RingCentral Telephony Bundle Has Service Providers Buzzing

RingCentral's offering encompasses Internet call waiting, blended VoIP/ conventional voice-mail services and fax services in addition to unified communications and consulting.

Dial-up ISP 695online, whose offerings include Internet access, e-mail and e-mail blocking services, plans to initially market RingCentral's BuzMe Internet call-waiting service to 700,000 of its customers and later to another 1.5 million customers, said Robert Craddock, CEO of 695Online, Daytona Beach, Fla.

The service, which includes call notification, caller reply features and voice services, will be offered as a no-cost add-on to 695online's $6.95-per-month service. But the company will still make a profit, Craddock said. "We make a $5.70 profit per account on average already, so this is simply a way to give them additional services they can't get elsewhere at the same cost to in turn prevent customers from leaving," he said.

IP-based telecommunications service provider Dialpad also signed on to sell RingCentral's Internet call-waiting service. The company plans to layer BuzMe on top of its Internet-based PC-to-phone service.

"RingCentral is very complementary in that if our customers get a busy signal, they have the option of having the call sent into voice mail or to send an instant message back," said Vincent Paquet, vice president of business development and marketing at Dialpad, Milpitas, Calif. "What customers on a call via Dialpad are now getting, really, is a second phone line."

There is also an opportunity for solution providers to sell RingCentral's services. The company is finalizing its channel strategy and is receiving inquiries, said Vlad Shmunis, co-founder and CEO of RingCentral, based here.

"We have one company in the New York area that wants to buy 2,000 voice-mail boxes from us to resell to their customers at the enterprise level," Shmunis said.

RingCentral's channel program was designed to be flexible, giving solution providers the opportunity to simply resell the company's services or private-label them as their own, he said.

Solution providers receive discounts of up to 40 percent off of suggested retail prices, depending upon order volume and the reseller level RingCentral designates, according to the company. Once signed up for the program, solution providers will be able to purchase RingCentral software online at a discount.

The fact that RingCentral isn't a fly-by-night Internet company will likely attract partners, said Craddock.

In the 1990s, RingCentral started out selling SmartFax, which turns a PC into a fax messaging system, and PhoneWorks, a telephone, voice-mail answering and fax messaging solution that can be accessed online.

In 2001, the company acquired the assets of BuzMe.com to layer the Internet call-waiting service on its desktop communications software offerings.

"We surveyed the market and realized that ISPs were facing the pain of trying to compete with major national providers like AOL and EarthLink," said Shmunis. "The ISPs could compete on price, but they did not have the resources to enrich their feature set. The goal is to give the ISP new features for their customers and leave the pricing up to them so they can undercut the major competitors at the same time."

In addition to BuzMe, RingCentral is rolling out a unified communications service for ISPs targeting the SMB and SOHO markets. The offering includes a 1-800 broadband number that directs incoming calls to be picked up, sent into voice mail or sent to a cell phone, and uses the same number to send faxes from a PC over the Internet. Shmunis said RingCentral is in discussions with more than 20 ISPs interested in selling this service.

On the consulting side, demand for v.92 modem-compatibility services is on the rise, said Jay Ward, president of RingCentral. An upgrade to the v.90 International Telecommunications Standard, v.92 boosts the upstream rate to 48 Kbps from 33.6 Kbps and reduces connection time by remembering the previous settings negotiated when dialing the same telephone number.

"[Research firm Cahners predicts that all modems shipped by 2004 will be v.92-compatible, and many ISPs don't have the resources to make the change," Ward said.

Illustration by Steven Lyons for CRN.