8x8 (News - Alert), Inc., the provider of Packet8 residential, business and video VoIP phone services, has announced the U.S. Army’s Yuma, Arizona MCAS Cannon Field P-111 site as the first U.S. government customer for its Virtual Office solution. 8x8 will provide a total of 15 Packet8 Virtual Office Unlimited Extensions to the military installation.

 

Virtual Office Unlimited Extension service provides users with unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S. and Canada along with hosted IP PBX (News - Alert) calling features such as auto attendants, conference bridges, extension dialing, business class voicemail, music on hold, ring groups and more.

 

The U.S. Army is a fairly exacting customer, where the term ‘mission-critical’ takes on a whole new level of meaning. According to 8x8 Vice President of Sales and Marketing Huw Rees, “As with the majority of our business customers, this organization places a high priority on reliability, scalability and mobility, as well as technical support expertise.”

  

Today’s news follows on the heels of the recent announcement by 8x8 that they have begun shipping the Packet8 Tango Video Terminal Adapter (VTA), a unique broadband phone adapter with a built-in LCD screen designed to turn a regular home phone into a state-of-the-art, full motion videophone.

 

The secret to the product’s ability to offer high-quality video is in the addition of advanced H.264 video codec. The Packet8 Tango is fully SIP compliant and interoperates with 8x8’s previous generation videophone, the Packet8 DV326 as well as its video soft phone, Packet8 Softalk.

 

The lightweight (1.5 pounds) Packet8 Tango VTA represents a stylish, consumer friendly product that delivers outstanding video communications for the affordable price of $249.99. The accompanying Packet8 monthly phone service plan costs $24.99 per month and includes unlimited local and long distance voice calling to any phone in the U.S. and Canada, and unlimited worldwide in-network voice and video calling to other Packet8 subscribers. The company has plans to more tightly integrate the device with its Virtual Office offering, which is being deployed at the rate of approximately 1,000 customers per quarter.

 

According to a recent company release the Packet8 Tango offers the following features:

 

For more details on the new tango videophone, visit the product Web site.