BUSINESS PHONE NEWS

Where's the Love? New AT&T Small Business Phone System Panned by 10 out of 10 Online Reviewers

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Has AT&T created an "Edsel" with its new small business phone system dubbed MS2085?

You'd think so by reading the one star (out of five) reviews the new 4-line system is getting on multiple online review websites including Amazon, BestBuy, Staples and Office Depot. 

We're not trying to create or jump on an anti-AT&T business phone system bandwagon. In fact there are some AT&T phone systems we like such as their SynJ^® SB67138 line that we did a mini-review of on this post. 

If you watch the AT&T promotional video we've shared below, the MS2085 would seem to be an easy answer for small branch offices that can get by with four phone lines or less.  

But as you can see from some of the review quotes below (we found 10 bad reviews out of 10 on 4/23/13) small business owners that purchased the system trying to save money did not save money and only earned a headache for their trouble in addition to the frustration of having to return the phones.

 

Sample Quotes from Online Reviews

"I never write reviews, but couldn't go past this one. Very disappointed to return this phone. I've searched for a new phones for my business for such a long time, and now I am still stuck in a middle of nowhere. Well..."

"This phone might seem good at first but once it's in use you will soon realize that it is about as useful as a paper holder. We are always loosing calls from our customers. We will go to answer the phone and it will hang up on them. Some customers will try and call 4 times before they will finally get through."

"This phone is a pile of discounted garbage. You can't get a clear line on it, hold a 3 way conversation, pull phone numbers and redial easily. You have degraded a great phone line. This was our 7th AT&T Phone. Now, we have to start shopping other lines. We are returning it. Each day becomes another issue. Tech support is a joke. Your manual is confusing and online support doesn't exist."

I could post more reviews but reading them proved too painful for someone like me that consults and sells business phone systems for a living.

 

How Do You Find a Phone System You'll Love?  Call Us!

We're not against buying cheap business phone systems from a big box warehouse distributor as evidenced on this post. We've helped hundreds of business customers of every size choose the right system for their budget and their unique requirements. 

You don't need to buy the most expensive system to get good quality. You don't even need to buy a new system as there are plenty of great deals to be had from buying a used phone system.

Give us a call. In just a couple minutes on the phone we can let you know if the phone system you're looking at is the right deal at the right price or a headache waiting to happen.

 

Overview Video of the AT&T MS2085 Phone System for Small Businesses

  

Business Continuity Solutions Overview: How to keep your business connected with advanced satellite technology

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

When your business absolutely, positively has to be connected all the time - satellite offers "business connection protection" for disaster recovery.

 

The Importance of Connectivity

Business continuity is a vital arm of large and small businesses alike, assuring constant connectivity and resilience in today's increasingly digital world. Virtually every process of modern enterprise operations involve network interface, increasing productivity while also making the entire organization vulnerable to network disruption. Productivity, logistics, revenue and employee safety are significantly impacted when primary connectivity is down for even a short period.

While everyday factors such as human error and equipment failure cause the majority of minor disconnections, the constant threat from excavation incidents, acts of terrorism and increasingly occurring natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and fires can take networks down for extended periods of time.  Some of these risks could take your organization offline for only an hour, others for weeks, but in a competitive and highly-automated environment, even minutes of lost communication between company sites or processes can have significant results. In a recent internal study by Hewlett Packard, it was found that unexpected network downtime costs their organization approximately $900,000 per hour.

 

Download, Read or Listen to Our Whitepaper Interview with Garrett Hill

X2nSat is a business based in California that specializes in business continuity and disaster recovery solutions that utilize an affordable, business class satellite technology.

Click here to view and print a seven-page whitepaper interview I recently conducted with X2nSat CEO Garrett Hill.  In the whitepaper Mr. Hill provides a detailed overview for his business continuity and disaster recovery satellite solutions and provides a competitive comparison to related solutions.

Click the audio player below to listen to the interview now or download the MP3.

 

 

Does a Satellite-Based Business Continuity Solution Make Sense for Your Business? Call Us!

Long gone are the latency challenges that have previously prevented businesses from seriously considering satellite technology as the wireless data link they use to augment their wide area data network.

If you are currently considering 3G, 4G, LTE or WiMax wireless data as part of your business continuity or disaster recovery solutions, such as the one shown in the diagram below, please contact a recommended solution partner in your area to learn how a managed satellite solution from X2nSat can provide a 2 meg symmetrical wireless data connection that may be far superior and more economical.

 

 

Keywords: x2nsat, garrett hill, business continuity, satellite, whitepaper, disaster recovery, wireless data, 3g, 4g, lte, wimax, wide area data network.  Image: iStock

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

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

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

Here's Your 5-Point 2013 Office Communications Technology Checklist (to Not Get Fired)

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

Sure, the economy seems to be picking up a bit but 2013 would still be a rotten year to get fired by your boss (or your customers).  

To help you keep your job (or make more money), following is a short, 5-point checklist of what you need to be looking at in the area of "office communications technology".

Please run through this checklist as soon as you can because "unified communications" is getting cheaper and sticking with outdated technology is getting more expensive.

1. Connect Your Offices Better - The same connections that connect your computers together in your office are now inexpensively available to connect your offices together in a secure environment.

Ethernet & MPLS are two technologies that allow any business owner to use to connect the local area network (LAN) of each separate office over a single wide area network (WAN) to eliminate the perceived communications barrier of distance.

 

2. Bond Better Bandwidth - If the contracts for the bandwidth you're using to connect your offices together or to connect to the internet are more than twelve months old then you're either paying too much or you're missing out on needed diversity.

Most MPLS WANs that have been around for a while are creeping along at T-1 speeds of 1.54 megs at very high prices. If you're got a T-1 based MPLS, make sure you're getting the best price and check out how cheaply you can "bond" more and better bandwidth to or around your current WAN connections.

What constitutes "better"? Cheaper and faster. While an MPLS network is still viewed by many as the most secure way to communicate critical data between locations, not all of your business traffic needs to traverse over a gold-plated WAN. Take all your business "junk" data traffic off your MPLS and route it over low-cost data connections like cable, DSL or satellite using either equipment or software that shapes and prioritizes your business data traffic.

 

3. Unify Your Phone System in the Cloud - Seriously, why is your phone system still in your broom closet, server room or basement? While a reasonable argument can still be made that owning a phone system might be cheaper in the long run than "renting" one via many current "hosted VoIP" or "unified communications" business phone system solutions, even businesses that own their own phone systems are moving them to "the cloud".

If you're a business owner with multiple locations you already know how important it is to have your multiple locations all function as one. Just as you can connect your multiple local area network computers over a single wide area network you can now connect the desk and mobile phones of all your offices and remote employees over a single phone system.

If you own more than one phone system or callers to your main phone number can't be routed to any employee or any office then 2013 should be the year that you change that. The technology to accomplish this has been real world tested for over a decade and it's finally affordable.

 

4. Become Indestructible - How many single points of failure do you have engineered into your multi-location business critical voice and date systems? What happens if your basement floods? What happens if your main telecom carrier goes down? What happens if your employees can not physically be present in one or more of your offices for a week?

If you've already implemented the first three points on this list then you're already half-prepared to become an indestructible, fully-redundant, self-healing business. To become a fully indestructible business simply go through your wide area network diagram and start "breaking connections" and blowing up servers.

If one communication path is blocked, where's the re-route? If one application or data set is destroyed, where is the backup and how quickly is it moved from secondary to primary? You'll soon see that having multiple network service connections from multiple vendors that can also provide "managed services" like remote data backup and remote hosted applications can easily make you completely indestructible without your having to buy more in-house equipment or software.

 

5. Eliminate all Desk Chairs - By completing the first four items on this list you'll have prepared all your non-human business assets for increased profitability. To properly prepare your employees to take advantage of your office communication technology upgrades, eliminate all desk chairs.

Think about it. Can your employees shake hands with new prospects or current customers while sitting at their desk? Why are they sitting at their desks anyway? Probably because there's a chair there.

If your best employees insist that there are profit increasing activities that they can only engage in while parked at their desk, make a list of all those activities so you can find, migrate or create an office software application that can allow that activity to be completed using a smartphone or tablet computer while your best employees are visiting with customers or prospects or traveling between costumers and prospects.

 

Who Can Help You With These Checklist Items? Call Us!

Office communications technology is blurring the lines between phones, computers and "the cloud". It's also getting cheaper and more complicated every day.

To help you decide whether the business communication technology advances of 2012 mandate that you spend or move money around differently in 2013 talk to a business communication technology expert. Click here to find one near you.

 

Keywords: office communication technology, application, redundant, self-healing, business phone system, cloud, hosted voip, unified communications, MPLS, wan, cable, dsl, satellite, t-1, bandwidth, ethernet, lan, local area network, wide area network, checklist. Image: iStock

Which Smartphone Operating System Should Your Business Use in 2013?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

With Microsoft's recent roll-out of both Windows 8 (the updated operating system for 80% the desktop computers in the world) and Windows Phone 8 (the updated operating system for Windows phones - used by only 2% of worldwide smartphone users), business owners and IT managers should ask themselves, "Is it a good idea to match the operating system software between my desktop computers and my smartphones?"

In a word, "Yes". But which one?

Click here to read a recent CNN article that provides a reasonably decent comparison of three different smartphone operating systems; Windows Phone 8, Android 4.2 and iPhone iOS 6.

 

Small Businesses with Android, Enterprise Businesses with Window Phone, ??? with iPhone?

In the realm of smartphone operating systems I'll be the first to admit that I don't know as much today as I will next year, but as a small business owner I do know that profit suffers when employees can't be as productive on their smartphones or tablets as they can be on their desktop computers.

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.

How to Use Cable Aggregation as an Alternative or a Replacement for Your MPLS Network

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email  

Can cable aggregated wide area data network ("WAN") really replace an MPLS network for a multi-location business? Yes...

For years the business phone companies have been telling business owners and IT directors that using any sort of cable Internet solution in a business environment is a bad idea because cable does not have any quality of service ("QoS") and is an inherently "shared" resource meaning a business would never get the data throughput they were promised.

Well that argument is certainly still being waived around by the telcos but after experiencing the successful use of cable Internet in their homes, few business owners or IT directors have a problem with the idea of taking a serious look at replacing their expensive MPLS data network with a professionally aggregated mix of coax cable providers.

But since all the cable companies have different service areas across the country, most businesses are hesitant to try an aggregated cable dat network solution because of the problem of having to do all the aggregation in-house and then keeping track of individual cable company invoices.

Fortunately there are cable aggregation companies available to businesses that want to try an aggregated cable solution to replace their expensive MPLS wide area network or "WAN". Of all the cable aggregation companies to choose from, few have the "one stop shop" success that has been found by Bandwave Systems out of Philadelphia. 

To learn just how a coax cable solution works when backing up or aggregating an MPLS network we recently interviewed Tom Azelby, Managing Director of Bandwave.

Click here to download a PDF copy of the white paper created from this interview.

To listen to the interview, click here to download the MP3 recording.

You can also listen now with your computer speakers by clicking the player below and then follow along by reading the transcript below. 

 

Interview Audio

Click the player above to listen to the interview now.

 

Interview Transcript

Dan Baldwin:  Today I'm speaking with Tom Azelby, the founder and managing partner of Bandwave Systems, a nationwide business broadband provider that integrates and aggregates all carriers and cable operators and technologies, DSL, T-1, cable, fiber, Ethernet, wireless and so on, so that businesses with multiple locations are provided a complete nationwide network solution with just a single point of contact. Tom, thanks for speaking with our audience today.

Tom Azelby:  Thanks for having me, Dan.

DB:  Tom, IT directors for multi-location businesses are looking for alternatives to the classic MPLS network because they need to save money, get more bandwidth for the money they're spending or other reasons.  When typing "MPLS Alternative" into their favorite search engine, IT directors are finding Bandwave Systems. 

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
951-251-5155 email  

 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.

We're Writing the "Business Phone Buyers Guide for CPAs" Book and Your Comments are Invited

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email  

Every week I work with all kinds of business owners, CIOs and IT directors to help them solve some business communications problem that touches their business phone system.

While all my clients want to either lower their phone and data bills, get more productivity out of their employees or beat their competitors in the marketplace, none of them want to buy a new phone system to solve their communications problems. And who can blame them? For many of my clients, the phone system they have now has lasted 10 or more years and they'd keep it except they can't get replacement parts for it anymore.

Sooner or later all of our clients will need to buy a new phone system and to help them do it we are currently writing a "Business Phone Buyers Guide for CPAs".

(It's for CPAs because I currently have a CPA client that's paying me to help them choose between several IP-PBX hardware solutions and hosted VoIP solutions for their new phone system. After the first buyers guide is written we'll rewrite it for the unique needs of other business types.)

 

Your "Here's What Happened to Us" Comments are Invited for the Book!

Every good "How To Buy" book of any flavor needs customer anecdotes and lessons learned. If you've purchased a new business phone system for your business over the past several years and have some "lessons learned" that you'd like to contribute to the book we'd love to hear and print them. Please email them to Dan@BusinessPhoneNews.com. 

If you've not purchased a phone system recently but think you will need to in the next year please also contact us and we'll share a copy of the book with you in e-book format. The book will be published by the end of July 2012.