Service to be demonstrated on stand 418,
London Olympia’s UC 2009,
11-12 March 2009.

Gradwell, the leading and award-winning one-stop internet business provider for the UK’s SME sector, announced today it has launched the “Spoken through Spinvox” Voice-2-Text service for its Hosted PBX Platform.

“We will show how you can ‘read’ your voicemail messages via text or email,” explained Peter Gradwell, MD of the Bath-based company which, in December 2008, won an award from ITSPA (Internet Service Providers Association) for Best Business VoIP.

“The Voice-2-Text service helps businesses convert their voicemail audio into text, to be delivered by SMS text message or by email – whichever format the customer chooses,” he added.

Voice-2-Text, a bespoke innovation by Gradwell, utilises the Spinvox Voice Message Conversion System (VMCS) and:

• Enables ‘on the move’ or remote employees to keep in touch with any voicemail message received on their office phone with ease
• Allows voicemail messages to be easily prioritised, forwarded and/or archived – no longer stuck in the voicemail inbox.

“With this innovative service we are stealing a march on our competitors,” commented Peter. “Spoken through Spinvox Voice -2-Text will benefit users significantly and shows that we are really motoring forward in advancing UK Business VoIP” added Peter.

“We’re pleased to work with Gradwell to offer their customers a truly unified communications service, helping British businesses save time and money” says Christina Domecq, CEO and Co-founder, SpinVox.

Service to be demonstrated on stand 418,
London Olympia’s UC 2009,
11-12 March 2009.

Gradwell, the leading and award-winning one-stop internet business provider for the UK’s SME sector, announced today it will be demonstrating its leading-edge update of Microsoft’s Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007.

“We will show how OCS provides UM, Voice Communications and tight integration of telephony with existing Exchange, Outlook and Microsoft CRM environments, as a bolt-on product,” said Peter Gradwell, MD of Gradwell.

“Our version can increase the efficiency of businesses communications.”

“The demo will comprise a fully-working Microsoft OCS platform integrated with Gradwell SIP Trunking and Hosted PBX products,” he added.

The service will be demonstrated on Gradwell’s stand 148 at London Olympia’s UC 2009, 11 and 12 March.

“The release in 2007 by Microsoft was a huge step forward. But now, with further progress elsewhere, in my view it requires updating - it has become a cumbersome beast,” commented Peter.

“Until now, it has not talked easily to a standard VoIP platform.”

Unlike other IP-PBX systems, OCS is not self-contained. So customers can use it either as a Voicemail service (eg: linked using a SIP trunk to the normal Gradwell PBX) or used with telephones (both software “Microsoft communicator” and Polycom hardware phones) directly attached to OCS, as a simple PBX.

SIP trunks can be used to link it with a full PBX, to gain fully-featured control over call routing.

Gradwell has built a Hosted PBX solution used by thousands of UK SME customers: they benefit from not having to negotiate a costly onsite PBX, and benefit from zero-cost calls between sites.

Plus they have access to extensions in multiple locations, inbound numbers with different area codes and powerful voicemail, voice menu, hunt groups, call queuing.

“So in a nutshell we have built a hosted OCS gateway, which can be deployed for any customer to permit interconnection with a normal SIP network: we can demonstrate phone calls, voicemail and the presence functionality of the OCS system,” said Peter.

PRESS RELEASE

Gradwell reduces its peak VoIP rate mobile call charge by 16.6 per cent;
success in 2007 puts Gradwell on pole position

The first week of August 2007 has seen Gradwell - a leader in VoIP for SMEs - intensify its price challenge.

With these new, competitive rates it aims to consolidate its Top 3 status among the UK’s SMEs using VoIP.

“We have reduced our peak-rate mobile call charge from 12p per minute to 10p per minute. That is a fairly hefty price cut by any standard,” said Peter Gradwell, MD of Gradwell dot com.

This 16.6 per cent cut relates to customers’ calls to the UK’s Top 5 mobile service providers (Vodafone, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile).

Rates to callers using 3 remain at 18p, while other mobile services attract rates of 25.5p per minute peak time, as before.

”We are offering this cut to our customers calling mobiles served by the Big 5 because we are increasingly aware that the main cost that businesses are now concerned about are mobile call costs to these operators,” he added.

“Our successes and progress with infrastructure in 2007 have allowed us to offer an altogether better and cheaper service. You could say that, so far, 2007 has proved to be an exceptionally good year all-round.”

Gradwell’s Offpeak service

Gradwell’s Offpeak service now comes in at 9p per minute (9ppm) - a reduction from 10p - while its weekend rate is now 6ppm, a reduction from 7ppm.

“Our minimum call charge is just 1.5ppm,” added Peter, “so again, we are ultra-competitive.”

”BT has been running adverts this summer about its price cuts. (For information, please see
http://www.callsave.bt.com/callmobile/index.html )

”BT’s headline rate is 5ppm for weekends - but you have to pay BT £1.50 every month for the service, and you also have to pay BT, every time you use its service, a minimum 3p call charge.

”Our pricing compared to others’ is therefore clearer, simpler and ultimately cheaper for customers,” concluded Peter.

For more details about the services Gradwell offers,
please contact:

Peter Gradwell,
Managing Director - 01225 800800 (www.gradwell.com)

Jack Ozanne,
Full-Media Solutions - 01985 841375 and 07973 770942.

NOTES:
For more information on Gradwell’s products, services, or industry liaison work, please see www.gradwell.com

Gradwell dot com is one of the leading UK internet communications service providers to UK businesses.

Since 1998 Gradwell has provided a range of email hosting, website hosting and Internet Telephony Services to more than 5,000 clients in the UK. With more than 10,000 VoIP phone lines, 6,000 websites and 12,000 internet domain names, the company had revenues in excess of £1 million for the 2006 financial year. Gradwell’s team of 16 is headquartered in Bath.

Peter Gradwell is one of the UK’s leading young internet and telecoms entrepreneurs and was recognised in the Daily Telegraph (February 2007) as one of the changing faces of IT.
<Peter Gradwell>

Peter Gradwell has sponsored the creation of www.voip.org.uk. It is a community-led VoIP forum aiming to become the UK’s main reference point for internet telephony.

For two years (April 2002-April 2004) he contributed to the work of Nominet, the think-tank for UK domain name policy. As Chairman of Nominet’s policy advisory board he was instrumental in guiding extensive debate.

He is a founding member of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association (ITSPA), the UK trade body that, among other activities, lobbies OFCOM.

Additionally he holds several non-executive directorships for Internet Service companies and is pursuing a PhD at the University of Bath in digital settlement systems comprise an analysis of the use of auctions to manage and procure resources via agent computer networks, known as The Grid.

In summer 2006, Peter was elected a Fellow of the British Computer Society one of the BCS’s youngest-ever Fellows.

Ends.