Despite recent political tensions, the United States and Mexico have fostered a vibrant business climate that encourages collaboration and innovation for small businesses with partners, employees, and consumers across the border. Part of the competitive advantage for both U.S. and Mexican entrepreneurs is the geographical proximity; however, there are also challenges related to understanding relevant legislation related to cross-border business, tariffs, customs, product shipment, delivery, payment, etc. Cross-border entrepreneurs must maintain effective communications with business contacts in both countries, and when international calling charges hit, it can get costly. This can particularly affect small entrepreneurial ventures.
This week, San Diego, Calif.-based VoIP innovator Voxox announced that the company is giving U.S./Mexico cross-border entrepreneurs a break on calling costs through its virtual business phone service called Cloud Phone. With Voxox Cloud Phone, in just a few minutes, anyone can create a business phone system made up of existing mobile phones around the world. When you sign up for Cloud Phone, you get a dedicated phone number (local U.S. or toll-free) that serves as the central "hub" for your business calls. When someone calls this number, the caller is routed through the virtual phone system to designated cell phones. If no one picks up, the call goes to a dedicated business voicemail (as opposed to the cell phone owner's personal voicemail). Think of it as an advanced business-grade version of Google Voice. The difference is that Cloud Phone has many additional business features tailored to entrepreneurs -- for example, extensions to other "departments" which can be routed to staff mobile phones, conferencing, device transfer, voicemail transcription, and more.
Per this week's news announcement, Cloud Phone will now include free outbound and inbound calls to Mexico as part of the service's standard bundled calling plans. Typically, competing services offer U.S./Canada bundled calling but calling Mexico calling tends to incur additional cost. Why is this? While landlines in Mexico tend to be affordable to package into pooled minutes, Mexican mobile numbers can be on the high end for most providers. Voxox says that the company has long worked on developing strong relationships with global carrier partners to bring costs down for customers. Furthermore, the VoIP innovator's sophisticated cloud technology built entirely in-house enables them to bypass expensive licensing fees that competitors have to pay, enabling highly competitive rates and additional price breaks for customers.
According to Bryan Hertz, CEO and co-founder of Voxox: "In adding Mexico calling within our standard bundled subscription plans, we hope to make communications more cost-effective for entrepreneurs who regularly have business dealings with colleagues in Mexico. We've prioritized securing incredible calling rates to advance entrepreneurship, not just in Mexico but all around the world."
Subscription plans for Cloud Phone start at $12/mo for pay as you go, followed by different tiers of bundled subscription plans, which now include U.S., Canada, and Mexico pooled minutes. The plans range from 1,000 minutes/mo to unlimited calling. The majority of Cloud Phone customers are small businesses, though the service has also had other interesting use cases that are not business-affiliated. Once a Do It Yourself (DIY) set-up is completed online, all that a user needs is a calling device (e.g., mobile or landline phone) to which calls can be routed. The effortless user experience and set-up process, which can be completed in less than a minute, along with highly competitive global calling rates and exceptional call quality, are key differentiators as compared to alternative solutions.
Cloud Phone comes with a complementary mobile app for iOS and Android. The Cloud Phone mobile app leverages Voxox's new breakthrough VoIP codec, a technology used to encode and compress voice signals into digital form for transmission. This is particularly significant for small businesses with a disbursed or traveling workforce, as the codec dramatically improves voice quality in poor bandwidth settings, such as hotels, convention centers, rural locations, etc.
To learn more about Cloud Phone, please visit www.cloudphone.com.
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