Enterprise VoIPplanet.com has been covering San Jose, Calif.-based Virtual PBX for several years. As COO Greg Brashier observed in our initial meeting, the veteran provider of hosted telephony services likes to bring out upgrades two or three times a year.
Earlier this year, Virtual PBX announced the availability of international DIDs (def.). This week, the news is the addition of free conferencing in all of the company’s service plans.
Virtual PBX’s new conferencing service allows audio conferences to be started at any time, and both users and system administrators can monitor conference activity in real time.
The new free service has already been rolled out to all existing clients and, going forward, becomes a standard component of all new accounts.
“We’re pleased to offer our customers this feature at no cost,” said Brashier, in a statement. “In today’s economy, free services can be a big help and, together with the low cost of our service plans, all our clients get a lot of PBX power for a very low price.”
Every extension in a Virtual PBX system has its own private conference room that can be used whenever the need arises. There is no need to log into an online service, reserve specific times, or acquire and distribute access codes. Users can, however, password-protect their conferences at any time with any password they choose.
Like other Virtual PBX features, conferencing can make small companies look like big companies. Virtual PBX includes a feature set that is typical of a Fortune 500 phone system, but with a starting price of less than $10 per month.
“Virtual PBX gives my clients that ‘big company feel’ even though all extensions ring to a handful of employees at home in their pajamas!” said Andy Potter, founder of promotional agency Hand it to Mom. “The conference call bridge further extends the mirage that our company is huge and has an IT department—we even have a conference bridge!”
Activity in each conference can be monitored at all times. Users and systems administrators can know how many people are in the conference, who they are by caller ID, when they came in, and if a participant drops out.
