Tired of having to remember different numbers for your office phone, fax, pager or mobile phone? No room on your business card for the raft of numbers that are now part of everyday business contacts?
The answer is at hand—or rather in a number. One number can now be used for all your different devices and communications, thanks to a new system devised by a technology company which uses the science available in the high-growth, hi-tech modem world.
Instead of numbers belonging to different devices, the company assigns you one number belonging to you, the person. You have one number for phone, fax, pagers and mobile phones. All your calls and contacts come to this one number so that you can divert unwanted callers politely to your voice mail if you want.
Voice messages that come into the same personal number can be turned into emails for delivery to the desktop of your computer or to another person’s computer. You can have trouble-free call-forwarding anywhere in the world. Those are some of the features of Bloodhound, a new service offered by Auckland-based computer telephony integrator—Powercall Technologies Ltd. General manager Nick Little said the company, a subsidiary of the Brocker Technology Group,
came to the new one-number system when they wanted to set up in a new office. It would have cost $US 250 (RMB ￥2,000) a month to lease a small phone switchboard. To avoid the capital outlay or the hardware in the office, they set out instead to develop a switchboard based on a PC computer. Then, realizing the market was awash in such products, the company looked at ways to use its experience in voice mail, interactive voice response and unified messaging to develop new subscriber-based services.
Mr. Little said Bloodhound, which costs $US 20 (RMB ￥160) a month for full phone, fax and messaging, side-stepped the number portability issue (whether phone owners can use the same number in different phone company systems or not) because subscribers were given not a telephone number, but their own personal number.
"The number we issue is a virtual number belonging to the person. It does not terminate on a physical device," Mr. Little said. "The subscriber sets up devices behind the scenes."
Bloodhound runs on NT servers and subscribers pay their telephone carriers for line connection and any toll charges. They also pay for calls received on mobile phones via Bloodhound at US$ 25c (RMB ￥2) a minute. But they can change phone carrier company or exchange without having to change all their stationery.
Callers are greeted by an automated "virtual assistant", which locates the Bloodhound subscriber or takes messages. Calls can be screened, with known callers announced to the subscriber who can choose to accept a call or divert it to another person or voice mail. Fax can be forwarded to any location for printing, without the cellular charges associated with cellphone-based fax services. And if users have a sudden inspiration, they can call Bloodhound and dictate a message for recall later.
Simon Morgan from advertising and direct marketing agency Carpe Diem has been a pilot user of the service throughout the year 2000. He said Bloodhound helped his five-person company present a consistent and professional face to the world.
"One of our staff works from home part-time, but with a Bloodhound number available to the world as her office number. As far as the world is connected, she works in the office. It’s also useful if I’m working at a client site. I can use the ‘I am Here’ feature and get calls forwarded through."