Digital phone service cuts costs

Western Bay businesses can now use a new digital wireless service that slashes telephone charges by more than 80 per cent.
Tauranga-based Enternet Online (EOL) is launching its Voice over internet phone service to business customers this Wednesday - after introducing it in homes at the end of last year.
EOL, which has wireless transmission coverage along the coast and 15km inland from Waihi to near Matata, is one of the first technology companies in the country to establish a full digital service - which does away with analogue phones and copper lines, and therefore significantly reduces monthly charges.
"Everything has moved to digital, even TVs, and we can put our service across wireless networks, the internet, satellite, anything.
"It has enabled us to produce a better quality service and bring the costs down," said Terry Coles, director of EOL, which was established 16 years ago.
A business can purchase eight phone lines for its office from EOL for about $59 a month - a similar amount to the present charge for one line using the traditional analogue and copper wire system.
Overseas calls to 33 countries including Britain, Republic of Ireland, western Europe, United States, Canada, and China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand mobiles, will be charged at 5c per minute.
Other charges for calling around the world mainly range from 10c to 65c a minute.
EOL tested the new phone service with a local lawyer and he reduced his bill from $450 to $30 a month.
"He was over the moon," said Mr Coles.
Already, EOL's home users have saved $50 a month on their phone bill and this is equivalent to a monthly internet account.
The Tauranga firm has imported converters from China, and the phones and converters are connected to the office's digital PBX computer network, and calls are made over the internet.
A $365 converter will service 20 lines and 50 extensions, and free calls can be made between the head office and its branches within the Western Bay.
EOL has made inter-connection arrangements with wholesale digital phone companies based in Europe and they will deliver calls anywhere in the world.
"We are buying cheaply. The inter-connect partners treat us as a local call because we are arriving at their gateways via the internet which is free; no one owns that," said Mr Coles.
"Domestic calls are connected through the Telecom network, and the charge for a call to a mobile [phone] in China or Britain can be cheaper than to Katikati, just 50km away," he said.
Mr Coles said "the first thing you notice is the clarity in the voice; on an overseas call it doesn't sound like you are talking down a tunnel but instead you are having a normal conversation. The clarity is the same wherever you call."
The normal features such as voicemail, call diversion, caller ID, conferencing are available on the digital phone system and are free.
Customers can go into the EOL website and configure their phones to include toll bars. Or they can have a voicemail sent to their mobile by email if they are away from the phone.
A small converter can be taken overseas and plugged into a hotel phone connection. "It still thinks you are at your own desk and you can make free calls back to the office or roam free around the world," said Mr Coles.
"People buy two converters for their home phone and give one to someone overseas - it could be a daughter at university in England.
"There's a monthly charge [$9.95] for each converter but the daughter can call as often as she likes and can talk for hours without any additional cost," he said.
EOL presently has 72 repeaters spread throughout the Western Bay and it is looking to expand its wireless network.
It will install an additional repeater near Matata and extend coverage to Rotorua and Eastern Bay including Whakatane and Opotiki, and it is talking with a Gisborne internet service provider about taking on its digital phone service.
EOL has increased its staff from four to eight over the past six months, and 80 per cent of its activity involves business (internet) connections.
It has connected 90 per cent of the medical centres, law firms and accountants in Tauranga, and almost all of the kiwifruit packhouses and coolstores in the Western Bay.
EOL's business was built on of the kiwifruit industry as it went more hi-tech in the mid-1990s.
"There were people running around with floppy disks that had all the loading data for ships. Now, all the information is tracked through the wireless network to Zespri.
"That was a a shot in the arm for us," said Mr Coles.