Blio has completed the design and production of it's first PBX product.

The VX1600 series IP PBX is the first South African designed and manufactured, affordable IP (SIP) and Analog converged PBX. It has a 1U form factor with a rack or wall mount option and is designed to be power efficient with no moving parts.

Blio's PBX grows with your needs. It's Stackable to form a single logical PBX from a group of 1U units. A user friendly web management interface makes it easy to configure and manage.

The PBX features flexible incoming and outgoing call routing to fit our business needs and minimise your phone bill. It offers ISDN, Analog, GSM least cost routing and a SIP provider option.

A 12 Month Warranty and free software upgrades are included.

Blio's first IP PBX system was exhibited at the Futurex Cape 2006 trade show in September. The device on show was a 1U rack-mount casing containing custom designed circuit boards and a CPU board.

The demo device was a fully functional PBX, able to handle analog and VoIP calls. The final product will ship with 8 analog (FXS) ports, 2 analog (FXO) trunks, 2 BRI ports and an Ethernet interface.

We expect the device to ship after development work in the user interface is completed. The target market for the product is small and medium size businesses in need of a cost effective feature rich modern IP PBX.

The Blio PBX's design is unique in that in can form a PBX cluster which enables it to scale as the need for more users and ports grow. A friendly web interface allows the owner to easily configure the device.

Watch this space for more news on this innovative PBX product.

Creating infrastructure for reliable wireless local loop or last mile connectivity has been a big challenge but it is becoming all the more important. End users expect carrier grade service from their wireless network providers especially if these providers aim to deliver voice services. Faced with the nature of the broadband business model and price constraints for rolling out cost effective wireless infrastructure, Blio designed the NC2100 series wireless CPE (Client Premises Equipment) units.

The new NC2100 CPE range packs a big list of features into a compact unit that enters the market at a low price. It is built to serve the network provider in delivering a quality service to the client. Manageability and easy installation are key aspects network providers look for in CPE units.

The Blio NC2101 contains one wireless LAN interface and one Ethernet interface. It is powered using power over Ethernet.

Using the Blio range of wireless CPE's the network provider can deliver end to end quality of service for voice and data and limit the rate of data on the client side of the connection to prevent flooding of the wireless backbone.

The embedded web server provides an interface for installation work flow, gives link status and quality overviews and can scan for access points in range of the device. The web interface has two modes of access. Admin Mode provides the technician or network admin to configure the device on-site or remotely and one Client Mode gives the client access to link status reports and traffic statistics.

The device offers clients the usual LAN services such as DHCP IP allocation, DNS and NAT services in order to minimize the dependance on other systems and speed up the installation process. In designing this device Blio wanted to focus on creating a standardised solution that is a joy to manage on a large network yet friendly and simple for the end user to interact with.