Toktumi VoIP Service Broadens Distribution

By TWICE Staff -- TWICE, 11/21/2008

San Francisco — VoIP provider Toktumi announced a partnership with Dell to distribute its small-business voice service through a co-branded micro site on Dell.com.

The service costs $14.95/month and offers unlimited dialing inside the U.S. and Canada.

Included with the service are caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, visual voicemail, auto receptionist and voicemail-to-email.

The company is seeking to differentiate itself in a crowded market by targeting mobile professionals who work in “virtual offices” — at home and on the road, said Peter Sisson, CEO. The service is intended to give small businesses the air of professionalism with enterprise-style telephony features without the expense of on-premise hardware, he added.

The service is accessed via the PC through a softphone with USB handsets/headsets. Users can also purchase a USB adapter for connecting traditional phones to the computer, which must be turned on for the service to work (calls route to an alternative number if the computer is off).

Toktumi users can dial into the service via their cellphones, receive a dial tone and then dial out over the Toktumi network. The recipient of the call would see the user’s Toktumi number on their caller ID and not the user’s personal mobile phone number.

The service also features “search dialing” — which lets consumers place calls by typing the name or keyword of a person or business. Toktumi searches Outlook contacts and the Web to locate the number.

A “mobile assistant” feature lets users screen calls or route them to different voicemails. Users can also create custom interactive voice-response messages for up to nine different employees or departments.

The service also supports number porting, conference calls for up to 20 people, custom greetings, a free 800 number and multiple extensions with centralized billing

In addition to Dell, the service is available through a similar micro site at Staples. The company had initially sold its service in a box that included the USB adapter. Going forward, it will sell the service first with the option to add handsets or adapters after activation, Sisson said.