMB VoIP for $50 a month

March 03, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Whaleback SMB VoIP for $50 a month

TAGS: SMB VoIP

Yesterday, I had a short interview with Ken Stess, who's the Vice President of Corporate and Business Development for Whaleback Systems, which just released its new managed SMB 1500 VoIP service.

Summing up Whaleback is pretty easy: turnkey Voice over IP system built specifically for SMBs, with an emphasis on SBs. And 'turnkey' really does mean 'turnkey'--as in, Whaleback supplies everything, including the SIP PBX, the hand sets and the phone service. All you need is $49.95/month per seat and a DSL or cable connection.

The catch? None really, at least not from Whaleback's side. I haven't tested the system, but they're not offering anything that's radically new, including voice, fax, voicemail-to-email and call forwarding. And even extension mirroring, where the handset at your house and the handset at the office are exact mirrors of each other. Great for telecommuters. Plus, they're monitoring every SIP PBX from a central NOC location.

The catch is in whether you want to rely on DSL/cable for something as critical as voice. The New York Metro area, for instance, has been hit with a spike in DSL problems recently, due mainly to Verizon dropping its DSL pricing in a bid to grab customers without doing anything on the back end to prep for the new load.

Cable has better reliability, but both the DSL and cable guys are also trying to legislate that new Internet where they get to charge us more and block any kind of traffic they don't like. What happens then?

Stess actually had an answer for that, though, as it seems that Whaleback has made deals with guys like Comcast to provide VoIP service, and these deals should transcend any evil future legislation. You DSL users are out of luck; but you've probably got a multi-year window as the legislation battles peter out. And for $49.95/seat, you're still getting a good deal.

Posted by Oliver Rist on March 3, 2006 12:58 PM

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