Save costs while increasing productivity

Businesses waste thousands of rand every month as employees place ‚urgent‚ calls to colleagues’ cellphones, when their work mates might just have stepped away from their desks for a few minutes.

Now voice-based telecommunications solutions company Du Pont Telecom has introduced a versatile ‚fixed mobile‚ solution that enables employees to be contactable via their cellphone handsets at all times – without unnecessarily incurring the cost of a cellphone call.

By downloading software to employees’ cellphones and upgrading the enterprise PBX, the devices become mobile PBX extensions when in the office’s WiFi area. This allows users to make WiFi calls all around the enterprise without worrying about coverage or costs.

All the functions provided on a desk phone automatically become available on the cellphone. These include standard in-call features such as consultation, toggle, transfer, call waiting and conferencing as well as out-call features such as call forwarding.

‚Employees effectively have just one contact number at all times. The mobile cellphone becomes the employee’s desk phone in the office and calls to that phone while the employee is in the enterprise Wi-Fi area are free,‚ explains Du Pont Telecom CEO Graeme Victor.

Once away from the WiFi area, the cellphone becomes just that – a standard cellphone. However, calls to the employee’s office extension are routed automatically to the cellphone and charged for at normal cellphone rates.

Should users start a conversation while in the office and then leave the WiFi covered area, the call will not drop. Users just carry on with their conversion and the phone will switch seamlessly to connect to the GSM network. The call then becomes a regular cellular call.

‚The fixed-mobile solution brings full VoIP telephony to all capable handsets. In addition, apart from enabling businesses to use their existing corporate WiFi infrastructure to drastically cut costs for mobile telephony, it also allows users to utilise public hotspots and wireless LANs at home to keep cellular call costs down,‚ he concludes.