Britain’s largest phone company, BT (News - Alert), announced that it has expanded wholesale offering in the Netherlands with the launch of a new cloud-based solution - BT Virtual iPBX.

The BT Virtual iPBX enables resellers to offer Internet Protocol or “IP” voice services quickly, simply and cost-effectively to small- and medium sized enterprises or (SMEs), according to company officials.

Compared to traditional IP hosted PBX (News - Alert) solutions, which is mainly based on equipment deployed at the customer’s premises, the new hosted PBX solution offers great advantages to customers, said Carla Somhorst, BT’s general manager Global Telecom Markets or “GTM” Benelux.

BT’s GTM business sits within BT Global Services (News - Alert) and provides capacity and capabilities to other telecom providers.

“It is cost efficient, future proof and the pay-as-you-go model significantly lowers investment barriers for the SME customers of our resellers,” Somhorst added.

BT already owns an extensive, 5700 kilometers fiber-optic network in the Netherlands and has a dual-data centre offering which the company thinks are the core building blocks for industry leading cloud services.

The service, immediately available in the Netherlands, enables resellers to offer SME’s a compelling solution that is usually only available to large corporations or government organizations, BT officials said.

The flexible, scalable service requires very little upfront investment and helps smaller organizations to reduce their cost-base, they added.

BT’s new Virtual iPBX supports regular voice services including IP, Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) or “SIP” and Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

Additionally it supports voicemail and PC fax, plus a number of unified communications features including computer telephony integration via soft phone, dual ringing, Outlook integration with presence information, fixed-to-mobile integration, virtual conference rooms and interactive voice response.

Atlantic Telecom is the first player to deploy BT Virtual iPBX in the market to offer their extensive Dutch customer base a service based on the new platform. The company will use it for its own organization as well, company officials said.

Marc van Bracht, CEO Atlantic Telecom, said, “Offering our SME customers a simple, effective hosted PBX solution was fundamental to our IP voice portfolio. With this solution, small- and medium sized enterprises have access to the same capabilities as large corporations, tailored to their needs and at an attractive cost level.”

Additionally the future-proof hosted platform provides great unified communication features they can start using as and when they need them, according to Bracht.

A recent TMCnet report said BT Group (News - Alert) is planning to sell part of its 30 percent stake in India’s Tech Mahindra in the stock market.