Zed-3 has only been in existence for about a year, but the company has already cornered the market on its latest product – the GS8 Modular Gateway (News - Alert).

 

Iain Milnes, the company president, recently discussed the GS8 Modular Gateway with TMC President Rich Tehrani during an interview recorded for podcast, highlighting what the product does and its uniqueness.

 

“So far it’s been a very well-received product,” Milnes said. “It’s very unique in the fact that it is module, you can plug in GSM and CDMA and analog, and to my knowledge, there is no other product on the market.”

 

Zed-3 (News - Alert) provides products that permit people to communicate simple, efficiently, and cost effectively, according to its website. The company’s IP telephony products work seamlessly together and interoperate with products and services from other suppliers. Zed-3 can provide VoIP solutions to connect home workers, small businesses, and enterprises with multiple offices.

 

According to Milnes, you can plug modules into the new GS8 Modular Gateway and connect your network to GSM or CDMA networks, enabling you to connect your communications into a variety of wireless networks.

 

Milnes says the GS8 is a product that can be used not only with his company’s SIP products, but can also be plugged into other SIP products. He said it also can be used completely stand alone without the need for an IP PBX (News - Alert) as its host.

 

“So it has two fundamental modes of operations, one is where it registers like an ordinary telephone would register with the SIP PBX and the other mode is where it operates completely independently,” Milnes said. “In the second mode, you can actually cascade them together, so you can create a virtual gateway that is going from one medium to another medium without the actual need for an IP box.”

 

When you put analog modules into the GS8 Gateway, and also put the mobile phone modules into the gateway, you can make a call from your analog PBX throughout to the cell phone network and the analog modules do not need to be in the same physical GS8 Gateway as the mobile phone modules, Milnes explained.

 

You can also plug in the CDMA and GSM modules that you want and simply put your regular SIM card from the mobile phone into the module, then create a routing table, Milnes said.

 

Milnes said you want GSM network connectivity because you either want more backup or you have a lot of people out in the field and you want them constantly making calls to mobile phones. “And depending on your plan, you may be able to get those calls, mobile to mobile phone calls, at zero cost or significantly lower costs than you could over analog network or over the ITSP network,” he said.

 

It’s not only about cost, but about additional value, Milnes said. “So that now if I am a mobile phone user and I am out of the office and you dial my extension on the IP PBX, I can set call forwarding roles,” he said.

 

The gateway also helps with unified communications, Milnes said. You can also send an instant message from within an office and that would go out over the same gateway. It also works for text messaging, he said.

 

“With our gateway, the company is sending out the SMS to the customer or to a colleague and can accept a reply back by text messaging,” Milnes said. “And so yes, you’re being able to handle it and send it out, so that you can send out text messages to your employees and other users, as well as being able to send out phone calls to them and (it’s) less obtrusive for your people who are out on the road.”

 

Miles said he sees business people carrying around several different mobile phone numbers with different carriers for each phone.

 

“With the GS8 network now installed, instead I take all those different SIM cards and I plug those different SIM cards into this gateway and now I end up carrying only one phone,” Milnes said. “Business people go around with six or seven phones and it’s laughable, they have a plastic bag full of mobile phones and it’s just hilarious to see this guy in a suit carrying a plastic bag full of phones.”

 

The GS8 Module Gateway launched May 12. The podcast touches on other various topics, such as what the company has in store for the future. Click here to listen to the podcast.