We’re always on the look out for new and exciting mobile technology so when we saw the latest offering from Gradwell Mobile, we thought it was worth sharing on here.
Now, Gradwell’s services won’t appeal to everyone as they only offer services to business, but if your company uses a PBX system, or relies on both landlines and mobiles to get things done, then I’d take a look at what they can offer you.
A lot of companies already use a PBX or telephone system, which is great for transferring calls all around your office building, but what if you’re not always in your office or don’t want to commit to long line rental contracts if you’re always moving about?
That’s where Gradwell come in. They can offer the same services that you’d get from a fixed line phone system, but using just your mobile phone and your PC and without long and expensive contracts.
I’ve been able to play with their system for a few days now and I’m surprised at how simple it is. My previous dealings with PBX systems has often left me confused, but even though there’s a lot to take in, the service I tried from Gradwell was far easier to use than you’d think. If you’re new to telephone systems or haven’t used them before don’t worry, I’ll try to keep this as simple as possible.
How does it work?
With a standard telephone system it can be quite costly to set up. You need some fairly expensive equipment installed in your office, along with a number of phone lines and the phones themselves. You then need an engineer to come out and program it all to get it working how you want it. Most systems are limited to fixed line numbers on the same network too, although more expensive systems can allow you to transfer calls to other locations.
With Gradwell’s solution, you don’t need any expensive equipment other than your PC and a 3G mobile phone. You can invest in a physical desktop phone if you want, but you can use a free PC application to handles your calls. You don’t need an engineer to visit either. The whole system is managed through a straight forward and easy to use website. Once you’re logged in, you can control the order in which the phones ring, specify times for the phones to ring, set up queuing, set and record voice prompts and IVR, upload music for hold and much more.
The service works in two parts, a VoIP service and a Mobile Service.
VoIP isn’t really anything new – it’s been around for a few years but complicated set up and confusion over which devices will work with it have made the take up of the service relatively low. That’s all starting to change though and VoIP is looking like a very strong alternative to standard voice calls.
The Mobile Service is what really makes this stand out though. It’s new and very different to that provided by the likes of O2, Vodafone, 3, Orange and T-Mobile. All your calls are routed through your virtual phone system over the mobile network – acting in pretty much the same way as it would if it were an ordinary landline plugged into the wall. This means that you can promote just one phone number and fully control where that call is routed.
With Gradwell Mobile you can have a geographical number (01,02,03) as your mobile number rather than a traditional mobile number that starts 07. Any calls and texts that you send will then appear as if they have come from a landline number.
Benefits
There are so many different types of business that can benefit from this service, for example, a company employing home workers or people that work on the road all day could provide each employee with a mobile for their calls. All outgoing calls would have the main switch board number as their caller ID. Anyone calling the back on the main landline number could then choose from an IVR who they wanted to speak to and be routed through to them quickly and easily. This would give the appearance of everyone being in one office. Calls could also be routed to the user’s PC running a VoIP client.
Why would you switch?
That’s exactly what I asked when I was first given this to review, but having spent time with it, I can see exactly why this would be a better, cheaper option for a lot of businesses. The package I’m using is £18 per month (ex VAT), that gives me up to ten extensions – these can be Mobile phones (with the Gradwell Sim Card) , PC’s with a VoIP client installed, VoIP deskphones or a Smartphone with a SIP client (such as Fring) installed. Calls aren’t included, but calling rates are much cheaper than those charged by the mobile networks.
Recommended Handsets for Gradwell Mobile
To get started, you’ll need to sort yourself out with a Hosted PBX service from Gradwell, and if you want the flexibility of being able to divert calls to your mobile without having to use a third party VoIP application, you’ll need a Gradwell Mobile Sim and a compatible sim free 3G phone – Nokia E Series and BlackBerry handsets are ideal.
