Fully featured hosted IP telephony solution for SME & multi-sited branch organisations  

ATC, one of the UK's leading business to business systems integrators, has launched a first in Voice over IP (VoIP) with SiNET, a new managed service delivered end-to-end by ATC and designed specifically to meet the needs of small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and multi-sited branch organisations.

SiNET, unveiled at the "VoIP for Business 2006 Conference" at Olympia, London, allows customers to enjoy the benefits of a fully featured IP Telephony solution on a converged infrastructure, but paid for on a subscription basis.

The virtually 'plug & play' solution eliminates the need for upfront capital investment and dramatically reduces the total cost of ownership of voice communications, replacing ongoing maintenance and support costs with predictable pricing and savings of up to 50% on telephony spend. In addition, multi-sited branch organisations will benefit from free inter-site calls.

Alex Tupman, Group Chief Executive Officer, ATC said: "SiNET - simple integrated networking - is perfect for small businesses or multi-sited branch organisations, because it utilises scalable VoIP technology without the upfront costs and complexity associated with building and owning IP-telephony systems. With the launch of SiNET customers will be able to 'pay as they grow' and eradicate the ongoing maintenance costs associated with both traditional and IP-based telephony. 

"We are confident that SiNET will fuel the use of VoIP within small businesses and that it will revolutionise the way that businesses procure and manage their communications."

SiNET is a highly flexible and scalable solution - managers can choose the features and applications that employees have access to, and select new applications as and when they are required.

Because the solution is fully hosted on ATC's own switching platform at TeleCity (the main telecommunications hub for the UK) customers will not experience expensive ongoing maintenance or support costs and there is no need to make provision for periodic software upgrades.

SiNET also reduces the cost of moves, add-ons and changes by up to 90%, as well as offering flexible working to employees such as hot-desking and remote working. In addition, multiple locations can be linked under one centralised service, providing unlimited free calls between sites, the ability to move employees seamlessly between locations, and provision of call overflow between sites in times of high call volumes or temporary site closure.

Alex Tupman continues: "We believe that we are the first organisation to offer a hosted VoIP service end-to-end, meaning that we take ownership of every aspect of the solution so that customers do not have to deal with multiple vendors. This will enable smaller companies to take advantage of the advanced telephony features that VoIP offers and that have typically only been available to larger organisations.

"At a time when thousands of small businesses have been given notice by their fixed-line Carrier, who can no longer provide them with the services they require, the launch of SiNET is testimony to ATC's commitment of providing all businesses, irrespective of size, with reliable and effective advanced communications to help give them competitive advantage."