8x8 adds features to expand VoIP reach

8x8 today announced both a new hosted key system VoIP service and new plug-and-play phones, both intended to expand the reach of its business VoIP service.

While some industry analysts are seeing a softness in the enterprise VoIP market, 8x8 is seeing steady growth at about 1000 net new customers per quarter, said Huw Rees, vice president of marketing and sales. “Since we are experiencing churn at a consistent rate on a larger base of customers, that means we are actually adding more customers each quarter to hit that number.” The latest new features are intended to make the service more appealing to smaller businesses, particularly those that don’t need PBX-type functionality.

“What we’ve found is that, for some smaller businesses, they want a service that changes user behavior,” Rees said. “They feel more comfortable going ahead to use the service that looks like their current key system.”

So 8x8 added shared line appearance to its Virtual Office platform, enabling business users to put an incoming call on hold and make it available to anyone in the office. In addition, the company partnered with Aastra Telecom to create the Packet 8 675xi series of IP phones, which incorporates 8x8’s advanced NAT (network address translation) traversal technologies to enable the phones to be plug-and-play on any public or private Internet connection, and support the shared line appearance.

“We have licensed our NAT traversal technology to Aastra; they have incorporated that into their phones, and we get them back as branded Packet 8 phones,” Rees said. “All of our orders are over the phone and on the Internet. We mail out the phones to the customers, and they simply open the box, plug them in and they get dial tone” without the need for apply static IP addresses and changing router configurations.

The shared line appearance capabilities will also be available on 8x8’s hosted PBX service, Rees said, so that departments within larger enterprises can set up their own calling groups and share calls without having to transfer them back and forth between phones.

The announcement is the latest in a series made by 8x8 to expand its service reach, including virtual trunking, which was announced in June.