A Carlisle telecoms company is planning a major expansion as it predicts businesses will switch to internet-based communications within five years.
Toby Evans, owner of Eclipse Office Technologies, says that with BT Openreach phasing out the traditional voice network based on phone lines by 2025 businesses will need to look towards their communications systems being replaced with systems & handsets connected to broadband.
It is one of the reasons the business is expanding with Business Development Manager Prabs Kumar joining the business to head up new and existing customer development While Toby continues to focus on the operations and engineering side of the business. With plans to hire further engineering staff and apprentices, this is an exciting time for the business.
“It has become apparent that there won’t be BT voice lines anymore. By 2025 they will have switched off all the ISDN lines and phone lines as we know they won’t exist.
“Instead you will have a VOIP phone on the end of your broadband and everything is going to have to go over data connections. These are interesting times in the telecoms world,” he said.
Prabs Kumar, who is joining the business with 11 years experience in the telecoms industry, strongly believes that firms are increasingly seeing investment in telecoms as giving them a competitive advantage.
“All the talk now is about ‘unified comms’ that links together desk phone and mobile technologies allowing staff and business owners a much more flexible ‘work anywhere’ approach. That might mean receiving a call on your desk phone and then switching to a video call on your phone, for example.
“Telecoms based around your IP address also provide a much more secure solution than the traditional landlines which can be targeetted by hackers,” he said.
Eclipse was started eight years ago by Mr Evans when the welsh based telecoms company he had been working for went bust.
“They expanded too quickly and didn’t have the focus on customer service. I woke up one morning to find my company car being taken away by bailiffs and I was unemployed.
“I built this business up from nothing and remember getting my first customer which gave me the money to print my first business cards, get a uniform and new tank of petrol.”
“Since then the business has grown steadily, mainly via word of mouth and recommendations based on our strong ethics and customer service levels.
“We have a strong focus on supporting local independent businesses,” he said.
Eclipse now provides state-of-the-art telecoms systems to a broad range of Cumbrian clients that includes Penrith Building Society, Cumbria Building Supplies, Jopsons Jewellers and John Watt and Sons.
