FrontDesk Serves Up Personal Telephony on ISDN

John McDonough

There's a new product in the SOHO communications-management market, but it's not a telephony card. Jetstream Communications' Front Desk is an ISDN-based home office hub that routes and manages your voice mail, faxes, and data. Front Desk is not an all-in-one solution like the telephony cards; it's more of a personal PBX router that uses your existing telephone, fax, and modem equipment.

At $1395, Front Desk costs $1000 more than a high-priced telephony card, but Jetstream president David Frankel says the advantage with Front Desk is its wide-bandwidth ISDN connectivity. (He says 90 percent of telephone subscribers in the U.S. now have access to ISDN lines.) A single ISDN line supports tw o simultaneous calls, which eli minates the need for running multiple lines into your office. With Front Desk, you can talk to one person while a second caller is being routed to the answering machine.

Another advantage with Front Desk is that because it's an independent piece of hardware, you don't have to leave your PC on all the time. The notebook-size hub also houses a battery that provides up to four hours of backup in the event of a power failure. Front Desk has memory for storing voice and fax messages. The Front Desk Display with a 20-character LCD connects to the hub, but Jetstream also provides Windows 95-based software for PC control. Front Desk services include simultaneous call management; single-button access to call-handling features such as hold, conference, and transfer; voice mail; and faxing.

The hub has a single ISDN port and three analog ports for a telephone, fax machine, or modem. The hub also provides a serial interface for connecting to a u ser's PC. The serial connection is used to communicate with the Front Desk Manager PC software, as well as for providing the PC with high-speed data communications for accessing the Internet or a remote LAN. It is through the serial connection that Front Desk performs as an ISDN modem for the PC.

"Please Hold..."

The Front Desk hub itself is a handsome desktop accessory with an aerodynamically sloped front. It is about 1-foot long so if it takes up too much desk space, you can keep it under the desk or mount it on the wall. Setup is easy with recognizable symbols for the ISDN connector, Front Desk display, telephone jacks, and serial connector. You just have to plug in your telephone and fax machine.

Front Desk provides key telephony services. It can detect those callers you deem important based on caller IDs or dialed numbers that the hub recognizes. If you're talking on the telephone, Front Desk can greet a caller, notify you via the Front Desk display and call-waiting beep, t hen give you the option to answer it. If you are away from the office, Front Desk can reroute important calls to alternative numbers such as a cellular phone, while you can have your regular calls sent to voice mail. You can set things up so the important caller gets a message such as "Please hold while my Front Desk attempts to find me."

Front Desk's call-handling capabilities are pretty much foolproof. The display makes it easy to transfer or hold calls by placing the commands on the LCD right next to the appropriate buttons, just like with a bank's ATM. For accessing messages remotely, Front Desk lets you check caller IDs before listening to voice mail. It also tells you how many fax pages are coming in if, for instance, you don't want too many pages transferred to the hotel fax machine. And, of course, the best feature may be the No Calls mode that reroutes all callers to voice mail or just lets important callers get through.

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Product Info rmation

Front Desk...........................$1395

Jetstream Communications, Inc.
San Jose, CA
Phone:    (408) 777-4300
Fax:      (408) 777-4343
Internet: 
http://www.jetstream.com

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FrontDesk

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