25 January 2010 - COLT, a leading European provider of business communications, today announced it is providing IP connectivity to support MeetingZone’s audio conferencing facilities in the UK and Europe. As the UK’s largest independent conference and collaboration service provider, MeetingZone will be adding COLT’s SIP Trunking service, COLT VoIP Access, to its audio conferencing services in order to deliver high quality, scalable voice services whilst keeping network and bridging costs to a minimum.

Line quality and availability is crucial in a conference call environment. Market demand for conferencing services is continuing to grow rapidly and MeetingZone has selected COLT to deliver a scalable VoIP solution that can handle this growth in business, whilst maintaining the quality, availability and reliability which its customers expect. 

Steve Gandy, chief operating officer, MeetingZone said, “It is important to our strategy that we continue to outperform the market growth rates with a quality service at the right price. We are always looking for ways to be more efficient, but without compromising quality and business-grade VoIP can help us do that. In the conference calling environment, users do not tolerate service failure as they might with public VoIP services.

“We chose COLT as they could deliver a complete VoIP solution, which worked with our bespoke call management software and delivered the service experience and other benefits we required,” Gandy added. “Looking to the future, COLT’s European footprint was also an important factor as it means they can easily support MeetingZone’s expansion into the rest of Europe. Over time we also hope to offer different connection options to our customers – such as direct IP connections to our services.”

Rob Jupp, head of SME Division at COLT UK, added, ”Voice is still the most significant communication tool we use each day and with travel budgets being slashed and many companies taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint, the use of conferencing facilities is on the up. Business-grade services, such as COLT VoIP Access, can help conferencing providers meet market demand for quality, lower cost and more flexible solutions. We expect many providers will be following MeetingZone’s lead in the next year.” 

COLT VoIP Access allows businesses to converge their voice and data networks and route all telephone calls via an IP network and a single access connection. This provides a lower total cost of ownership, improved flexibility in call management and business continuity. By providing a more flexible and effective approach to convergence, COLT VoIP Access helps customers leverage their investment in IP PBX infrastructure and provides a flexible roadmap for unified communications.