LONDON, United Kingdom, October 5, 2026 (EZ Newswire) -- Every unanswered phone call is a small business that has already lost, whether the business owner realises it or not. Consumer surveys indicate that 80% to 86% of callers hang up immediately upon hitting voicemail rather than leaving a message, and roughly 82% immediately dial a competitor. That is the wager behind bOnline's newest product: an AI receptionist that never lets the phone ring out.
London-based bOnline, the VoIP and communications provider used by roughly 50,000 UK small and growing businesses, will launch an AI Receptionist in October, giving business owners a round-the-clock virtual front desk that can answer calls, capture caller details, route enquiries and escalate to a human whenever needed.
The launch lands at a pointed moment for Britain's small business sector. BT and other network operators are working towards switching off the UK's old analogue telephone lines by the end of January 2027, a deadline that has left large numbers of sole traders and micro-businesses facing an unfamiliar, and for many unwelcome, digital transition. bOnline has positioned itself as the company helping them make that switch without needing an IT department.
“The real opportunity is using AI to make people more productive, not to replace them,” said Anthony Karibian, founder and chief executive of bOnline. “We are building our own business around AI with humans in the loop, and it is exactly how we are building products faster and better for our customers.”
The AI Receptionist follows bOnline's AI for Business Calls feature, priced at £19.95 a month and bundled with an unlimited-calling VoIP line. That product transcribes and summarises every call automatically, surfacing follow-up actions and sentiment scores so business owners no longer need to take notes while they are meant to be listening. Roughly one in two new bOnline customers are now choosing to add its AI features, a take-up rate Karibian described as “incredibly encouraging.”
Karibian argues the technology should widen the gap between bOnline and competitors on service, not narrow it. bOnline says it has collected more than 20,000 five-star customer reviews and describes itself as the UK's most awarded VoIP provider for small and growing businesses. “AI should not become a barrier between businesses and their customers,” Karibian said. “It should remove friction while making the human experience even better.”
Industry data has long shown that small businesses adopt new technology more slowly than large enterprises, held back by cost, complexity and a lack of in-house technical staff. bOnline's bet is that AI tools built specifically for that market, rather than adapted down from enterprise software, can close the gap. “Our role is to make AI incredibly easy to use, affordable and genuinely useful,” Karibian said, “not something that requires technical expertise or enterprise budgets.”
Karibian is not a first-time founder. He co-founded Euroffice, an online office supplies retailer, before starting XLN Telecom in 2003, a telecoms reseller that grew to around 130,000 small business customers and roughly £60 million in revenue before its sale to private equity firm ECI. bOnline, launched in 2016, is his third venture aimed squarely at Britain's small business owners, and by his own account, the mission across all three has not changed.
It is a wager that the phone call, the oldest channel in business communications, still has room to be reinvented as Voice AI. If bOnline is right, the ring the business owner used to dread missing will simply never go unanswered again.
Media Contact
Anthony Burr
Burr Media
anthony@burrmedia.co.uk
