Many work at home moms use their home or cell phones for their business calls. I just recently had the chance to review another alternative for work at home communications (or for any businesses): VoIP. VoIP is not a word many recognize, but it simply means a communications protocol over the Internet. So when using VoIP, instead of make calls using a cell services, an internet connection is used.
Alteva is a cloud (or internet) based communications solution. The phone I am testing is a wireless business phone that will be using the Alteva solution. I am excited to try it for a couple of reasons.
1. First, my cell coverage is always not so great at home and my cell phone speaker is not a perfect solution for business calls.
2. I have a home broadband service but there are limits on how many “mbps” (mega bits per second) that I can use. With all the wireless gadgets I have in the house, our broadband can sometimes be slow. It would be great to have a different communications protocol for my business calls so it won’t interfere with the broadband demands of our many other home wireless devices.
The Alteva VoIP phone I’m currently using at home allows you not only to manage your email in Outlook from your phone, but also to automatically redirect phone calls to mobile, desk phone or voicemail, depending on your Outlook calendar. And, using VoIP to make my calls over the internet gets around international long distance charges.
The service Alteva is offering incorporates MSFT Comms Svcs – Outlook/hosted Exchange, Office live Meeting, Office Communications Suite – with Broadsoft’s VoIP telephony.
3. No matter if you are a work at home parent or have an office these days everyone seems to work with a virtual team. This solution offers an advantage because it is a Unified Communications platform (UC Platform) that supports the concept of a virtual team. One of the other bloggers in the review, Joseph Mutidjo, explains a Unified Communications platform as this “Unified communications is the concept of taking all the ways we communicate and seamlessly integrating them into a single interface. For businesses, this translates into pulling communication modes like voice calls, video conferencing, instant messaging, mobile communication, email, voicemail and fax into one platform.”.
Beth Blecherman started her career in application development then Senior Manager, Computer Process Integrity, for Deloitte. After senior management she took on family management blogging as her career 2.0. She is a Co-Founder of the Silicon Valley Moms Group, a collaborative of mom blogs across the country, and their first international blog Canada Moms Blog.
Blecherman founded her personal blog, TechMamas.com, as a platform to discuss technology and gadgets for families. Beth vlogs with other female tech bloggers at Gadgetspin.com. She also consults with companies on blogger outreach and social media strategies and speaks at conferences on parenting, social media and technology. TechMamas.com was chosen as one of the Nielson Power Mom 50 influencers. On Twitter as @TechMama she was chosen as one of the 25 Influential Moms to Follow on Twitter and BizTechDay’s 25 Influential Business Women in the Bay Area. Beth is on the Board of Advisors for MommyTech at CES.
