BaldwinTel

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.

Gadget Review: Plantronics' CT14 Headset Phone Connects Your Home Based Call Center Employees For Less

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

One of the big cost-saving benefits for Southern California businesses when switching their phone system to a VoIP based solution is they can instantly allow their "desk based" call center employees to work from a home office.

This saves the company the overhead of maintaining an expensive office cubicle and opens up the potential labor pool to a whole lot of qualified U.S. based call center employees who are glad to "do a quality job for less" so long as they can work from a home office.  

This single benefit is one of the biggest reasons many businesses are bringing off-shore call center jobs back to the U.S. that had, in past years, been outsourced to India, the Philippines or some other far away land where they "kind of speak English" but not completely -- and not to the satisfaction of your upset customers calling into your call center.

 

Do Home-Based Call Center Employees Need an Expensive VoIP Phone? No!

The big purchase decision question for businesses trying to properly outfit home office employees so they can tap into the new VoIP enabled office phone system is "How expensive of a phone do home workers need?"

Well if the home-office employee is the CEO of the company, then the most expensive phone that Polycom sells. But what about your call center employees that don't have stock options?

Many VoIP and SIP phone vendors will tell you that you don't need to buy your home-office workers a phone at all, saying "the beauty of our VoIP phone solution is all your home office people need is our 'soft phone' that appears right on the screen of their computer".

Well, in theory, soft phones work just fine -- until the soft phone user has opened up 27 browser windows on their computer or you get confused about using the keyboard and mouse for both their phone call and order fulfillment on their computer at the same time. 

Combining your computer and phone keyboards or trying to get your computer to be a phone is really a recipe for inefficiancy and "angry at the IT guy" home office employees.

 

Split the Different for WAY UNDER $200!

The most important phone feature for your at-home worker is the ability to work hands free. Whether your home-based employee is a call center worker keying an order into their computer or your highest paid sales person just needing to wave his or her hands while giving an empassioned sales pitch, you'll likely not find a "work at home phone" that better splits the cost difference than the Plantronics CT14.

Is Your Customer Service "Out to Lunch"? Unified Communications' "Presence" Feature Solves This Problem

By Dan Baldwin

 As the economy finally starts to pick back up for many Southern California multi-location businesses, owners and managers are happy to see that their incoming phone lines are starting to ring again but sad to know that they still have not staffed their business back up to answer and properly address the increase in prospective customer phone calls.

How can a business owner get greater efficiency out the the reduced number of employees they have reporting to work each day?

Take a look at the "presence" feature offered by many newer "unified communications" (AKA "UC") business phone systems and services.

Below is a video that simply shows how the unified communications "presence" feature works on the NEC Univerge SV8100 phone system.

While the NEC phone system solution featured is produced by a "premise based" phone system (one where you make a major capital purchase and the phone system sits in your phone closet or a "private cloud") there are many similar enterprise grade "hosted VoIP" phone service solutions offered by companies like Smoothstone, Alteva, Telesphere, MegaPath, Broadview, Vocal IP and others.  

Subscribing to an enterprise grade unified communications solution from a hosted VoIP or "cloud" business phone service provider means a business owner can access "presence"-type features without having to commit their entire capital improvements budget for the year.

 

What's "Presence"?

When I first started selling business office phone systems 30 years ago, the phone on your desk helped you make and receive phone calls and not much more.

Should You Buy Your Next Business Phone System From "Scramblin' Fran" Tarkenton?

By Dan Baldwin

 If it makes sense for retired boxer George Foreman to sell you a grill you can use indoors then I guess it makes sense for retired Minnesota Vikings football great "Scramblin' Fran" Tarkenton to sell you your next hosted VoIP business phone system for your Southern California multi-location business. Right?

That's what Ari Rabban of Phone.com must be thinking as he's recently signed up with the former quarterback to secure Tarkenton's celebrity endorsement of Phone.com's hosted VoIP business phone system solution.

 

Does it Make Sense to Take Phone Buying Advice from a Retired Quarterback?

I admit it's kind of a silly question. Sure Fran's a great guy and some of my earliest memories of watching football on TV were of watching Fran make defensive ends and linebackers look silly trying to sack him in the backfield. 

But choosing a VoIP business phone system? I'm not sure.  If you watch the short video below that features Ari and Fran discussing the benefits of the Phone.com solution, at no time during the video does Fran say, "I switched to Phone.com's solution for my business a year ago and it's better than any other phone service our business has used in 30 years!".

Now if I found myself playing quarterback at a Deacon Jones family reunion I would certainly seek Scramblin' Fran's advice about how best to survive the event.

 

Ask Fran About QoS and the Differences Between Broadsoft, MetaSwitch & Asterisk Before Buying

When choosing someone to explain to my wife the difference between a "nickel" and "dime" defensive football scheme or how to throw a touchdown pass into a zone or man-to-man coverage, Fran Tarkenton is definitely my choice, especially since my wife hails from Minnesota.

A Cheap Cloud Phone Solution for Small Professional Office Locations? Panasonic says "Yes" but we say "Maybe"

By Dan Baldwin

For over 10-years, hosted VoIP providers (initially Vonage & 8x8) have been telling small businesses that "the cloud" (their broadband DSL or cable Internet connection) can host their phone service so they can abandon their expensive local phone company lines and save money.

The idea was fine when it was first proclaimed, but the actual phone equipment that small offices needed to work "with the cloud" did not have all the features required like intercom, music on hold, cordless handsets, etc.

 

Panasonic's "Office Cloud Phones" to the Rescue?

For years Panasonic has been a phone equipment champion for small businesses. The phones are pretty inexpensive, fairly easy to install and easy to

Verizon's "Premium Technical Support" Service Solves Computer Problems for Your "Work at Home" Employees

By Dan Baldwin,

As more and more businesses allow their employees to "work at home" out of necessity or convenience, more and more businesses are discovering the pain and expense of providing their remote workers with decent computer "help-desk" support.

In order to keep their FiOS residential customers from switching to their cable Internet competitors, Verizon is offering their "Premium Technical Support" service to any FiOS residential customer that needs "help desk" computer PC support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

 

Unlimited PC & Mac "Help Desk" Support 24/7 for Under $15 per Month

This is an absolute screaming deal for any business with a "work at home" employee that they need to provide PC help desk support for. I actually signed up for this service myself and can personally vouch for how well it works.

While there might be many other things to hate about Verizon, there's really nothing but "good" about their "Premium Technical Support" service. Whenever I've got a computer problem I call 866-785-8145 and a human answers the phone.  They confirm I'm a customer, assign a trouble ticket and then pass me onto a technician.

The technician asks a couple questions and then gets me to allow him or her to log into my computer at http://expert.verizon.com/. A couple minutes later the technician to "fixing my computer" via remote log-in while I'm reading a magazine.

 

Supporting Your Existing Business IT Support Staff

I would not recommend that any business fire their existing IT support people or contractors after signing up for Verizon's premium technical support service, but it certainly makes economic sense to have the subscription as a "call these people first with your home computer problems" option to free up your existing IT support staff to work on bigger challenges of your computers at your office.

When I received my "welcome" email to the service the following items were confirmed to be included:

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

By Dan Baldwin

In today's economy, many Southern California based multi-location 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 VoIP phone calling at home using Vonage, Skype, magicJack or some similar residential grade "alternate phone service" know that you can easily substitute your phone line with a broadband Internet connection. Phone numbers and phone calls do not have to go over phone lines as they're "transport medium agnostic."

If you pick apart your business phone service invoice from your local phone company you'll see that the "phone line" part makes up the majority of the costs. You're paying for the "phone line pipes" all the time whether they're being used for phone calls or not.

The actual phone call usage portion of most phone bills and the hidden cost to "rent the phone number" for the month are really very small. This can be plainly seen on successive phone bills when a month of heavy calling is about the same as a month with very few calls.  

When it comes to your classic phone company phone bill - you're "paying for the pipes". This alone is not bad except you're also paying separately for your broadband Internet connection. It's time to "double up" and dump the cost of your phone lines if you can swing it.

Is it Hard, Legal (or Safe) to Connect My Phone System to My Business Cable Internet?

No, it's not hard. Yes, it's legal (confirm this with your cable company). Yes, it's safe - if you do it with a business "SIP Trunking" provider that has turned this new business phone service practice into an art form.

If you've connected a magicJack at home you already know how "hard" the connection process is. Instead of plugging your home phone into the phone line jack on the wall you plug it into the magicJack device and then plug the magicJack device into a USB port on your computer. The software on the magicJack device then connects your regular home phone to "real dial tone" using the Internet connection plugged into your computer.

After about a minute after connecting the magicJack you pick up the receiver on your phone and make a normal phone call. Incoming calls make the phone ring just like before.

Now of course magicJack is only residential quality so you don't want to use it for businesses calls. It actually works fine for business calls (I used my magicJack for business calls for about a month) until someone uses the Internet connection to watch a Netflix movie or swap vacation photos with friends on Facebook.

FCC Reports on Best Broadband Services - How Did Your Provider Perform?

By Dan Baldwin

Many business owners wonder, "Why is the broadband Internet connection at my home so cheap and the one at my office so expensive?" I mean seriously, a 1.5 meg T-1 at work is upwards of $400 per month while a 35 meg connection at home is under $100 a month?

Maybe the the federal government should look into it, right?

Well maybe that's starting to happen now that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has issued a first ever report on whether consumers are getting what they're paying for (or buying more than they need) in the way of their residential Internet service.

Click here to view the web page for the FCC broadband report. 

I've thumbed through it myself and am pleased to learn that the fiber Internet service I use in my own home office performed pretty well. (I actually learned about the report when my service provider - Verizon FiOS - sent me an email proclaiming the FCC "says we're best" or words to that effect.)

 

Why is the FCC's Residential Broadband Report Important for Your Business?

As more and more business owners send their desk-bound employees to work at home out of a home office, the quality of the broadband connection the employee can get at home is critical to the employer's ability to stay connected to (and keep tabs on) the employee during work hours.

The quality of a business phone system station being used at a home office will succeed or suffer based on the bandwidth, latency or jitter that the home Internet connection provides. 

Fortunately the FCC report on residential broadband service is good news for business owners.  The QoS or "quality of service" delivery (the bandwidth, latency, etc. that's promised versus what's actually achieved) was anywhere from 85% to 125% depending on the service provider.

With home Internet service being so cheap (I have a 35 meg up and 35 meg down service for under $90 per month), businesses can afford to max out their employees home Internet service to ensure the very best connectivity.

 

Network Service 24/7 IT Support Available as Well

One of the biggest drawbacks for business owners considering allowing their employees to work from home at a remote office has been the percieved drain on the company to support a home worker's IT needs.  All the broadband in the world won't increase a home worker's productivity if their computer isn't working right or their Internet connection is having problems.

Who can afford 24/7 remote IT support for employees working at a home office? The answer is practically any business owner can afford it through multiple outsourced IT solution providers.