StartUp Beat: Fonality Launches Free Business Phone System
By Staff
August 13, 2007
Culver City-based Fonality, the open-source IP telephony company, today launched a free phone system for businesses. Called trixbox Pro, Fonality says the downloadable system allows companies with five to 500 employees to make free voice-over-IP, or VoIP, calls.
Fonality says that in addition to traditional phone dialing and PBX system features, trixbox Pro also includes conference calling, unified messaging between voicemail and email, employee presence management, an embedded corporate chat server, and the ability to integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.
The company says the new service includes trixNet, a free in-network calling service which lets any trixbox Pro user call any other trixbox Pro user, using their regular phone numbers. Calls over trixNet are not subject to any local or long-distance charges. Fonality says that in early 2008 it will extend free trixNet calling to include anybody using GoogleTalk, Google’s instant communications service.
trixbox Pro is a hybrid-hosted phone system, meaning the free software is first downloaded by a business and installed on a local computer and local IP phones. After this step, the local computer connects to the Fonality network where server health, call quality and usage are constantly monitored, according to the company.
