GoBeam vPBX, unlimited local and long distance starts at $36.95 per user for 100 users. GoBeam, (800) 278-7114. www.gobeam.com
We tested VoicePipe first and were immediately impressed with the voice quality on our unmanaged network. Although we did not rate these products on voice quality, we have to say that we were very pleasantly surprised. ICG's service is aptly named.
Like MCI, ICG sent us a Cisco 7940 IP phone to connect to our network. And like GoBeam, ICG connected us to its internal network so we could see the directly populated employee list. With the phone connected, we had a dial tone in a matter of seconds. Our first call--which came within minutes--was from an ICG engineer calling to see if the phone was working and if we were having any problems. Nope, it worked like a champ. Like GoBeam's implementation, ICG's service had no problems dealing with our network setup.
We had one hiccup, though, caused by the configuration being fat-fingered into the switch: Our phone could not find its directory server because the IP address had been entered incorrectly. A quick call to ICG had the problem solved in a matter of minutes, and we could see the entries created on the Web site from the telephone.
ICG's Web interface is even simpler to use than GoBeam's and offers much of the same functionality--voicemail, directory services and conference-call setup. Conference calls are easier to set up with GoBeam's service, however.
For reporting, ICG's logs lumped all the calls together instead of breaking them out into outgoing, incoming and missed, as GoBeam does. However, the logs can be sorted based on call direction, date and time, person or length.
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