Expanding outside an ILEC’s traditional service area without having to pay for upfront infrastructure is what Fritz Hendricks and Chris Brown of Onvoy discuss in the above interview, filmed at the 2014 Minnesota Telecom Alliance Convention. Hendricks describes a service that allows:
- An operator to offer unified communications’ services, through their own softswitch, outside their service territory without building infrastructure
- A single phone number that spans multiple devices; from wireless phone to desktop phone to tablets and PC
- Automatic transfer between the cellular phone network and WiFi network
- No apps required to make a call; the back-office automatically chooses the network that the call will traverse
- Seamless transfer of calls that is transparent to the caller, so that a caller can, for instance, start a call on a desktop phone and continue it on a wireless phone.
- Homing of multiple phone numbers to one device (e.g work, personal all on one device, but separated logically in the network).
- For an operator to provide MVNO services without having to actually sign an MVNO agreement with a wireless carrier.
As Hendricks points out, this capability provides operators a potential for revenue growth. It also provides a low-risk way to edge out into areas outside their traditional wired service boundaries without major upfront investments.