Voipfone was founded in 2004 by Lee Rose to develop innovative Internet telephony services using VoIP – Voice over Internet Protocol technologies. The founder and Technical Director of Voipfone, based on his previous experience with analog switchboards and audio streaming technologies, built software that allowed conversations over the Internet and was therefore free.
It used a new VoIP technology called SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). It soon became clear to him that nothing like this was available on the market and that many other small businesses would find it useful.
Colin Duffy, current CEO of Voipfone, has worked on the business side of phone and internet technologies with BT for many years and got involved in early 2005 to help turn Lee’s prototype into a business. From that point on, it took many years of hard work by some very talented people to get to where they are today.
About Voipfone
Almost everything was built from the original code: the hosted switchboard services and telephony products they sell, the billing platforms and Package BuilderTM (see later) needed to earn revenue from them, the back office support and the management systems, the interfaces between our vendors and security systems, the website and customer control panels that connect customers in real time to our switching platform and the physical infrastructure that makes up the network platform.
They are a technology company and develop their own services in-house. This means they can create new, custom services quickly and do a lot of things most others can’t. They now have a fully scalable and ultra-reliable network. A complete virtual PBX with many unique support products and services and a purchasing system that allows customers to create their own services to match exactly what they need.
Voipfone is a fully virtual company, all its employees work remotely using our own products and services. That means they experience exactly what their customers do and work hard to develop the products and services we both need. They believe in providing not nonsense but sophisticated services with transparent and honest pricing and a very high level of reliability and support.
Hosted PBX, which is central to Voipfone’s service, is becoming a more common offering, but most are targeting the SME or corporate sectors as very few are able to profitably sell to micro-enterprises. There are now around 100 companies in the UK offering various types of VoIP services and on the rise. Most resell hosted services from larger companies that have invested in proprietary Softswitches.
Its innovations – and differentiators – are its ability to provide reliable and advanced phone services to small businesses – profitably. Voipfone is able to do this because of its very low operating cost structure and by building a network platform that can scale to hundreds of thousands of users simply, reliably and cost-effectively.
The core of their product differentiation is the Package Builder™. This is a unique and complex piece of in-house developed technology that allows customers to create their own service to meet their exact needs. All competitors sell a fixed package of services for a fixed price, which is easy to charge but means that, almost without exception, customers will pay for services they will not use.
The Package Builder integrates with a Self-Service Virtual PBX so customers can add and subtract resources at will and pay only for what they need. This is a big benefit for a micro business that may only need a single number (£3) but 2 extensions (£1) and may need to add a call queue (£2) later. He may also need an IVR – Press 1 for accounts, 2 for sales etc (from £5). And so on. This allows new customers – typically start-ups – to try it out without compromise, provides a migration path to a professional managed service, and allows customers to scale up or down without penalty, inconvenience or cost.
High quality customer service
Excellent customer service is vital to them and has been recognized by Voipfone by winning the Institute of Customer Service, Customer Focus Award, the only telecom company to win this award. VoIP isn’t difficult to use, but sometimes you might need help, and when you do, they’re here for you.
Voipfone is a founding member of the Comms Council UK – the UK Internet Telephony trade organization – so you know your phone service is safe with us. In 2013, Voipfone also won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise – the UK’s highest business award. Continuing to win awards over the years, including the most recent in 2021 for the ISPA Best VoIP Award.
They have been very successful so far, there are another 4 million small businesses and charities that need their services!
