T-Mobile Targets Small Businesses With New Business Connect SaaS Phone Service

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Ingrid Lunden.

T-Mobile, fresh from the completion of its merger with MetroPCS and new NYSE listing, is now sharpening its focus on new customers and new products, beginning with small businesses and cloud-based, software-as-a-service phone deals. We’ve been passed a letter that T-Mobile is sending out to a selection of small companies (copied below), targeting those with 20 or fewer employees and offering them free business phone service for the remainder of 2013, with half price on phone services in 2014. The plan, called Business Connect, also has a dedicated website.

This looks to be a direct competitor to other hosted services like those offered by 8×8 and RingCentral, which effectively offer small businesses a cloud-based solution that gives them telephony features like voicemail, CallerID, conference bridges and other features that have been hallmarks of services for larger companies…

From what we understand, this is being developed in conjunction with ChooChee, whose site, if you visit it, still indicates it is in stealth mode but also notes that it is working “in close partnership with one of the world’s largest global telephony providers”. Our source tells us that ChooChee has in fact been quietly acquired by T-Mobile. (We have reached out to the company to confirm this, plus the news about Business Connect. In any case, someone last year created a profile on CrunchBase called Deutsche Telekom/ChooChee, which points to them at least working together.)…

Read more from the source @ http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/06/t-mobile-targets-small-businesses-with-new-business-connect-saas-phone-service-partnering-with-stealth-choochee/