Phone.com's Communicator Brings a New Level of Convenience to the Virtual Office

By Amanda Ciccatelli, TMCnet Web Editor

Today, businesses require numerous vehicles for communication in order to continue to run productively no matter where employees are located in the state, the country or even the world.

Recently, Phone (News - Alert).com, a cloud-based phone company that provides business and home phone services to small businesses, expanded its Virtual Office cloud-based business phone services to include the Communicator “softphone,” a Windows and Mac OS X application that is installed on a computer to emulate a traditional phone dialer. Using Communicator, business people can place or receive calls just as they would through a desk or mobile phone by using a laptop or desktop computer with a microphone, headset or speakers.

“We wanted to create a situation where the customer can take the office to wherever their workplace is located whether it’s traveling overseas, working outside the office, working from home and so on. This way wherever your laptop is, your office is,” Alon Cohen, executive vice president and CTO of Phone.com (News - Alert), told TMCnet.

Communicator works as effectively in voice only mode or can be used to create desktop-to-desktop video sessions.  “Video calling is going to become more important to businesses in the near future,” said Ari Rabban (News - Alert), Phone.com co-founder and CEO. “Communicator allows Phone.com customers to quickly and easily add real-time video calling to their communications tools without the need for expensive telephones or video systems.”

Communicator is a branded version of CounterPath’s (News - Alert) Bria softphone application. CounterPath is a developer of desktop and mobile VoIP software applications that enable service providers and enterprises to integrate unified communication (UC) services into VoIP offerings across fixed and mobile networks. Working with Phone.com, CounterPath was able to adapt its phone to specific needs to meet the requirements of its customers.

“By adding our desktop- and laptop-ready softphone to their service, Phone.com is empowering its enterprise customers with a new way to communicate using voice, video and messaging across multiple platforms and devices,” said Todd Carothers, executive vice president of sales and marketing at CounterPath.

Phone.com chose CounterPath Bria as opposed to other clients because CounterPath products were popular among Phone.com customers. It wanted to create a situation where the client was a more UC client with the ability to add functionality.

“CounterPath provided us with a very stable platform to work with. We have support from it in case there are issues in operating systems. It is a one-stop shop where you can actually get clients for PC, Mac, Android (News - Alert) and iPhones all in the same shop, which is very important for us,” said Cohen.

Since Phone.com’s customers are very small businesses, it wasn’t sure if video was a necessary feature. So, Phone.com decided to test the idea out by adding the video function on the Bria and see how the market responds.

According to Carothers, CounterPath has observed an over 40 percent use of video across the consumer space and the enterprise space. He said, “This matches really well with a differentiating proposition for Phone.com.”

To use Communicator, you must have a Phone.com Virtual Office account and will need to add a Communicator extension to your service. Communicator is a free download for Phone.com customers.

Edited by Allison Boccamazzo