June 17th, 2009
It isn’t just the rock bottom price that attracts business users to VoIP according to IP Centrex Vendor 8el. That doesn’t mean businesses are not attracted by the low prices of VoIP. It means that VoIP is maturing as a business and users are looking for more features from it. In the near future, what will differentiate VoIP from other similar offerings or VoIP from VoIP is what features the service offers.
Differentiable VoIP features include a temporary voice mail greeting with a configurable number and also enhanced centralized unified messaging. The king of features remains the quality of voice transmission though. This is what business users want the most of. That there is great room for improvement in international calls and business conferences is a common opinion. High definition audio quality could be the next big “feature” of VoIP.
This interesting analysis features in fiercevoip.com.
Posted in Business Services | No Comments »
April 29th, 2009
Cleartel has switch away from offering local phone service to residential customers, and is now only offering service to business customers only. The move is a good one for them, as they were loosing money on their rsidential customers, who tended to have bad debt issues.
I checked local service for a customer in Illinois this morning, and Cleartel came back with pretty good rates. Cleartel was offering two local business plans to choose from. The first plan offered unlimited local calling, plus 2 phone features, for $29.95 per month. The second plan let you add 2000 minutes of monthly long distance to the service to the first plan for only $10.00 per month more, for a total monthly rate of $39.95.
Check for local business phone service rates in your area at Cleartel’s Website.
Tags: business Phones, Cleartel
Posted in Cleartel | No Comments »
March 12th, 2009
For those of you who have been following Google and telecom for the last couple of years, you know that Google owns Skype and purchased a telecom startup called Grand Central a couple of years ago. Google has now changed the name of Grand Central to Google Voice and is getting ready to go main stream with it. In a few weeks, Google customers should be able to start signing up for their free Google Voice accounts.
Google Voice has some cool features, but, if you’re paranoid, these features might also freak you out a bit. Google’s new service will issue you a new phone number, and that number will be able to be set to ring to all of your current phone numbers and track you down. The service also has the ability to take phone messages, turn them into written transcripts and email them to you. This will give you the ability to search your text voice mail content, which is cool and scary at the same time.
It’s cool, because with this service it will be really easy to organize your life, but the scary part may just be more than most people will be interested in subjecting themselves to. Since Google’s ToS says they pretty much own anything you do when you use their free services, they may own your voice, the content of the voice mails you get and they will also have the ability to data mine your voice mails if they so choose. I don’t know about you, but that scares the bejesus out of me.
For a good article on the whole thing, visit Csmonitor.com.
Tags: Business Phone Service, Google Voice, Grand Central Telecom, Telecom Privacy
Posted in Bundled Services | No Comments »
February 18th, 2009
There is an article on TelecomAuditGuide.com that explains the need for businesses to have a yearly telecom audit. Telecommunications audits are free, and can end up saving a business a ton of money. The audit that the hospital went through covered 4 areas of telecom; local, long distance, cellular and paging, and came up with $789,335.40 in anual savings.
The hospital’s telecom audit showed that they were spending too much in the following areas:
- Local Phone Service: $26,800.95 per month.
- Long Distance Service: $8,175.54 per month.
- Cell Phone Service: $5750 per month.
- Paging Services: $5197.46 per month.
Every business should have an annual telecom audit of their phone bills, their cell phone bills and their local bills. By doing an audit, the hospital above was able to save $800,000.00 per year, and your business could end up save a substatial amount of money also. If you would like your bills audited for free, please email them to info@calling-plans.com.
Tags: business savings, lower my bill, save money, telecom audit
Posted in Telecom Audits | 1 Comment »
January 20th, 2009
Total Call International (TCI) is a really hot business product right now. Their 3 cent long distance plan is billed in 6 second increments, and that has the plan really moving with my business customer. The top seller used to be Pioneer Telephone among the business croud, but Pioneer’s 2.7 cent plan is billed in full minutes, which can really add up if you have a company that averages long distance phone calls that are less than 3-4 minutes each.
You wouldn’t think that full minute vs. 1/10th minute rounding would make a lot of difference, but it does. For example, if you made 1000 2.1 minute phone calls with Pioneer, that would cost you the same as 1000 3 minute calls, or $81.00. Those same 1000 2.1 minute calls with TCI would cost you $63.00. Sure it’s not a lot, but if you’re running a whole bunch of lines without your own T1, it can really add up.
TCI’s toll free and PICC fees are also cheaper than Pioneer’s. TCI’s monthly toll free fee is $1.00 per line per month for the first number, and 50¢ for each additional number. Pioneer’s fees for toll free service are 99¢ per number per month. (OK, it’s cheaper than TCI if you only get one, but who can stop at one?) TCI’s PICC Fee for business lines is $2.75 per month per line, with the first line being free. Pioneer’s PICC fee is $4.21, so if you have very many lines, that can really add up too.
Since I’m really a fan of both companies, you should go to the rate calculator at Lowertel.com and run the numbers for your state’s instate and state to state calling rates to find out which one of these companies will be the best for your businesses bottom line. You can also drop me a line at info@calling-plans.com, and I will gladly run some numbers for you and show you how much you can save by moving to one of these discount carriers.
Tags: Business Long Distance, Pioneer Telephone, TCI
Posted in Compare Rates | No Comments »
