Why reative agency ditched Bell landline

You could get some current pop number when dialing for Michael Wilson, the company's designer and copywriter, or something from the 70s punk rock band The Clash if you were calling for Emir Ebrahimnia, Derooted's CEO, and it's going to be a Chilly Gonzales modern classical number if you happen to dial Simon Rojas, the firm's creative director.

But music, Rojas admitted, is just one of the many reasons the company will shortly be unplugging its landline from BCE Inc.'s Bell Canada and switching in every way to Rogers Communication Inc's. hosted voice over Internet Protocol service. Bell, but, has its own VoIP service targeted at SMBs since 2005. Derooted nevertheless maintains their Bell landline during they are currently trying out the Rogers service, which uses a cloud-based business phone system developed by RingCentral Inc., a virtual PBX (Private -Automatic- Branch Exchange) and hosted e-mail company based in San Mateo, Calif.

"The array of features of the RingCentral system provided at the price point Rogers offers are just too compelling when compared to our landline service," Rojas told ITBusiness.ca.

Derooted is just one of many small and medium sized businesses that are increasingly turning away from hardware PBXs and switching to VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony, which enables conversations to travel as data across the Internet. By 2013 more than 80 per cent of businesses will use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), according to In-Stat, a technology global service firm.

Tisha Rattosh, director of SMB for Rogers, said hosted IP voice services are helping many budget-constrained small businesses boost their productivity. "These types of services provide SMBs with more useful features without the heavy capital investment required by traditional PBX systems," she said.