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

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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Finally. One of the biggest phone companies on the planet did something that will make the life of a Southern California 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.

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 in Southern California 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.

 

About Us

We specialize in helping Southern California business customers in San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ontario and beyond. If we set you up for our free 45-minute consulting call (click here for details) we might be able to solve your problem for free!

How to Use Coax Cable Aggregation to Backup or Augment Your MPLS Wide Area Network

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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 For years the business phone companies in Southern California 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 backing up the wide area date network for their business 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 backup 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 backup or augment their main 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, for years, IT directors have been led to believe that an MPLS network was the perfect solution to connect a nationwide multi-location business over a single wide area network, or WAN, but for multiple reasons, your company, Bandwave Systems has been brought in by MPLS carriers to augment and/or backup the MPLS solution they were selling a business.  

 

Question #1:  Why are MPLS carriers bringing Bandwave into their solutions?

  TA:  Well, I think one of the big reasons today is network redundancy, and coax cable is a diverse pathway to traditional Telecom infrastructure, so the Bandwave Cable -Connect product is a perfect fit for a redundant Internet connection.

The next reason Telecom Consultants and Carrier Sales Reps are coming to Bandwave is due to our experience. We've been in data aggregation since 2000. We were one of the first nationwide DSL aggregators. Today as a cable Internet provider or a cable aggregator, we have the experience, the relationships, and all the systems in place to provision and manage Nationwide Cable Internet Connections, Our main marketing message is one contract, one bill, one customer support, and we do that for Multi Site Enterprises using our partnership with all the cable providers Comcast, Time Warner, Charter, Cox, Brighhouse, RCN, Cablevision, Suddenlink, Mediacom (MSO’s).

How Do You Know Which of Your Employees Can Talk to Your Most Important Prospect Right Now?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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 Remember the old days when every credible Southern California business had a receptionist that had a huge receptionist phone covered with "busy lamp fields" (BLF) that showed which employees were on or off the phone?

She was indeed the "gatekeeper" because she always knew from looking at her BLF who within the local office could or could not take a call.

Moreover, even if someone (like her boss) could take a call, she know which calls to put through and which calls to put into "the trash" (a voicemail box where all messages were deleted without being listened to).

Well for good or bad, few businesses have receptionists anymore. But without a receptionist, how do people within a company know which other people in a company can take an important customer prospect call?

 

Say Goodby to "Receptionists" and Say Hello to "Presence"

What's "presence"?  Wikipedia defines presence as "a status indicator that conveys ability and willingness of a potential communication partner to communicate". Think "red light, yellow light, green light." 

As companies try to be more productive with fewer employees, it becomes critical to enable the sort of instant collaboration that minimizes voicemail and email "tag".

Always knowing "who can help" solve a problem "right now" and then taking advantage of that via instant collaboration via instant message or a phone call that doesn't go to voicemail is exactly how small nimble competitors often beat our their larger, slower competitors.

 

Buy Presence First - It's the Foundation for all of Your Unified Communications

At a unified communications conference I recently attended it was remarked that "every vendor wants to sell you presence" because once a vendor owned your presence system they basically became your key vendor and all other communication vendor solutions were subservient.

So if a receptionist with her "busy lamp field" phone represented "Presence 1.0" and digital business phone systems where everyone had a "do not disturb" button on their official desk phone represented "Presence 2.0", what solution represents "Presence 3.0" where every company employee knows the presence of every other company employee no matter how close or far away they are from their official "desk phone" - and which vendor should you buy your Presence 3.0 system from?

Who indeed. That's the current $64,000 question for business owners trying to stay one step ahead of their nearest competitor.

Computer Vendor, Phone Vendor, Cloud Vendor or Other? Who does presence best?

Price Alert: No More Free Smartphone Upgrades From the Big 3; Is it Time for Wi-Fi First of Wi-Fi Only Cell Phones?

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

Verizon Wireless recently reported that they were following the lead of both AT&T and Sprint by charging their Southern California customers an extra fee to upgrade their mobile phones where in the past many mobile customers got a "free phone upgrade" every two years or so.

Following is the widely distributed Verizon statement: 

“On April 22, Verizon Wireless is implementing a $30 upgrade fee for existing customers purchasing new mobile equipment at a discounted price with a two-year contract.  This fee will help us continue to provide customers with the level of service and support they have come to expect which includes Wireless Workshops, online educational tools, and consultations with experts who provide advice and guidance on devices that are more sophisticated than ever.  While the upgrade fee is not unique to Verizon Wireless, most devices can be traded in with our green friendly trade-in program at www.verizonwireless.com/tradein as a way to save money or potentially offset the fee completely.”

It's reported that Sprint and AT&T both are charging a similar $36 fee.

 

Time for "Wi-Fi First" or "Wi-Fi Only" Employee Cell Phones?

Now I'm no revolutionary. I understand that the CEO, the Chairman of the Board and your top salespeople (and your spouse) can have any damned expensive phone and usage plan they want and, as the company owner, you're (mostly) happy to pay for it.  

But what about all those other W-2 folks hanging around your office who claim they need "smartphone mobility" to remain a critical business asset of yours?  Do they all need an exensive monthly cellular data plan and the newest phones when they spend 90% of their waking hours inside a Wi-Fi network?

Probably not. (Time to get out the savings calculator and sharpen your pencils!)

 

What's a "Wi-Fi First" or "Wi-Fi Only" Cell Phone and Where Can You Get Them?

Well just as the name would imply, "Wi-Fi first" cell phones or smart phones use "free" Wi-Fi connectivity first over "expensive" 3G/4G cellular connectivity when trying to make a phone call or data app connection. "Wi-Fi only" phones only work for cell calls or data connections when connected to a Wi-Fi network.

Where do you get them? Let's just say that phone equipment makers are not exactly falling all over themselves to bring them to market. T-Mobile actually had a solution like this called HotSpot@Home that made smartphone calls over Wi-Fi but they discontinued the service back in 2010.

Gadget Review: "Call Mynah" Easily Records Cell Phone Calls via Bluetooth, No Expensive Phone Apps Needed!

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
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If recording business phone calls is not a normal part of your day then the whole thought of recording your cell phone calls probably creeps you out. If that's the case for you just stop reading now.

If, on the other hand, recording your phone calls is actually an important part of your job description (maybe you're a journalist, lawyer, stock broker, court reporter, secret agent, etc.) then you'll be overjoyed to learn about "Call Mynah".

 

Skip the Wires, Extra Numbers or the High Cost Phone Apps

The Call Mynah device overcomes the problems inherent to other cell and smartphone call recording techniques that require a complicated advanced setup, extra cell phone numbers, expensive per minute third party phone apps or connecting extra wires that degrade audio quality. For more information about these other methods check out these links: RecordiaPro, online phone call recording app store or RadioShack.

Because Call Mynah is a Bluetooth cell phone call recorder, users maintain maximum control over the call recordings they make. Once the user records a cell phone call, the recording of the phone call only resides on the Call Mynah device until the user transfers the recording to another device using a USB connection.

Until the user chooses, the recorded phone call is never stored on the Internet or on a third-party vendor's phone call recording server where call recording "distribution accidents" can happen.

Check out the video below to see Call Mynah in action:

 

Other Office Options to Consider and How to Choose...

The Call Mynah device is produced by Intelligent Recording Limited (Philip Hill, CEO) and distributed out of the U.K. and California.  Check out their website for a long list of every conceivable type of office phone recording solution for single phones and home offices all the way up to VoIP phone servers and IP call centers.

What's right for your business call recording solutions? Give us a call.

Call recording is one of the most popular options that businesses are after when switching from their old phone system to a modern VoIP business phone system. But if all you're really after is call recording, dumping your old phone system for a new VoIP phone system might be your most expensive option.

Let us spend a bit of quality time sharing with you what all your call recording options look like and which ones our other customers have tried to failure or success! 

I specialize in helping Southern California business customers in San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ontario and beyond. If we set you up for our free 45-minute consulting call (click here for details) we might be able to solve your problem for free!

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.

Eliminate Business Phone System Wiring Nightmares with New, Static-Free DECT 6.0 Wireless Technology

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email 

If your Southern California business empire includes locations that can operate with four total voice phone lines or less (this describes almost every small, customer-facing retail business on the planet) then there are new wireless business phone systems available that you should look at if you're in the market for a new phone system.

The best thing about these new business wireless phone systems is they operate just like regular phone systems with incoming phone lines in hunt or roll-over, have intercom, auto-attendant and voicemail but largely need almost no wiring.  Because labor to install phone wiring can be very expensive, wireless business phone systems can save business owners a great deal of money.

 

Removing Voice From Your Data Network Solves Expensive Problems

A decade ago every business had two separate wired communications networks in their office that they had to pay to maintain; a phone wire network for voice communications and a data wire network for computer communications. Then someone (I can't remember who exactly) had the great idea of eliminating the cost of the phone wire network by connecting their office phone system over the data network.

That was a good idea in theory but it really didn't save small businesses much money and actually created expensive problems. The biggest problem created was poor voice phone call quality for small businesses that could not afford QoS ("quality of service") upgrades to their data networks to ensure that phone calls always got priority of data transmissions.

 

New DECT "Static Free" Wireless Technology Reinvents Cordless Business Phones

Most everyone that still has a landline in their home accesses that landline dial-tone with a cordless phone and understands the shortcomings that older cordless phone technology can bring to a phone call. Static, disconnects, interference with WiFi devices and "dead-zones" are just a few of the problems associated with the older 2.4 gHz, 900mHz and 5.8gHz.

Business phone system manufacturers seem to have selected DECT over other wireless spectrum technologies as evidenced by the AT&T SynJ^® line built for small businesses and PolyCom's KIRK Wireless Solutions build for any sized business.

The DECT technology wins over older technologies due to increased range, call clarity and extended range when using DECT repeaters.

 

How Will Your Business Incorporate DECT Wireless Phones?

The technology is built to be a modularized solution that augments your existing PBX phone system or it can entirely replace it.  If you have an existing business phone system that you'd like to get a couple more years out of contact your equipment provider to see what cordless phone option they have to offer.

New FCC Smartphone Database Cuts Thefts in Six Months But We help You Today

By Dan Baldwin, Editor
951-251-5155 email

 The FCC is announcing that they have decided to partner with the likes of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, t-mobile and other wireless carriers to create a national database to help thwart the theft of smartphones by making them all but unsellable after a theft.

Uh ... that's good, right?  

Sure it is when the newest smartphones cost upwards of $500 or more. 

But the real cost of smartphone loss is the loss of the data ... and the person stealing your phone may be only after the data ... and the new FCC smartphone database won't do anything to prevent a thief from stealing your phone if all they want is to steal your data.

 

Don't Wait for the Feds!  Here's How to Secure Your Phone Right Now...

1. Put a password on your phone.

Sure it's a hassle to type in the name of your Aunt's dog into your phone several times a day.  But how much more trouble would it be for your friends, relatives, enemies, competitors or the government to be able to access everything on your phone from the moment they "find" it until the moment you realize it's gone?

2. Make sure whatever's on your phone is already in the cloud.

Remember this Google+ commercial from awhile back about the dad who lost all his baby pictures because he lost his cell phone? Your phone (and your desktop computer for that matter) is not meant to be a secure storage device. It's meant to be a simple endpoint to collect data and then get it instantly to a safer place.

3. Use software that "finds your phone or fries your phone"

For as little as three bucks or as much as twenty bucks you can access any number of smartphone applications that can do as little as find a lost phone in vibrate mode, turn a phone into a coldwar-type spy device and/or turn your phone into a useless plastic brick.  GadgetTrak, SeekDroid and Webroot are just three of multiple companies that specialize in giving you control over lost phones.