What price loyalty or a guarantee

Skype suffers worldwide outage for a full day, users of the free app threaten to leave in droves! What price loyalty eh?

Just because something is free, it should still work and nothing is more frustrating than a free and useful product suddenly becoming unavailable. People become resentful and bitter toward the products owners.

Apparently, the business version was unaffected which leads one to imagine that their view is that the free product didn't matter? Cynical yes and probably incorrect but that's the world view.

We recently had to compare product availability for a business continuity plan for a telephone system.

The very best quoted service level agreement on the market is from a leading British Telecom provider. However, their claim of 99.9% availability is only guaranteed if you use their equipment and their broadband! Strangely, our humble Module IT VOIP is currently at 99.975% and we will use any broadband and equipment. To put this in perspective, 99.9% equals about a working day per annum. 99.975% is about 2 hours.

What does this really mean to my business?

Well, you should be cynical about sales claims and work out what the real impact might be but then look at the cost difference between the systems. The one guaranteeing 99.9% costs over 100 times more than the one currently performing better but of course we cannot guarantee that! ;)

SMEs and Broadband

Are you capitalising on broadband connectivity?

It has been revealed in a study by Go ON UK ad Booz & Co that an additional £1.8b can be generated by incorporating digital capabilities, but in a report by The Broadband Stakeholder Group there are many smaller firms who are failing to capitalise on this.

The report has come up with a list of recommendations which could be used to better inform policy makers in SMEs on the benefits of using the internet and better internet connectivity.

So far £1.7b has been invested in the broadband infrastructure and SMEs need to take advantage of this and boost their own productivity.

Beta Telecoms

01291 620189

www.betatelcoms.co.uk

High Roaming Charges

How many people turn off their mobile devices when travelling abroad to save on the high roaming charges?  I know of someone who actually ended up with a bill for £900 after using his iPhone whilst abroad and continuing to download the same data etc that he downloaded at home – his comment was “never again”.  Once, on a trip to the USA, I purchased a US SIM card to use to call the UK as it was cheaper than using my UK one.

The European Commission carried out a survey of 28,000 people from across the European Union and along with other data showed that 47% of the people surveyed refused to use their mobile devices whilst travelling abroad.  It was discovered that up to 37% of British residents turn off their mobile devices when outside of the UK.

As a result Neelie Knoes, European Commission Vice President stated “it shows we have to finish the job and eliminate roaming charges”.   As a result these high charges end up with no winners and the mobile companies losing out on revenue and businesses losing out on business and profits.  More particularly these charges are having a damaging effect on UK businesses that operate outside of the UK and whose personnel frequently travel abroad.

Since February 2013 the EU has been in discussions with the mobile network providers to force them to cut roaming charges with the EU.

There may be some light at the end of this tunnel as the EU has announced that it is hoped that roaming charges will be reduced or dropped by October of this year.

Beta Telecoms

www.betatelcoms.co.uk

£30b Loss To The Economy

The report by Smarter Working Britain which was the result of a joint study carried out by the Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR) and )02 has discovered that the public sector and some of the Country’s biggest businesses lose out on £30b of economic growth due to lack of connectivity.

These organisations state that their staff are unable to access instant messaging facilities, apps and other services which are available or are required to enable them to work productively outside of the office environment and effectively make better use of an employee’s time and productivity by being able to access information during meetings and whilst working from home or out and about on business.  The lack of such connectivity increases the travelling time of such employees because they have to attend the office when it would be more beneficial to work away from the office.  The study argued that just saving 121 employees travelling time equates to £127 hours per year.  Do you or an employee of yours have to go into the office because you are unable to access certain data at home or you have to download it prior to a meeting because you know that there will be insufficient connectivity at the meeting or you are at a meeting and try to download some important data and are unable to do so?   How much does this cost you in time and travelling costs, let alone frustration?

Beta Telecoms

www.betatelcoms.co.uk