New York firms use VOIP to avoid convention crowds

Some New York businesses are using a voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) feature to avoid the crowds at the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.

Most VOIP service using dedicated phones means that the number assigned to a particular phone goes with it, so the receptionist for Infinity Consulting Group LLC took her VOIP phone home this week and answered calls as if she were in the office. She simply plugged her VOIP phone into a broadband connection to receive calls.

Infinity’s New York offices are across the street from Madison Square Garden, and Lou Forino, the company’s chief executive officer (CEO), decided that with the expected large crowds in that area it might be easier for employees to work at home or from other offices this week. “As the CEO of the company, I still want to get productivity this week,” he said. “I don’t want to send people on a week-long vacation.”

Forino on Wednesday reported no problems with the 25 New York employees who took their VOIP phones with them to other work sites this week. Forino’s company, an IT consultancy, has been using VOIP service from M5 Networks Inc. for about eight months, and the ability for phone numbers to follow employees was one of the attractive features, Forino said. “It’s just as if I’m sitting back at my office in New York City,” Forino said from his suburban home earlier this week.

The Lloyd Group Inc., another IT consultancy based in Manhattan, also gave about 12 key employees M5 phones in case of problems with commuting to its office four blocks from Madison Square Garden, said Adam Eiseman, the company’s CEO. Employees have experienced fewer problems getting to the office than anticipated, but since widespread power blackouts in the Northeast U.S. in August 2003, the company has been planning a way to move operations out of the main office if needed.

“The Republican National Convention was a catalyst for us to do this,” Eiseman said.

The phone portability feature gives employees more flexibility to work remotely, Forino said. “It opens up a lot more possibilities for us,” he said. “It depends on the type of employee.”

Not all employees are a good fit for telecommuting, he noted. Forino wants sales people to work together in an office and feed off each others’ energy, but employees such as help-desk workers might be perfect for long-term telecommuting, he said.

VOIP features such as phone-number portability are one of the big selling points to customers, said Dan Hoffman, president and chief executive officer of M5 Networks. “What we’ve found is the tremendous advantage of IP phones is they’re designed to network,” Hoffman said. “One of the natural advantages of using this network is this telecommuting functionality.”

VOIP providers tout this portability feature as an alternative to wireless phones, which sometimes can be subject to roaming charges when a user leaves his or her calling area.

Combined with M5’s hosted VOIP service, the phone portability feature is one way businesses can stay up and running during emergencies such as power outages or events that make it difficult for employees to get to the office, Hoffman said. M5’s hosted service has power backups in case of an outage.

“Phones have been two cups on a string for too long,” Hoffman said. “We’ve had a client say, ‘I can think of real estate in a whole different way’.”