Controlling Your Hosted VoIP Via SMS

New VoIP Logic feature uses text messages to set up conference calls, call forwarding and more.

Robert Poe on October 10, 2007

You arrive at your hotel in Paris after an overnight flight. You need to take care of a few things concerning your company's phone system back home. Maybe you forgot to set it to forward your calls to your cell phone. Maybe you want it to forward them to a local number — your hotel room or a mobile handset with a local SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) — to eliminate those dollars-per-minute international roaming charges. Maybe you want to set up a conference call in a few hours; the guys back home should be awake by then.

The problem is that yours is a small company. You don't have one of those fancy in-house IP PBXes (Internet Protocol Private Branch Exchanges) with sophisticated FMC (Fixed Mobile Convergence) technology. That means there's no client software on your handset that lets you access all your system's features through a classy GUI or even a touch-tone menu. If you're using hosted VoIP, you might be able to do the necessary setup via the Web from your laptop or an Internet café. Good thing Paris is working on city-wide wifi service. Otherwise, you're out of luck.

If you use hosted VoIP delivered by VoIP Logic LLC, though, your luck is about to change. The Williamstown, Mass., hosted-services wholesaler has developed a way for you to control your IP PBX functions via cellular SMS messages. For example, you might send a "CC" code followed by the names of two or three colleagues from your address book. Your hosted IP PBX would ring you and those individuals and connect you all in a conference call. Seven or eight other codes let you do everything from resetting your forwarding numbers to managing your address book.

The SMS capability is a newly developed function of VoIP Logic's proprietary Cortex software, which ties together and coordinates its various hosted services and technologies. That's a fairly complex task. VoIP Logic uses, for example, equipment from Acme Packet Inc., Covergence Inc. and Nextone Communications Inc. to provide hosted SBC (Session Border Controller) functions. It uses Iperia Inc. for its messaging platform, Highdeal Inc. for billing and Sylantro Systems Corp.'s platform to provide Class 5 traditional telephony calling features. In fact, VoIP Logic developed the new Cortex SMS feature in response to a recent Sylantro mashup contest.

Your next problem is that you may never have heard of VoIP Logic until now. That's because it stays behind the scenes in its role as a wholesaler of hosted VoIP and other services, selling only to commercial service providers. If your provider is doing its job right, you won't have any idea that your IP PBX service is coming to you from VoIP Logic hosting centers. Thus, even if you want the cool new SMS feature, you can't just go buy it directly. You have to find the right retail VoIP provider.

That may take a bit of searching. VoIP Logic currently has some 60 customers, according to CEO Micah Singer. About half of them are in the U.S., with European, Middle Eastern and African business also strong, and Central American, Latin American and Asian businesses coming up fast in the last year. It has hosting hubs in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, London, Hong Kong and Frankfurt, Germany.

Singer says VoIP Logic intends to use innovations such as its new SMS feature to keep its commercial VoIP-provider customers ahead of more established companies. If it succeeds, it might even encourage small businesses to do something they find difficult these days in light of the problems of companies like SunRocket Inc. and Vonage Holdings Corp. — to take features, rather than just the size and stability of the provider, into account in choosing their hosted VoIP services. That would really be a breakthrough.