A cloud-hosted phone system has been introduced to Bermuda to help businesses cope with the problems of reliability, high cost and after-sale support.

The new way to make calls is offered by Oxygen, which brought the IPCortex phone system to Bermuda three years ago.

The hosted service is a further development for the system, which has won industry awards in Britain.

Traditional phone systems for businesses in Bermuda are based at a company’s premises, with a phone switch on site to connect to the telephone exchange.

Oxygen already offers the site-based IPCortex system, but now has a hosted option.

Ben Smith, a technical sales consultant at Oxygen, said: “In the QuoVadis data centre, we host the IPCortex solution. Clients connect to that, via the internet, to make their calls instead. It is similar to Skype and Microsoft Teams, but crucially you get to keep your Bermuda telephone number.”

Mr Smith said the new system offered concrete benefits, especially in times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

He added: “For example, when Covid happened, as long as you had an internet connection you could still use your desk phone.

“Just unplug your phone from your desk, take it home and plug it into a router, and then all of your configuration, all your call history is there — it’s like you’re in the office. The phone system still works as expected.”

Mr Smith said: “In the rare event that the internet does go down, we have all sorts of features so that you can still have all of your calls answered by an app on your mobile phone.”

The company introduced the IPCortex phone system to Bermuda after it identified problems businesses faced with reliability, high cost and support for their existing systems.

Graham Turner, Oxygen’s chief technical officer, has more than 15 years of experience implementing on-premise and hosted VOIP, voice over internet protocol, platforms across Europe.

He said: “IPCortex exclusively specialises in fully featured voice systems.

“Bermuda is a unique market with so many businesses unhappy with their existing phone systems.

“We have proved time and time again that this does not need to be the norm.

“Our on-island support team are fully trained in IPCortex and offer same-day support to ensure the best customer satisfaction.”

The system has many features, including auto attendants, call queuing and call recording.

There is also a voice quality guarantee.

Mr Smith said: “Our solutions come with guaranteed audio quality, which in Bermuda is quite rare in terms of people often having calls dropping out.”

• For more information visit oxygen.bm or call 542-3811