BUSINESS PHONE NEWS

Will Auto-Renewal of Bad Voice & Data Contracts Drag You Over Your Own Telecom Fiscal Cliff in 2013?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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As Washington wrangles over the details of avoiding a national "fiscal cliff", business owners and managers should take a day or two to find the fiscal cliffs buried in their current telecom agreements.

Just as the nation's taxpayers want their Washington political representatives to eliminate spending on overpriced or underutilized services, so too should every business be scrutinizing the details of every contract  for voice and data services that generates a monthly invoice.

 

Auto-Renewal = Going Over the Telecom Cliff

I've been in the telecom business since 1990 and the only rates that I've ever seen go up year after year are copper phone line rates from AT&T and Verizon. All other rates on all other services have gone down every year for over 20 years.

The reason telecom carriers write their contracts so they auto-renew at the end of a term is to prevent their customers from asking for lower rates.  If you do not notify your telecom carriers that it is your intention to review and renegotiate each and every agreement prior to the expiration of the term you are locking in lower business profits for yourself and giving your telecom vendor higher profits without your vendor giving you more value in return.

 

How to Renegotiate Your Telecom Contracts Without Switching Voice & Data Carriers

The main reason most business customers let their contracts auto-renew is because they simply don't have the time, energy or resources to conduct a thorough market analysis of their current vendor's competition and they really don't want to change providers anyway.

While an aversion to switching carriers is understandable since that's when major outages can occur, an aversion to saving 10% on a voice or data phone bill is hard to understand, especially since it can be accomplished without switching service providers if a professional network services "independent partner" is engaged for a contract renewal consulting agreement.

The trick to successfully negotiating a lower contract rate from your existing provider is in being able to convince your current provider that you can easily access the same or better service at a lower rate from one of their competitors. Unfortunately, getting competitive contract pricing information from your current carrier's competitors (that you have no real intention of switching to) can be tough. This is where an independent sales consultant is invaluable.

Independent telecom agents or "channel partners" work with all the different voice and data competitors and are very familiar with the most aggressive pricing that all the vendors provide to retail customers in any given competitive scenario. More often than not, an independent sales consultant can provide the exact documentation you need to get your current provider to lower your current rates IF and ONLY IF you've not let your agreement auto-renew.

 

How Can You Get Contract Renegotiation Help? Call Us!

Click here to find a recommended telecom agent or independent network services sales partner in your area.  All agents and partners help customers in different ways and at different price points. Some charge a straight hourly rate, some charge a "shared savings" percentage and others simply charge a "management over-ride" percentage of all the monthly invoices they help you manage.

To find the right partner for your renegotiation needs you'll want to work with someone that understands your specific network voice and data design so that competitive comparisons are done in an "apples for apples" manner.

 

Keywords: independent telecom agent, sales partner, network services, contract, service agreement, renegotiation, shared savings, auto-renewal, at&t, verizon, cliff, telecom fiscal, Image: iStock

Ready for Usage-Based Broadband Billing? How Much Data Does Your Business Use Each Month?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

Who remembers the early years of the Internet back in 1994 when we all paid $25 to America Online for just five total hours of surfing each month? Or how about in 1997 when AOL changed to unlimited pricing for just $10 a month but all their dial-up lines were suddenly busy 24/7?

Believe it or not, Internet access started out as a usage-based or metered service. And even though the Internet's been "all-you-can-eat" usage-wise for the better part of 15-years, it looks like a return to some sort of usage-based Internet pricing for both consumers and businesses alike is not too far off.

Both Verizon and AT&T are moving their smart phone customers to metered data models and residential cable companies are following suit according to this article.  

What's a small business owner to do?  

Create a network bandwidth management checklist for your business so you can learn what sort of data transmissions you're paying for, measure how much you're paying for and monitor the traffic to confirm that you're only paying for what you want to pay for.

 

How to Create a Network Bandwidth Management Checklist for Your Business

Do all the ways your employees use your businesses Internet connection suddenly make you feel like you're running a coffee shop with a free Internet "Hot Spot"?  Well if you feel that way you've got the right model in mind.

Effective "Network Bandwidth Management" for any business owner really requires no more expertise than what a coffee shop owner employs for a public Hot Spot when they exercise control over just three things:

1. Who's accessing the network,

2. What type of data are they uploading and downloading, and

3. How much are they uploading and downloading

So step one for creating a "network bandwidth management checklist" for your business can be as easy as treating your business like a coffee shop and instituting the same Internet access controls as a coffee shop.  If you're not sure where to start, click here for a simple, 3-step guide to protecting your business Internet as least as much as a coffee shop owner protects his or her public Hot Spot.

This simple, painless and practically free exercise will educate you about what you need to be looking at to protect your own business wide area network which is no doubt much more complex than a single-site coffee shop.

Many business owners rightfully think, "I don't need to worry about that as my IT director, IT department or IT contractor has got that 'covered'". Maybe yes -- maybe no!  To double-check just how well your business bandwidth is being managed, download and take the "Business Bandwidth Management Self-Analysis Survey" in our Bandwidth Management Buyers Guide.

Business owners should know the answers to these important bandwidth management issues. If you don't, let the survey be an opportunity to discuss with your IT resources where your current business bandwidth management policies are today -- and where they may need to be tomorrow.

If your IT consultant isn't managing your bandwidth then feel free to contact a local bandwidth management partner listed at www.BusinessPhoneNews.com. 

 

Download our Free 2013 Bandwidth Management Buyers Guide

Click here to download our free Bandwidth Management Buyer's Guide. Our guide is designed help you understand what questions to ask bandwidth management sales partners and vendors to ensure you're getting quoted the right design at the right price.

If you need a referral to a TA partner or vendor that has been recently recommended by their customers for bandwidth management expertise, the buyers guide lists specific partners and vendors that you may wish to call on for consulting, solution design or a competitive quote.

Will an $8 "Dual Persona" App Enable Employees to Securely Use Their Personal Smartphones for Work?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email  

I recently attended a seminar put on by Verizon titled "The State of Mobility" which was promoted as an opportunity to meet Verizon's enterprise mobility experts and hear them speak on the current and future state of mobility strategy as well as an overview of Verizon's "Enterprise Mobility as a Service" ("eMaaS") solution.

The two -hour session began with Ed Branham and Forrest Carr covering the difficult questions CIOs and IT managers were struggling with as they attempt to decide about incorporating MDM ("mobile device management") into their enterprise operations including:

1. Should we even allow BYOD ("bring your own device") where employees use their personal smartphones and tablets to access required corporate mobility applications?
2. How do we create a reasonable MDM/BYOD policy that properly balances application access and corporate control?
3. Which MDM software solution should we implement to control mobile devices and application access? 
4. How do we make sure our data stays secure?

The session was too short to detail many answers but as the CIOs and IT managers in the seminar audience were all within shouting distance of their Verizon account executive, one could assume that Verizon is ready to have their enterprise mobility account teams solve any mobility problem a customer could envision.

 

$8 Per Month Per Employee to Instantly Resolve all MDM/BYOD Issues for any Company?

The second half of the seminar delivered the easy answer for anyone looking for an off the shelf solution they could throw at their MDM/BYOD problems today as Steven Baker and Tom Thimot presented Verizon's "Enterprise Mobility as a Service" or "eMaaS" solution.

According to the presentation, Verizon's eMaaS solution starts with device and expense management with a web-based portal that allows enterprise businesses to track all their mobile endpoint devices and make sure they're not overpaying for minutes and bandwidth. The presentation claimed that the software was "vendor agnostic" and using all Verizon Wireless cell phones was not required.

The presenters freely admitted that plenty of competitors like BoxTone, AirWatch and MobileIron existed that do MDM/BYOD but then they segued into Verizon's incorporation of a "Dual Persona" mobility solution which would solve the CIO & IT manager's MDM/BYOD problems and forever eliminate the need for any employee to ever again carry two cell phones - one for business use and one for personal use.

 

What's Dual Persona and Will Employees Trust it on Their Personal Smartphones?

"Dual Persona" refers to a mobile device application that allows a single smartphone to primarily be a personal cell phone but when the dual persona app is activated it turns the phone into a corporate smartphone that is VPNed into all the corporate mobility apps that the employee needs to do his or her job and is "fire walled" safely from the personal apps and data on the same smartphone.

Click here or the video below to view a 3-minute demonstration of the Divide dual persona smartphone application by EnterProid that Verizon has co-oped into their eMaaS solution. Click here to view a 1-minute Divide corporate promo video.

 

Pretty cool, huh?  Who wouldn't want that on their phone? It's the MDM/BYOD answer, right?  With the right dual persona app, every corporation can have a pretty simple MDM/BYOD policy like:

1. To work here you must have (and pay for) your own smartphone.
2. You must download and install this dual persona app and then manage it properly.
3. Don't worry, we won't we won't keep track of how much time you spend fooling around with your personal app during work hours (even though we can)

Now I've not discussed with any CIOs or IT managers how much this dual persona app has solved all their MDM/BYOD problems - but for lack of having a cheaper place to start - Verizon's eMaaS seems like an inexpensive place to start. Verizon's retail price point for their whole eMaas solution which includes the Divide dual persona app is $8 per month per employee.

 

Will Verizon Win the MDM/BYOD War on Price and User Self-Management?

The presenters went out of their way to reinforce the fact that Verizon's solution price is per employee where as all their MDM/BYOD competitors charge per device. It was at this point that Steven Baker pulled out all four of his mobile devices (a Blackberry, an Android, an iPad and a laptop computer) and said Verizon's eMaaS solution covered all these devices for one low price.

How Does Verizon's New Unlimited Voice/Text and Shared Data Plan Change Your Phone Bill Budget?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email  

Finally. One of the biggest phone companies on the planet did something that will make the life of a business owner a little easier -- or did they?

Click here to read the Verizon Wireless press release that states that they are eliminating all their different "buckets of minutes" rate plans in favor of just letting all their customers talk and text all they like for one flat monthly price.

"All you can eat" talk and text. That's gotta be a good thing, right?

If all your employees do is talk and text a lot this new plan certainly is good. Except your employees don't just "talk and text". What they seem to be doing mostly these days is "apping" it up with every data drinking phone app they can figure our how to download onto their phones.

"Cha Ching" (That's the sound of you paying for your employees' mobile data usage through Verizon's new "shared data" pricing -- which is the other half of their new pricing package.)

 

Will Your Business Wireless Phone Bill Go Up or Down?  Yes...

In effect, Verizon simply held up a mirror to its old pricing package and said, "This is the new package". Where they used to have unlimited data and metered voice and text, now they have metered data and unlimited voice and text.

To learn how this will affect business wireless phone bills I called two people I know that run business wireless expense monitoring and management companies, Moe Arnaiz from eMobus out of San Diego and Josh Lipton from Advantix out of Texas.

US Soldier Gets $16,000 Wireless Phone Bill for Data Roaming -- Is Your Phone Bill Properly Protected?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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 This story from California about a US service man getting a $16,098 phone bill from his wireless cell phone company got me thinking on three different levels.

First, I thought that could easily happen to my phone bill since I have two sons about the same age as the US soldier in the story who both use their cell phones for just about everything you can think of except talking.

Second, what was the guy really doing with his phone that jacked the bill up so high and do I or any of my employees do the same thing?

Third, are there any safety measures set up on my own business wireless cell phone accounts (I use Verizon for seven business cell phones) to prevent the same sort of "bill shock" from showing up in my mailbox next month.

 

How Much Data Does the Average Employee Use or Need Every Month?

Surprisingly little I think. I honestly had no idea (nor did I seem to think I needed to care) since I still had Verizon's "unlimited" data plan on most of my businesses smart phones.

After printing out the summary pages of my business cell phone bill for the last four months I discovered that for seven business cell phones the total was under five gigs of data per month total. The range was quite large though as my own personal data use was under 200 megs a month (just 20% of one gig) while my oldest employee (over 70 years old) used seven times what I used at 1.4 gigs.

(It took me a while to discover what "business use" a desk bound 70-year old employee would have for 1.4 gigs of data usage per month. We narrowed it down to either streaming Pandora radio for several hours per day and/or the Scrabble dictionary app.)

I was somewhat relieved to discover though that even the most data hungry power users I knew (all three of my teenage kids and even my brother-in-law who's always video-Skyping his kids from the road) used under 2 gigs a month each - a lot of data but certainly manageable - I think (right?)

 

How Do You Create a $16,098 Cell Phone Bill?

So now that I've got a handle on my own business cell phone and data usage I go back to thinking, "How'd this poor US serviceman jack up his cell phone bill to over $16,000?"  Well if you read the story, it turns out the guy used 1.6 gigs of data in just six days while on leave visiting his parents.

How Can Enterprises Safely Migrate Away from Blackberry to iPhones, Android & iPads? A Subject Matter Expert Interview

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Blackberry outages have been well documented over the past several months as has been the outcry of unhappy Blackberry enterprise business customers.  The obvious questions begged by these headlines include:

What's preventing Blackberry customers from moving to the iPhone or the Android platform?

Does Blackberry have a monopoly on enterprise-class mobile security?

What does a migration strategy away from Blackberry look like?

To help answer these questions, and understand the related issues, I recently spoke with Moe Arnaiz, CEO of eMOBUS, a Telecom Association subject matter expert for enterprise mobility solutions.

To learn more about how your business can effectively migrate away from Blackberry to iPhones, iPads or Android devices contact your independent telecom agent or channel sales partner and ask them about the migration strategies suggested in this interview.

Following are the questions I posed:

Verizon Wireless is on Santa's "2011 Naughty List" for "Bill Shock"

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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It looks like Verizon Wireles is going to get a bunch of coal in its stocking this year. The question is, "Does Verizon Wireless care?"

Hard to say.

Consumer Reports unveiled its 2011 Naughty & Nice Holiday List this week and Verizon Wireless made the list.

Following is what CR reported:

"The company tells the Federal Communications Commission that it voluntarily provides ample warning to customers who seem about to exceed their monthly allotment of minutes, messages, or data, so a mandatory rule that would make it issue such alerts isn't necessary.

But we caught Verizon doing -- and admitting to -- something else.

Two staffers who are Verizon customers recently were notified only after

Can Enterprise Customers Migrate From Blackberry Without Sacrificing Security? Mobility Expert Matt Coffy Answers

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Blackberry outages have been well documented over the past several months as has been the outcry of unhappy Blackberry enterprise business customers.  The obvious questions begged by these headlines include:

What's preventing Blackberry customers from moving to the iPhone or the Android platform?

Does Blackberry have a monopoly on enterprise-class mobile security?

What does a migration strategy away from Blackberry look like?

To help answer these questions, and understand the related issues, I recently spoke with Matt Coffy, Owner of Slash Wireless, a carrier and device neutral mobility device management company and solution provider for enterprise businesses.  Matt is a SME or "subject matter expert" for Business Phone News in the area of mobility management.

Following are the questions I posed:

Michael Burns Announces the Upgrade of Start-video, Desktop Video Conferencing Service

By Michael Burns, President
A+ Conferencing                                   

As President of A+ Conferencing, I'm proud to announce the upgrade of our desktop video conferencing service, Start-Video, software release version four. 

Start-Video features HD quality video, VOIP audio and all of the web conferencing tools, all rolled up into one recordable service in the cloud.  Anyone from anywhere in the world can access this service via the Internet.  All you need is a webcam and a good Internet connection.

Start-video is a multi-party video conferencing service, which will allow up to sixteen simultaneous, full motion videos operating at any time.  Now you can see the facial expressions of your conferees on your conference calls.

The full range of web conferencing services include PowerPoint presentations, desktop sharing, annotation tools and web touring. The service also comes in

Looking to Eliminate Phone Lines by Plugging Your Cable Internet Into Your Old PBX Phone System? Call Us!

Posted By Dan Baldwin
Editor, 951-251-5155 email

In today's economy, many business owners and decision makers find themselves either trying to expand without a lot of cash or trying to downsize to save more cash. Whether due to expansion of contraction though, every monthly overhead item gets a thorough "scrubbing" especially nettlesome invoices like business phone line bills, broadband cable Internet bills and the like.

When looking at separate phone line & Internet bills, many business owners ask, "What happened to making phone calls over the Internet? Why am I paying separately for business phone lines and business Internet service? Can't I get rid of my phone lines?"

 

You Can Cancel Your Business Phone Lines to Save Money ...

If you look at your normal business phone service bill from the telephone company you'll see that you're paying for three separate services:

1. Phone calls,   2. Phone numbers, and 3. Phone lines.

Those of you who have already tried