Gamma Communications have officially released a new version of their flagship ‘Collaborate’ softphone app for desktop and mobile.

Collaborate extends your work phone functionality to a convenient app that runs across many device types, allowing phone system users to escape their desk phone, and communicate from a far wider range of workplace environments – as well as route calls intelligently in the cloud, regardless of the physical layout of the organisation.

With nearly three-quarters of a million Horizon end-users across the UK, Gamma Horizon’s cloud-hosted phone systems are already a technology titan of the British workplace.

But that workplace is ever-changing – with huge numbers of knowledge-workers operating either remotely from home, via co-working spaces, while travelling or across multiple sites, phone users are no longer anchored to a plastic deskphone.

Openreach are also scheduled to completely turn off the traditional analogue PSTN network (including ISDN) by 2025, forcing businesses to choose the future of their telecoms.

Version 2 introduces a significant visual refresh to the platform, and already appears more reliable in typical marginal call scenarios (such as when transferring external calls with mobiles.) In addition to immense bolt-on phone flexibility, Collaborate also adds Instant Message, Video/Conference Calling, Status Notification and more under one roof, for a convenient unified communications solution that is perfect for small to medium-sized organisations.

Collaborate Version 1 users will receive prompts to update from the legacy version from April 11th, which is expected to be moved to end-of-life in the near future.

For telecoms expertise and support, please contact our team today.

We recently attended the 2020 Gamma Communications Roadshow at Stamford Bridge – hearing the latest business telecoms and technology trends from across the UK. But what do businesses need to be aware of?

Clock Ticking for ISDN

BT will officially turn off all ISDN services by 2025, with the ‘stop-sell’ order coming as early as 2023.

With UK businesses just getting used to putting ‘2020’ on paperwork, this is no longer a drill – if your phone system uses ISDN, your business needs to begin preparing to switch to a digital services such as SIP or better still, a hosted VOIP platform.

There are perhaps as many as 1.5 million ISDN channels still in use by businesses across the UK. Gulp.

Ultrafast Fibre Rollout Gathers Pace

Superfast broadband (‘Fibre to the Cabinet’ or FTTC) prices are falling all the time, but the big story of the decade is likely to be the steady roll-out of ultrafast ‘Fibre to the Premise’ to many more businesses – to around 40% availability over the next few years.

Salisbury is the first single-year rollout ‘test’ area trialling complete fibre infrastructure (booking a new copper line in the Salisbury area is likely to be rejected).

Interested in fibre for your area? Perhaps you should speak to your friendly neighbourhood IT provider…

Not all 5G is born equal

We’ve known for a while how the smallest of the UK’s four mobile networks (Three Mobile) is arguably in the best position to deliver data, although it’s now becoming clear Three has an enviable technical advantage over some of the other major providers – and is even using the cheeky marketing slogan: ‘If it’s Not Three, It’s Not Real 5G’.

The reserved spectrum range favours Three to such an extent that EE/BT, O2 and Vodafone have all submitted strongly worded complaints over preferential access. Gulp.

Microsoft Teams Telecoms Emerges

Among Gamma’s most exciting news was the announcement of a Direct Call Routing service for Microsoft Teams – which effectively plugs into the back of Teams and Microsoft’s ‘Phone System’ PBX add-on, to turn your Microsoft Teams software into a fully fledged business phone system.

Until now Microsoft’s Teams platform has been a strong option for video/audio conferencing, screenshare, instant messaging and collaboration – but have always lacked the more robust business call-handling feature-set of true phone systems, or suffered from a shortage of physical handsets. With both of those challenges solved by Gamma and the Teams app available on a variety of devices, it’s easy to imagine Teams phones appearing on desks.

Direct Routing for Teams is expected from April 2020. The final pricing is likely to be somewhere in the region of between £15-25 a month per user (including Microsoft Office licensing) – finally unifying telecoms under the same single user account as Microsoft Office 365 hosted email, files storage, office apps and collaboration software. Watch this space.

For communications services and expertise, please contact our team today.