Gamma’s recently launched PhoneLine+ offering provides partners with a chance to jump on the opportunity around ‘The Big Switch Off’, according to its new Channel Sales Director, Andrew Smethurst.

Ten years ago, BT Openreach announced it would be switching off its PSTN and ISDN networks in favour of IP voice services. To counter this, Gamma designed PhoneLine+ for “micro businesses”, replacing their traditional landline service with VoIP technology, delivering voice calls over the broadband network.

“These micro businesses are very used to just having PSTN lines, or at best they might have a very small PBX or an ISDN,” Smethurst (pictured above) told UC Today.

“It’s predominately these PSTN services that PhoneLine+ looks to replace and that is because of what’s happening in the not too distant future.

“This specifically fills that gap between dial tone only and a full-blown PBX that is being shoehorned into this space. There’s a huge opportunity here for the customers that need that little bit of feature enhancement and for partners to provide their customers with a greatly enhanced service to the one that they’re currently experiencing.”

The new service is accessible through a range of devices, including the traditional desk phone and offers traditional features such as call divert, call hold and personalised voicemail. It allows users to set up and use multiple numbers, and offers real-time call analytics and easy access to the portal.

The new offering is aimed at thousands of micro businesses across the UK and offers partners the opportunity to start the conversation with customers about what their plan is with regards to the switch-off in 2025.

But if partners don’t grasp the opportunities around the big switch-off now, they may likely see their lunch being taken by their rivals, Smethurst warned.

“Resellers grow organically and I think that there can be quite a long tail of customers from where a company has grown, and often those customers are sat on these legacy services that don’t provide huge amounts of revenue margin to the reseller by customer, but they do by volume,” he elaborated.

“While a lot of resellers as they grow, perhaps no longer target those customers, they still have them and they’re still picking them up. If those resellers don’t recognise what is about to happen and talk to these customers about what they need to do, somebody else will.

“[Micro businesses] tend to be very long, loyal, and quite low-touch customers and PhoneLine+ is a perfect replacement service for them.”

PhoneLine+ marks Gamma’s first direct foray into the micro business space. Smethurst said that the comparatively low percentage of micro businesses switching over from their legacy systems presents a “huge” opportunity for the company and its partners.

“As Gamma looks to mature, we’re really keen to offer a product portfolio that has enough in the kit bag to address the needs and wants of customers from all ends of the spectrum and offer our resellers the opportunity to pick and choose how they address the opportunities that we think exist,” he explained.

“We see that SIP is transitioning on to hosted, we see that PSTN has got to end of life in favour of an IP voice product and I think that resellers have got a lot to consider right now, and ignoring this bit could be an oversight.

“If they address this [problem] now and jump on it and find ways to create sales in a low-touch fashion and support their customers, I think there’s a lot to be gained from that.”

 

 



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