Free video conferencing and digital phone system for Pay It Fwd towns
Connexus, the leader in enabling small business success through technology and Express Virtual Meetings (EVM), a leading provider of audio and video conferencing services have joined forces to back Australia’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) doing it tough during the Covid-19 crisis.
New businesses signing up to Connexus’ world-first ‘Pay it Forward’ scheme (Pay It Fwd), will also receive six months free video conferencing from Express Virtual Meetings via their vmeet.express platform.
Pay It Fwd provides free digital phone services to local businesses that are in turn asked to reinvest their savings and spend the money that would have gone towards their phone bills with other local businesses.
It’s all about helping to keep local economies afloat. And there’s no strings attached.
The innovative Pay It Fwd program, which is funded by Connexus (owned by Australian-founded MNF Group), is now in operation at three Australian towns across two states, with more sites to be onboarded over the next six months.
The first town selected to participate in the #payitfwd program eight months ago was Gawler, located in South Australia. Two towns in Tasmania - Sorell and Devonport are also up and running.
Now Connexus wants to spread the #payitfwd program further across Australia and is looking for additional towns. Eligible towns need to be NBN-ready and have a minimum of 500 businesses operating in the town.
“At Connexus our intention is to help boost SMBs. Only one in five SMBs have a digital business strategy and upgrading legacy phone systems to cloud-based phone systems, utilising the NBN backbone, has the potential to assist productivity and save money for regionally-based businesses,” Connexus’ General Manager Lee Atkinson said.
Megan Hodge from Your Wealthy Life has been utilising the Pay It Fwd program for the past few months and seen benefits. “Pay it Fwd has meant the business has been able to modernise its phone system. Since the impact of Covid-19, having a modern cloud-based phone system has been extremely important and enabled us to be agile in how the business operates."
“As businesses continue to feel the effects of Covid-19, we want to ensure that all Australian businesses have the opportunity to stay connected,” Andrea Goding, General Manager for Express Virtual Meetings said.
“Our reliable and secure video conferencing solution - vmeet.express - was built by the in-house development team at MNF Group headquarters in Sydney, and unlike other video conferencing services our solution has been built on the Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) framework. This browser-based communication standard is inherently secure and encrypted. WebRTC makes use of Secure RTP protocol (SRTP) to encrypt voice and video and to authenticate the parties using it whether from their computer or mobile device.”
Communities involved in the Pay it Fwd initiative are also supported with TEDx-style educational events and community activations to further accelerate their growth. Those taking part can use the #payitfwd hashtag on social media to highlight their participation.
Connexus is actively seeking communities across Australia that would like to participate in this ground-breaking regional investment program. Businesses who want to be a part of Pay It Fwd will receive a cloud-based business grade phone system and a basic desk phone handset for free and access to EVM’s vmeet.express video conferencing platform.
For more information about the national Pay it Fwd scheme, please visit https://www.payitfwd.org.
/ENDS
About Connexus
Connexus solves the pain of technology for small business. Connexus makes business-grade phone, mobile and NBN easy to understand, quick to setup and simple to use, leveraging world-class innovation and investment to create the best business telecom experience for SMBs.
Connexus is part of the MNF Group, one of Asia-Pacific’s fastest growing technology companies. Listed on the ASX since 2006, it is now twice the winner of the Forbes Asia-Pacific “Best under a Billion” award. MNF develops and operates a global communications network and software suite enabling some of the world’s leading innovators to deliver new-generation communications solutions.
For further information about Connexus visit: https://www.connexus.com.au/