Self employed – but not alone

Case study: Broadband telephone cuts homeworking costs

Self-employed systems consultant Martin O’Donnelly works from home and provides remote support for his clients’ computer networks across the UK. As a result, he receives a large number of telephone calls from customers who need immediate assistance.

“It is essential I don’t miss calls from clients, as they tend to call me when they need urgent advice – that’s why I need a second line at home,” explains O’Donnelly. “One option I had looked at was VoIP. I thought it was a great technology, but felt there was no service on the market that would be reliable enough to use as a business line. That’s when I heard about BT Broadband Voice.”

Broadband Voice enables customers to utilise their broadband connection to make calls through a standard telephone handset over the internet. They simply plug the adapter box into the broadband router or cable modem and attach a telephone handset. The adapter box transforms the voice into a digital signal that can be sent over the internet so it is just like making a traditional telephone call.

“The set up was simple,” explained O’Donnelly. “Once we had connected the adaptor box to the cable modem and plugged in the handset, we got a regular dial tone and could make calls. One of the advantages of Broadband Voice is that you don’t need to turn on the computer to make or receive calls – just like a standard telephone.”

BT Broadband Voice also offers the ability to fully customise the service from the customer’s own portal. For O’Donnelly, one very useful feature is that he can set up his speed dials on the portal. Rather than manually adding speed dials to each handset in his home, he inputs them up to the web, which automatically updates them on any handset he uses with the service.

“I have seen real call charge savings using this service, but cost is just one of the benefits. It is a reliable virtual second line that offers me the ability to control and customise the service as I need to – it’s almost like having my own telephone exchange at home.”