Comunicano

JUNCTION NETWORKS LAUNCHES CHANNEL PROGRAM FOR ONSIP PBX SERVICE

OnSIP Authorized Agents Reap a Revenue Share of PBX Application Services and Calling Charges; Also Gain Way to Build a Remote-Office Support Business

NEW YORK–July 1, 2008—Junction Networks, host provider of the OnSIP PBX service, has launched an OnSIP Authorized Agent program aimed at developing a nationwide channel of qualified resellers. Starting today, Junction Networks is opening the door for system integrators in the fields of data, networking and telecom to qualify for a new revenue stream by promoting its leading business communications service.

“At Junction Networks, we are committed to delivering VoIP to businesses in a way that makes sense technically, breaks the barriers of traditional phone service and levels the playing field economically,” said Junction Networks President Rob Wolpov. “That’s why OnSIP is designed in-house, using the best available open technology components; is priced with no expensive user, extension or 'seat' licenses; imposes no commitments, minimums or contracts; is simple to set up and manage; and is loaded with the features you would expect from a $25,000 phone server.”

Recognized as one of the “Top 15 VoIP Players To Watch” by Channel Reseller News, Junction Networks has been selling business-class voice service, PBX switching and enhanced services directly to small-to-medium sized businesses since 2004, amassing more than 4,000 customers.

Two-pronged ongoing revenue
In exchange for joining in its sales effort, Junction Networks is offering its authorized agents a share of ongoing revenues from two sources:  highly profitable monthly services such as auto-attendants, voice mailboxes, conference bridges and hunt groups, and per-minute calling activity to and from the PSTN. The agent program also includes training, technical support, an extensive online knowledgebase, marketing materials, RFP assistance, and access to leading phone vendors.

For those selling technology services to SMBs, the OnSIP Agent program represents an opportunity to add remote offices and new hardware to a support business. Junction Networks’ service is particularly friendly to phone sales, since it does not charge for OnSIP per extension, but by usage.

Revenue percentages will scale with agent level. In addition, OnSIP agents stand to profit by establishing service contracts and retainers with clients to procure, install, configure and manage phones on an ongoing basis. Junction Networks encourages agents to do so, as such contracts are an additional revenue opportunity that fits well within existing revenue models for resellers. 

Wolpov sees his potential OnSIP agent in three major types of existing consultancies: data network specialists, IT consultants and telecom consultants. Since the service is based on IP, those who install, support and manage routers, firewalls, ISPs and LANs are well positioned to offer their customers a money-saving telephony proposition. 

“To IT consultants, OnSIP is simply another IP service to add to your portfolio,” said Wolpov. “And telecom consultants know better than anyone how traditional PBX and key systems are being replaced en masse by IP-based solutions. For them, OnSIP is the continuously profitable, low-maintenance answer to their existing customers’ VoIP migration question.”

Those interested in becoming authorized agents for OnSIP must demonstrate technical competence and an ability to sell, implement and manage Internet-based services.  Junction Networks’ agent specialists also will assess applicants’ qualifications based on go-to-market plan, target customer base and current business model. Applicants are encouraged to assess OnSIP, in turn:  All OnSIP features are free to try for 30 days, and prospective agents can receive $10 of free calling services to make and receive calls to/from the PSTN. 

For more information on the Junction Networks Authorized Agent program, please e-mail agent@junctionnetworks.com.

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About Junction Networks

With more than 4,000 customers, Junction Networks is one of the largest providers of business-class VoIP services to small and medium-sized enterprises. Using the most innovative applications available, Junction Networks provides high-end, multi-functional, Internet-based communications options that are easily adaptable to the needs of the growing business. Junction Networks' unsurpassed ability to leverage open standards, such as SIP, enables it to seamlessly integrate new functionalities into existing, scalable platforms. In this way, it can offer the benefit of enterprise-class broadband voice and data communications at a fraction of the typical cost. For more information, visit www.junctionnetworks.com.

Contact:
Sue Huss
Comunicano, Inc.
sue.huss@comunicano.com 
619-379-4396

JUNCTION NETWORKS OPENS “INBOUND BRIDGE” TO ONSIP HOSTED PBX

Bridging application lets hosting customers use third-party providers of DID numbers for best LD price in desired footprint

NEW YORK–Feb. 28, 2008—Junction Networks, host provider of the onSIP PBX service, has launched Inbound Bridge, an accessory service that ties in third-party providers of international and domestic DID numbers. Inbound Bridge saves money for Junction Networks’ business customers by allowing them to find the best per-minute price for inbound VoIP calling minutes in their chosen geographic regions. These customers connect that to the onSIP PBX platform, which offers industry-leading price and flexibility in hosted PBX, auto attendant, voice mail and other voice services.

Inbound Bridge solves a vexing problem for companies that want local numbers and 800 numbers in foreign countries or specific domestic regions—numbers typically rented from other VoIP network providers. Many of these providers simply deliver calls from one end point to the other; they don’t implement the key function of the SIP VoIP signaling protocol that allows callers to navigate phone menus, transfer calls, put callers on hold and trigger other events. Without this function (specified in the IETF’s RFC 3515), inbound callers are disconnected when they “press 1 for sales,” or try to transfer to extension numbers for specific people. 

Junction Networks’ Inbound Bridge performs the missing SIP function, maintaining the two-way SIP signaling needed for interactivity after a call is already established. It can therefore pass the entered touch-tone digits to the auto attendant and other PBX applications. It can integrate onSIP with any network vendor having an open SIP implementation (permitting communication with other SIP networks).

“This is a perfect opportunity if you’re a company that wants a toll-free service from Europe or Asia, or you have some other reason to use a third-party phone number provider,” said Rob Wolpov, president, Junction Networks. “But you do want to use our hosted solution, because it works very well, you have company extensions in one or more sites, and you like the price of that.” ($39.95 a month for core voice applications and an unlimited number of SIP extensions, with free calling between them.)

“You can get your toll-free origination from any provider that offers SIP delivery of inbound calls, and just have it go to us through the Inbound Bridge. We charge $1.95 a month per DID, and half a cent a minute to cover our cost of the Bridge. If you can get your toll-free for one or one and a half cents a minute, you wind up paying two cents a minute for toll-free, as opposed to paying almost four cents a minute to Junction Networks. 

“That’s completely OK with us,” Wolpov stressed. “Go somewhere else to get your minutes and then come to us for the auto attendant, the ACD queue, the voice mail, all those sorts of applications.”

To date, Junction Networks has tested the Inbound Bridge with international DID provider Voxbone. Other third-party DID providers are to be tested and added in the coming months.

“We’re happy to supply onSIP customers with our core value—locally dialed phone presence in more than 40 countries around the world,” said Rodrigue Ullens, Voxbone CEO. “With our intercontinental voice-only backbone, Junction Networks’ Inbound Bridge and onSIP platform, these enterprises can get the best value in DID numbers and international VoIP transport, plus all the convenience and flexibility of hosted IP PBX.”

About Junction Networks

With more than 3,500 customers, Junction Networks is one of the largest providers of business-class VoIP services, for businesses ranging in size from five extensions to 500 and more. Using the most innovative applications available, Junction Networks provides high-end, multi-functional, Internet-based communications options that easily adapt to the needs of the growing business. Junction Networks' unsurpassed ability to leverage open standards, such as SIP, enables it to seamlessly integrate new functionalities into existing, scalable platforms. In this way, it can offer the benefit of enterprise-class broadband voice and data communications at a fraction of the typical cost. For more information, visit www.junctionnetworks.com.
 

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Contact:
Sue Huss
Comunicano, Inc.
sue.huss@comunicano.com
619-379-4396

SightSpeed and Junction Networks Receive INTERNET TELEPHONY® Magazine’s 10th Annual Product of the Year Award

SightSpeed 6.0 and onSIP Recognized for Outstanding Innovation

New York and Berkeley, Calif.–Jan. 7, 2008—SightSpeed and Junction Networks announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation’s (TMC®) INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has named both companies as a recipient of its 2007 Product of the Year Award.  INTERNET TELEPHONY has been the VoIP Authority Since 1998™.

SightSpeed, the leading provider of Internet video communications, launched version 6.0, a major release, in 2007. Version 6.0 was designed to be more flexible and functional, yet easier to use than ever before. One of the main features included the conversion to a SIP-based platform that would allow members to use SightSpeed to make Internet calls to, and receive Internet calls from, SIP-enabled hardware devices like telephones, video phones and even mobile phones.

“We’ve worked hard to make SightSpeed 6.0 the best personal video service and overall communications suite available anywhere, and it’s gratifying to be recognized by INTERNET TELEPHONY for our efforts.” said Peter Csathy, SightSpeed CEO. “The SIP conversion has opened up a whole new world of interoperability and is consistent with our unique open and standards-based approach to Internet video communications.”

Unlike typical PBX hosts, which offer all-or-nothing feature bundles and charge $20, $30 or $40 per user line per month, Junction Networks charges its customers only for calling minutes that go off its network, at low voice-over-IP rates. One monthly $39.95 network fee covers the entire “onSIP Complete” plan, including a comprehensive suite of advanced features.   

“Being chosen for this award is an honor and solidifies that the three-year investment in developing and testing the onSIP service was well worth the wait,” said Robert Wolpov, Junction Networks president. “We take this award seriously and will continue to keep innovation top of mind as the onSIP service evolves to fill the changing needs of SMBs.”

“Junction Networks and SightSpeed have proven they are committed to quality and excellence while addressing real needs in the marketplace. INTERNET TELEPHONY is pleased to grant a 2007 Product of the Year Award to SightSpeed 6.0 and onSIP,” said Rich Tehrani, TMC president and editor-in-chief of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine.  “We’re proud to honor their hard work and accomplishments and look forward to more innovative solutions from SightSpeed and Junction Networks in the future.”

A full list of Product of the Year winners will be published in the February, 2008 issue of INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine. For more information about TMC, please visit www.tmcnet.com.

About SightSpeed
SightSpeed Inc. is the award-winning provider of Internet video communications for both the business user and consumer. The company offers the broadest portfolio of industry-leading Internet video communications services, including  SightSpeed 6.0 and new SightSpeed Light, the most widely praised consumer-focused video chat services, which turn a PC or Mac into an easy-to-use video phone to communicate with friends and family around the world; and SightSpeed Business, the world’s first high-quality, cost-effective and hardware-free videoconferencing service for all businesses (including SMBs). SightSpeed's services are SIP-based and standards-compliant. The company’s revolutionary human perception-based technology is patented and based on more than ten years of research and development originating out of Cornell University.

Founded in 2001 and based in Berkeley, Calif., SightSpeed is a privately held company funded by The Roda Group, best known for launching Ask Jeeves and PolyServe. For more information about SightSpeed, visit www.sightspeed.com.

About Junction Networks
With more than 3,500 customers, Junction Networks is one of the largest providers of business-class VoIP services to small and medium-sized enterprises. Using the most innovative applications available, Junction Networks provides high-end, multi-functional, Internet-based communications options that are easily adaptable to the needs of the growing business. Junction Networks' unsurpassed ability to leverage open standards, such as SIP, enables it to seamlessly integrate new functionalities into existing, scalable platforms. In this way, it can offer the benefit of enterprise-class broadband voice and data communications at a fraction of the typical cost. For more information, visit www.junctionnetworks.com.
 

About INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine
INTERNET TELEPHONY has been the VoIP Authority since 1998™. Since the first issue in February of 1998, INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has been providing unbiased views of the complicated converged communications space.  INTERNET TELEPHONY offers rich content from solutions-focused editorial content to reviews on products and services from TMC Labs. INTERNET TELEPHONY magazine has a circulation of 225,000 including pass-along readers.  For more information, please visit www.itmag.com.

About TMC
Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, Unified Communications, and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 6,000 most visited Web sites in the world by alexa.com*, TMCnet serves as many as three million unique visitors each month. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, and Call Center 2.0 Conference. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com. (*alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet.) For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com.

Junction Networks Featured In Enterprise VoIP and VoIP News

Enterprise VoIP's Ted Stevenson has written a very positive story about Junction Networks' new onSIP hosted PBX platform. Stevenson goes into detail about the newly introduced offering, highlighting many of the new and useful features, as well as customer benefits that onSIP delivers.

onSIP was also featured in a very laudatory story by VoIP-News' Robert Poe who summed sees this as good for multinational SMB's and even small businesses.

JUNCTION NETWORKS UNVEILS ‘onSIP’ HOSTED PBX FOR SMB MARKET: PRICED PER OFF-NET USAGE, NOT PER LINE

IP telecom provider develops its own flexible PBX hosting platform, offering extensions at no charge, savings on calls and big-business applications à la carte, at SMB prices

NEW YORK–Oct. 29, 2007— Junction Networks, a leader in IP voice telecommunications services for small businesses, today announced the general availability of onSIP, a hosted IP PBX service with a pricing model that stands out in a crowded field.

Unlike typical PBX hosts, which offer all-or-nothing feature bundles and charge $20, $30 or $40 per user line per month, Junction Networks charges its customers only for calling minutes that go off its network, at low, voice-over-IP rates. One monthly $39.95 network fee covers the entire “onSIP Complete” plan, including a comprehensive suite of advanced features.           

“Usage” here means use of the service to call “off-net,” that is, to non-IP, traditional phones and faxes, at great cost savings compared with switched-network carriers. Junction Networks also sells advanced calling features, including dial-by-name directory, voicemail, auto attendant, hunt/ring groups and call routing, on an à la carte basis, so that customers pay only for what they want.

As a hosted service, onSIP eliminates the hefty capital expenditure of in-house PBX hardware, and the opex of support, maintenance and change requests. Junction Networks groups all of a customer’s phones—at one location or many—as extensions of one calling group, and routes calls among all company extensions for free.

Employees at far-flung locations, nomadic workers and home-based workers all can use their IP phones and features over broadband Internet connections as if they all were physically attached to one on-premises PBX. In paying per usage, not per seat, onSIP customers are free to add seldom-used extensions, like conference room and lobby phones, without raising their costs. They can also add and drop extensions for temporary employees and consultants easily and economically, whether on-site or telecommuting.

onSIP also removes the need to change employee contact information for every temporary or permanent relocation; the phone number travels with the phone or PC softphone. It allows businesses to use any device that works with the SIP signaling protocol, which includes most VoIP networks currently operating. 

onSIP also connects calls to all SIP phones around the world, for free. Customers can easily order and assign regular ten-digit phone numbers to main numbers or extensions, to receive calls from traditional landline or wireline phones. Numbers can be chosen from area codes throughout the United States. Even more important, customers can keep the numbers they already have.

Open-source + self-made platform = flexibility + control

Junction Networks can price, package and provision onSIP calling features flexibly because the company has designed and built the onSIP hosted PBX platform itself, using widely available open-source technologies. 

In contrast, most PBX hosts resell telephony services running on platforms from Avaya, Alcatel/Lucent, Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks or similar big-name PBX vendors. They must charge more to cover licensing fees, and must wait for their vendors to respond when end-user problems require advanced technical support.

The onSIP platform also puts great control in the hands of its customers. Using onSIP’s Web-based interface and credit cards, customers with no telecom system programming background can quickly set up their own PBX accounts, assign user extensions, and purchase regular 10-digit telephone numbers to receive PSTN phone calls. 

After setup, the same newbies can also order and set up advanced features such as hunt groups, call forwarding and voicemail. Extensions in different locations can be registered to all ring at the same number, so that the same call can be answered from offices on either side of the Atlantic, or from home, office or traveling PC.

“To understand what onSIP brings to small to medium businesses,” says Robert Wolpov, Junction Networks’ president, “start with the outsourcing convenience and low capex of Centrex. Add in the economy and location-independence of voice over IP.  Now add the still greater economy, scalability, flexibility and integration potential of open-source. With that third piece, we level the playing field between large-enterprise and SMB telecom.”

Customers are welcome to bring their own application servers to their onSIP Complete accounts; any SIP-compliant server, such as a call monitoring or VoiceXML IVR server, can be registered within the hosted PBX, making it addressable like any other extension.

New applications are more quickly developed, too, owing to onSIP’s open-source, Web Service development model. Junction Networks has invited the developer community to see this for themselves by making its API available at: http://www.junctionnetworks.com/webservices.php

About Junction Networks

With more than 3,500 customers, Junction Networks is one of the largest providers of business-class VoIP services to small and medium-sized enterprises. Using the most innovative applications available, Junction Networks provides high-end, multi-functional, Internet-based communications options that are easily adaptable to the needs of the growing business. Junction Networks' unsurpassed ability to leverage open standards, such as SIP, enables it to seamlessly integrate new functionalities into existing, scalable platforms. In this way, it can offer the benefit of enterprise-class broadband voice and data communications at a fraction of the typical cost. For more information, visit www.junctionnetworks.com.

 

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Contact:

Sue Huss

Comunicano, Inc.

sue.huss@comunicano.com

619-379-4396

Welcome To Our Blog

Thanks for coming to the Comunicano blog.

After looking at the ways we communicate with the Bloggers, Analysts and Media we felt that it was time to change how to work with you.

If you're a blogger, an analyst or a member of the media and you cover either our clients or the space they are in, then you'll want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

As time goes on we'll make this more and more granular, but for now, this will be a far cry better than email.

Please let us know your thoughts.

Andy Abramson and the Comunicano Team