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Telecom spending can be a very large part of a company’s operating costs. Companies are always looking to keep their costs under control and telecom spending is one of the more difficult areas to manage.

Even with the increase in value and flexibility from new technology, companies have also seen an increase in their telecom costs. Mobile phones, remote network access and broadband solutions have simplified our workspaces, but have complicated the telecom accounting procedures.

Although you can’t just forgo your telecom services to cut your budget, you can curb and control them. Here are a few ways to tame your telecom budget.

What do you have? What do you use? Sometimes you don’t use what you have. Take an inventory of all your lines, services, hardware, mobile devices, and contracts. As you do this you may find that employees have left but you are still paying for their cell phones, or departments have closed and you are still paying for their phone lines.

Wireless devices can be a huge drain on your company pocketbook. Sometimes employees are given mobile devices that the company pays for and sometimes they use their own and are reimbursed. Organizing and setting up a company policy for wireless devices takes time but can save you money in the end.

Check your contracts and see if the pricing in the contract matches the pricing on your bill. If not, you’ll need to apply for a credit for those overcharges. If you were promised a refund or rebate in your contract, make sure you received those. If you’ve done a complete inventory, matching bills to the inventory is a great way to identify problems.

Now that you know what inventory you have and that you are paying correctly for that inventory, you need to look at your services with an eye to how your company is using them. Is your company growing or downsizing? Don’t just cut back to cut back. Look at the value the services provide to your company.

Employee personal usage of business telecom services should be addressed as well. If you provide perks like home broadband, business mobile devices and WiFi access, boundaries should be addressed with employees in a telecom company policy. Managers must take responsibility to enforce whatever controls the company puts in place.

If your business has multiple locations or if many of your employees work from home, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) might be a cheaper option. VoIP can connect offices and remote workers and could offer big savings.

After you have reviewed your contracts and current usage, it might be time to renegotiate your contracts. If it’s been a while, you might be able to get a better deal. Or, after looking at what you have, you may decide to consolidate or cancel some services. Carriers would like to have all of your business, so in consolidating with one, you may get a higher discount. Shop around to make sure you are getting the best deal. Sometimes, it may be better for your business to use flat rates and per-user or per-month services. This will give you a predictable monthly payment.

If it is possible, you many want to consider adding a business downturn clause when you renegotiate your contracts. This clause will allow you to renegotiate your contract if there is a downturn in your business, such as having to close one of your multiple offices.

Many businesses use multiple carriers for all of their telecom services. These carriers each send a separate invoice and sometimes they charge extra for sending a paper invoice. Automating your telecom billing and payments can save you money, both in internal processing costs and in staffing resources.

When you automate your billing, you can still have the opportunity to review all your charges. You will have access a variety of reports that can break down the charges by service, circuit, department, location, or carrier.

For smaller companies, the business owner is often in charge of telecom spending. As the size of the business increases, telecom responsibility moves from one person to a group or a department.

A telecom management company can help assess your spending and inventory, provide automated billing and can negotiate contracts for you. Since they are familiar with all the telecom carriers, they will be especially helpful in finding you a good rate and negotiating the contract. They can even apply for refunds on your behalf for services that were incorrectly billed.

Dealing with one telecom management person is always preferable than having to deal with 10 different service providers. And, when you work with a management professional, they will always be looking out for other ways to save money in your telecom spending, something you can’t always do.

It’s tough to tame your telecom spending. It takes time and effort. These days, cost cutting is a must and we are all trying to do more with less money. Getting organized, especially in the telecom area of your business will help you to see where you can cut costs and make sound telecom business decisions.

Author: Nermine Shaker has generated millions of dollars worth of savings for her clients. She is a Partner at The Sygnal Group, a telecom consulting firm that offers telecom expense management, telecom auditing and VoIP management to businesses of all sizes. Find out how to lower your telecom expenses at http://www.SygnalGroup.com or visit our blog at http://www.TelecomExpertise.com

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Today there is a better alternative available to the traditional PBX phone. This alternative is hosted PBX systems. PBX stands for Private Branch eXchange. With traditional PBX, an incoming call can be routed through switchboard hardware to different extensions throughout the company. This hardware is usually kept somewhere on company premises.

When a call is placed to a company with a hosted PBX service, it goes to the carrier’s central office, gets processed through the hardware at their site and then it’s sent to your phone extensions. So, Hosted PBX is an IP-based PBX (Internet Protocol) service that is hosted by someone else and provides call routing for your company.

This means that hosted PBX customers don’t buy, install or maintain any PBX equipment at their site. This can save a lot of time and money. Companies want to concentrate on their business and not on their telephone and email systems. And the expense for upgrading and maintaining these systems are huge and come with many IT challenges. Many small to mid-size companies can’t spend the money for a call center, so a hosted PBX system might be the right choice for them.

Hosted PBX offers rich features, excellent quality and wide coverage. These features are more advanced than traditional PBX and they are easy to manage. This is because the hosted PBX services provide users with excellent web management. Most of the services provide a platform that makes it easy for users to create new accounts, make extensions and manage call queues with the web interface.

Other benefits of hosted PBX include managing incoming calls such as voicemail, faxes, automated messages, conferences, touchtone menus, call records and those phone calls that need to go to the next available person in a department.

It is relatively easy to manage voice mail with a hosted PBX system. With this service you can also utilize your current voice mail facility. If a call comes on your mobile phone and you don’t answer it, it will automatically roll onto voice mail. Generally, hosted PBX services have better control over simple call transfers and they can also manage a higher number of phone calls.

The various ways to handle calls include forwarding them to voice mail, granting permissions from the attending person on the other end and automated voice mail recording. With busy lines and unanswered calls, voice mail can be easily setup and it performs well.

Besides all the great call routing functions, other great advantages attached to the hosted PBX systems are lower entry costs, support costs, reliability, improved scalability and flexibility. Hosted PBX also allows greater ease of management and it is better when you need flexibility with your telephony. Let’s look at some of these advantages.

Since you are using the host’s infrastructure, your start-up costs for a hosted PBX service will be lower than if you purchased your own phone system.

You can manage some support yourself, like adding users or lines by either going online or making a phone call. For some of these operations, you don’t have to wait for the phone guy to show up.

With hosted PBX, there is usually round-the-clock support. Also, for disaster recovery, there is full data access and redundancy.

You can get the exact number of lines that you need for your company. It’s easy to add and remove lines as your company grows or contracts.

Hosted PBX system has an advantage over the traditional PBX systems in many ways. It provides features that traditional PBX doesn’t have and there is more flexibility with it.

Routing calls to phones actually allow you to ring on any phone by calling the extension. Such calls can be made on the mobile phones of your employees who are traveling and cannot access their company phone. This keeps all the traveling employees in constant touch with the office and they can transfer calls as usual. If you have employees who travel a lot, then hosted PBX might be the best system for you.

The biggest considerations in company expenses are capital expenses and operating expenses. Employing a hosted PBX service eliminates most of the capital expenses and reduces operating expenses. Keeping your communication capabilities up to date without hampering your ability to focus on your business is vital. Hosted PBX will provide all of the technology, features and benefits found in expensive PBX systems at a much lower cost and might be a viable option for your business.

Author: Nermine Shaker has generated millions of dollars worth of savings for her clients. She is a Partner at The Sygnal Group, a telecom consulting firm that offers telecom expense management, telecom auditing and VoIP management to businesses of all sizes. Find out how to lower your telecom expenses at http://www.SygnalGroup.com or visit our blog at http://www.TelecomExpertise.com

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Prison facilities are evolving when it comes to contraband the prisoners obtain. No longer are they sneaking in drug paraphernalia or buying cigarettes, the new trend is cellular phones. The Senate has been urged to form legislation to allow prison facilities to jam cell phones. Why jam cell phones in prisons? Many officials speculate that the prisoners intimidate potential witnesses and they use the cell phones to make drug deals behind bars.

Many prison facilities are incorporating new types of security measures to disallow cell phones from finding their way into the facilities. X-rays and cavity searches are not effective enough to stop the cell phones and other types of contraband from appearing in prison facilities. Many officials say that prison staff are slacking and they are not trying hard enough to confiscate the cell phones from the prisons. Surveillance is also poorly operated and the cameras are not capturing footage when contraband is being passed through. Jamming cell phones might be a great idea for those who work inside of a prison but these cell phones could affect the good customers.

In California alone, over 2,800 cell phones were confiscated in 2008. Only 700 cell phones were confiscated the year before. Many problems are involved when dealing with jamming cell phones in prisons. Legitimate customers’ cell phones will be affected if you jam cell phones in prison facilities. Another problem will arise with the state, they have to make a budget to purchase equipment such as detectors. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are unable to block radio signals. Since certain techniques to find and confiscate cell phones do not work, citizens have to pay more taxes.

Jamming cell phones in prisons does have its benefits. Prisoners will not have control over their drug trafficking inside the prisons. Prisoners cannot send out one of their goons to kill a witness or send out death threats to anyone they wish. These cell phones could possibly get wiretapped. Credit card fraud, escapes, prison riots, extortion and several other crimes could be eliminated when this legislation takes effect soon.

Several states are concerned about this and they are ready to take action. These states do not understand that confiscating cell phones is not going to be an easy task. Several of these states have signed a petition to waive the 1934 Federal Communications Commission’s radio signal ban. It doesn’t make much sense to give prisoners cell phones in the first place. They are in prison to serve time for a crime, not order a cheese pizza. What happened to the pay phone? Prisoners have so many privileges. It is rather strange. Many prisoners enjoy the luxury of television, Sony Playstation, and their own cell with a queen size bed.

Seems like these prisoners are enjoying themselves. These people are still criminals and they will still commit crimes inside the prison facilities any chance they can. Jamming cell phones is going to be a difficult task but we are heading in the right direction.

Author: SESP develops and manufactures the most effective and reliable rf jammer in the world.

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The advantage of VoIP phone service is availability all over the world meaning you can access it from any place on the globe. The reason is because it sitting on the Internet and as you have access to the Internet, you can use your VoIP service. Since the Internet is attribute of any place today, your VoIP service is usable from everywhere on Earth.

Plenty of ways available to join a VoIP service provider but most common way is to join on the Internet. This path is easiest and is definitely the most widely available. Some VoIP service providers have offices in which you can acquire a phone number and the line, but usually your will need to sign up over the website.

There are various packages available from VoIP service providers which are vary depending on the usage of the service. While some plans are meant to be for personal use, the other plans are meant for business. Usually, what this means is that personal accounts have limited facilities, which is unnecessary for home use.

There are products like toll free number or office unlimited phone number. These are features, which a regular person will never need and the customer should not pay for it. From the business point of view, business owners will want that kind of service and they definitely will want to pay for that service. So, while signing up you will get to choose from packages that are designed for different situations.

There are also separate packages for calls to the US and Canada and calls to other countries around the world. Usually, if you need to make international calls, there are some plans that will cover you destinations for fixed monthly price. People with big volumes of international calls will go with such a plan, and the customers that calling US and Canada the most will select another rate plan. These packages incur a low monthly fee and you can make unlimited calls within that fee. There is also a pay as you go plan, with no month fee and some very small charge for the calls.

Any unlimited package is a good value and you get pretty good savings with them. For sums like $21 or $22, you can make any number of calls you want, within the selected area. Your regular phone bill will disappear and there are no hidden costs either. Once you have paid the monthly fee, you are free to call whenever you want for as long as you want. Usually, you can be on the phone for hours for the whole month and you still paying only the cost of the plan itself and no extra penny. That is the experience you will enjoy while you are with VoIP phone service.

The people around the world are going with VoIP phone service to cut their expenses and make more phone calls than have done ever before. The thought of having only a low monthly amount to pay is very reassuring, especially it today’s economy.

Author: Advanced VoIP service technology is widely available to join.

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As with anything new, Voice Over Internet Protocol has gotten a lot of attention. It has been touted as being the wave of the future. It can save money and simplify your business operations. But VoIP isn’t for every company. And does it deliver on its promises?

First, what is VoIP? Simply, it’s Voice over Internet Protocol - using the Internet as a voice phone line and more. Second, why is it becoming so popular, and could your company use it? This answer is much less simple, because there are in fact a great many things that could influence your decision. Ask a business why they use the service and they will cite its features packages, and low costs, and very possibly its reliability. Let’s take a look at just some of the reasons this service is used and a few pros and cons.

One reason it’s popular has to do with the ease of installation. So long as a business has an Internet connection and computers - and they almost always will - the set up and use of this advanced technology shouldn’t be at all difficult. Having regular phone service would mean a company would have to pay for phone lines and all the other lines connected to and within the business. With business VoIP, this is no longer a requirement. Most companies already have a broadband connection, and when using VoIP, they will use their broadband connection without paying the fees for another installed system. This is not always the case, though. When you put voice and data on the same network, it can be a complex situation.

Before you do anything, you have to make sure your infrastructure is up to the task of supporting IP based voice and data. If it isn’t, going with VoIP will be a nightmare. If you are seriously thinking about VoIP, your company should do a pre-deployment assessment. If you have older or inadequate infrastructure, you may have to upgrade your network, which might cancel out any savings you might receive.

Another factor to take into consideration is the fact that with switching to VoIP service, your telecom personnel will need to become IT proficient and/or your IT personnel will need to become more familiar with the intricacies of telecom.

Probably the biggest single reason that providers promote for any company to switch over from their typical phone service to VoIP is the lower overall costs. They pitch that while small businesses might have to pay more for their scale than large ones comparatively, business VoIP leaves its predecessors in the dust.

However, these huge cost savings were more common in the initial days of VoIP solutions. Then, the service wasn’t as reliable but the cost was much cheaper than traditional phone service. Today, the service offered by VoIP is nearly as good as basic phone service, but the price difference is not nearly as wide. If your company is looking at VoIP as a primary way to cut costs, you should take a hard look at all the costs involved to make sure it’s right for you.

One last item that providers publicize about their VoIP service is the customization that was not previously available to them. No matter how big or small a business might be, VoIP providers are almost always willing to work with them on an individual basis, finding them the plan that works best for their size and all of their employees.

VoIP providers are also big fans of the perks companies can get, the number of which has grown hugely in recent years. Providers offer all sorts of things that might cost extra with traditional phone lines, including multi-line services, call waiting, caller ID, call return, call block and more - and with VoIP you can have them all.

It all comes down to figuring out why your company wants VoIP. Switching can be an expensive proposition. Not only in buying or upgrading equipment, but also with re-educating employees and time spent making the system work correctly. It has great potential and will provide some advantages to nearly any company, but not everyone should make the switch.

To truly take advantage of VoIP and the multimedia applications that come with it, your workforce should be distributed with branch offices or satellite offices, telecommuters and personnel out in the field.

As you can see, there are reasons for a company to consider getting rid of landlines in favor of VoIP phones. There are also reasons not to. With an economy where companies are looking to cut corners, it’s not surprising that they are looking at switching to VoIP. VoIP can be a great thing, but it might not be a great thing for your company.

The reality is that if your organization is thinking about making the switch to VoIP, you should do your homework. You should know why you are switching and make sure to get a detailed costs/benefits analysis before making your decision.

Author: Nermine Shaker is a Partner at The Sygnal Group, a telecom consulting firm that offers telecom expense management, telecom auditing and VoIP management to businesses of all sizes. Find out how to lower your telecom expenses at http://www.SygnalGroup.com or visit our blog at http://www.TelecomExpertise.com

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What if your company couldn’t use its computers for a day? How about your phones? Any phone system outage, even if it’s a short one, could result in financial losses and inconvenience for your business. Can you afford this disruption? Most businesses can’t.

Planning for any type of interruption in your telephone or data service should be a critical issue for any business. Unfortunately, however, most businesses only realize its importance after the fact - after an outage has occurred. Many adverse effects of interruption of service could be minimized or even eliminated with some advanced planning.

Your business should be prepared for the following events: a power outage, network failure, phones system failure, a disaster affecting your workplace or a disaster affecting your region. During most previous disasters, the phones would still work. With the emergence of telecom systems that are powered by local electricity, without power, communications are shut down. Your customers can’t place orders and your business grinds to a halt. Restoring your telecom service then, is essential to restoring your business. Companies that have a telecom disaster plan are better prepared for any outage for whatever reason.

In the past, disaster planning was usually expensive and cost prohibitive to most companies. With today’s technology, there are cost-effective options for even the smallest telecom budget.

Your plan can be anything from a written plan on how to re-route your telecom services, to purchasing automatic routing arrangements with a carrier. The plan should define a procedure that will bring back your resources as fast as possible. It should also require redundancy in components and systems to provide continuous operation.

When you are designing your disaster recovery plan, you first need to understand all of your services, the value they provide your company and what the impact would be if that service was gone for a period of time. You also need to look at which parts of your services might be likely to fail and how that failing will compromise your business and its connectivity.

Redundancy plays a huge part in disaster planning. A common myth is that all you need to do is have a different circuit from a different vendor. This doesn’t guarantee redundancy. You have to ensure that you have two completely different circuits with absolutely no shared facilities and being fed by different central offices.

* Take the time to consider what the worst-case scenario would be and plan for it. If you have prepared for the worst case, lesser emergencies will be taken care of as well.

* Define everyone’s roles and responsibilities and make sure they know what they are responsible for.

* Back up your data. Important daily output should be backed up and documented. Ideally, one back-up copy can be kept on site and another off-site.

* Establish a plan for your communications and review these plans with all of your service providers.

* Select an alternate IT location in advance. This may mean a different building, city or state, depending on the severity of the disaster for which you are planning.

* Document your plan in writing and share it with your employees so they know the procedures you’re putting in place. Educate your employees to make sure everyone knows the procedures to follow during an emergency. Make sure all critical names and contact information are included in your document.

* Review your plan quarterly and make sure contact information is always up to date.

Specifically for telecom, here are some points to consider that will reduce the chance of telecom failure and give you a faster recovery from disasters.

* Do you have an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) in place? Is it adequate for your business and for a reasonable amount of time?

* Do you have a current data backup of your PBX system?

* Do you have back up lines if your T1 or PRI goes down?

* Do you have redundant hardware (hard drives and power supplies) if they fail?

* If your system fails, are your incoming calls automatically re-routed to another number?

* Do you have all your data, documentation, licensing codes and passwords backed up and in a safe place?

Disaster planning can end up being more valuable than any other IT project. Disaster recovery strategies are different for every company because every company has different priorities. It’s important to note that it’s never too late to start building and implementing your telecom disaster recovery plan. No one wants a disaster and no one wants to plan for it. However, a Disaster Recovery Plan will protect your business and prevent total loss during an emergency, whether big or small.

Author: Nermine Shaker has generated millions of dollars worth of savings for her clients. She is a Partner at The Sygnal Group, a Telecommunications Management Company that offers unbiased reporting, analysis and implementation of telecom strategies to businesses of all sizes. Visit our blog at TelecomExpertise

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Nearly everyone these days has a cellular phone, and if you don’t have one of those, then you likely have a landline. If you use either of these things to make international calls, then you’re likely spending a lot more money then you have to. One of the least known secrets about making phone calls is the use of phone cards for international calls.

There are many reputable companies out there that provide phone cards for international calls. In fact, there’s likely a store in your neighborhood that has phone cards for sale, if you do a little searching. If you’d rather just stay at home, there are many good phone card companies online, all of which have subtle differences in the cards that they offer. For the most part, though, they all follow one simple formula.

First, certain phone cards are specifically designated for certain countries. Make sure that the phone card that you select allows you to call out from the country you are in. Next, pick one phone card out of the many offered by the company. These are selected for the options and different rates that they offer. More than likely, there’s a phone card out there perfectly suited for you by country and destination.

Some of the options offered on the cards are that of having no connection fee, having pinless dialing, and access to local access numbers. These options either make the card more accessible or more economical. Usually, a no connection fee card costs more per minute than a card with a connection fee, but every time you use the card to call a number it will deduct a certain amount from your available minutes. Unless you are only going to use the card once, a no connection fee card usually makes a lot more sense.

Not needing a pin for your card is another option available on some cards. This option allows the user to associate their telephone number with the phone card, making it so that a person doesn’t have to keep a pin number handy in order to use the card. In order to use a pinless card, an additional step is required. When prompted by the system to dial the destination number, type in #15##. This will associate the telephone number used to make the call with the phone card, and the entire pin entry step will be removed after that.

Lastly, some cards offer local access numbers that are much cheaper to use than the standard 800- numbers on the cards. In some cases, it can cost 1-5 cents more per minute if a person uses the 800 number. If you’re going to buy a phone card, make sure that it has a local access number in your area code in order to make it the most economical.

Different phone cards are out there for almost every situation, whether you’re calling from Iowa or India. In almost every case, using a phone card to call internationally will save you money. So go ahead and call the Ukraine. Just use a phone card to do it.

Author: Alex Russell is interested in the VoIP technology and the advance of phone card and calling card industry. He likes to stay in touch with everything happening in the field, and also keep other informed, by writing articles and reviews of various prepaid phone card services.

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Telecom audit is an important process for any organization. Human error, failure to pay close attention to details, constraint of time in checking long telecom bills, and insufficient knowledge of new technology and regulations - these mistakes can take a toll on the revenue of a company. Avoiding all these potential problems is an integral part of the expense management of an organization. Many small losses can add up to a huge amount. In order to curb this waste, organizations can either use an automated telecom audit tool, a Telecom Management professional, or a combination of the two.

Telecom audit is a process that helps to detect and reveal even the smallest errors that waste money. Thus, it provides an opportunity not only to recover lost revenue, but also ensures that errors are not repeated.

Telecom audit ideally has three stages:

The first stage involves the collection of telecom invoices. These invoices show the costs over time and the customer records. Telecom audit companies at times use software in this stage that both acts as a database and helps in analyzing trends.

Depending on the size of your company, just collecting these invoices could be a very time-consuming job. Start with the local phone bills and work outward. The long distance bills may be on the same invoice or billed separately. Wireless services can be billed as a group or individual accounts. Check to see if each bill matches with a known phone. For Internet service bills, they may be on a separate bill or, if the local provider offers broadband with local service, they may be with the local phone invoice.

The next thing to collect is voice and data service contracts. These include local and long distance service, wireless phones, telecom equipment and any maintenance service agreements.

Make the time to request your Customer Service Records (CSRs) from your provider. Your providers may take a few weeks to get to your requests, but it’s worth the wait. These records contain your unique data that will ultimately be the foundation of your telecom audit. They are written in Universal Service Order Codes (USOC) and they are an itemized listing of all your lines, services, and features.

You should also gather any agreements for Directory Advertising or Yellow Pages. If your company is large, sometimes a publicity or advertising department handles these agreements. The documents are important because they will specify the rates that apply to all advertising, when it was ordered and by whom.

Other documents to get access to are tariffs. Tariffs are the provider’s official documents that break down all the rules, service offers, rates, etc. that they offer. You can find these rules on your provider’s website. Also gather any tax information that applies to your company. Charities, schools, churches, and some nonprofit organizations may be exempt from state and/or federal taxes.

The second stage of audit involves the comparison of inventory costs against pricing plans. And the first thing required is an inventory audit. In this section, you look at your organization’s inventory of telecom assets. Instead of looking for spot errors, this kind of telecom audit looks for trend information. This data aids the company in deciding whether it needs to expand its telecom resources or to re-deploy its existing resources.

Now a comparison of cost against pricing plans can be made. Here’s where a telecom audit firm can be very helpful. They keep a record of current pricing and tariff changes. With the help of these records and databases, the audit firms can provide a cost effective plan for their clients.

The third and crucial stage involves reports and recommendations. If you are doing this audit yourself, after looking at all the data, this is where you decide where you might be able to save money. A telecom audit firm will also give you their reports and recommendations at this time. Along with the presentation of their reports and analysis, they also give their suggestions for improvements and savings that have been identified in the process.

They may find errors in you bills and suggest disputing some charges. They may find credits you never received and apply for refunds for you. Today’s telecom bills contain many errors that you won’t find unless you do an audit.

Since billing errors play havoc on draining the organization’s capital, partnering with companies that provide solutions to check such errors is becoming increasingly popular. When using a telecom-auditing firm, there are two ways to approach it. One of them is the contingency method, where the telecom audit firms receive a percentage of the money they saved clients. The second can be a fixed fee approach. Generally, small and medium firms go for the contingency process, whereas large firms go for the second approach, as it is easier to manage.

No matter which approach a firm takes, one thing that needs to be kept in mind is that telecom audits should be conducted by both big and small businesses to keep a check on their expenses. The telecom audit process is complex and time-consuming, but fortunately, there are companies that provide such services, and instituting a regular telecom audit can ensure cost optimization for any firm, and almost surely improve its bottom line.

Author: With over 20 years of experience in planning, implementing, managing and consulting on telecommunications projects, Nermine Shaker has generated millions of dollars worth of savings for her clients. She is a Partner at The Sygnal Group, a Telecommunications Management Company that offers unbiased reporting, analysis and implementation of telecom strategies to businesses of all sizes. Visit our blog at http://www.TelecomExpertise.com

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VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol and is quickly becoming a fixture in the corporate world. Ask why and you’ll get a barrage of answers, ranging from the money companies save to various packages that can be added on for little additional costs. Those who tout VoIP promise many benefits over the traditional PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). The most mentioned ones are cost savings, new calling features, and reduced infrastructure of converged networks. Here is a closer look at just a few of the reasons behind the popularity of VoIP.

In the past, Internet telephone services have been seen as being of a lower quality or less reliable than the regular phone lines that came before them. However, this is no longer true, and an increasing number of businesses have started using business VoIP, which can get them connections just as good as their traditional ones, but at a lower cost.

The potential advantages to VoIP come in two categories - hard benefits and soft benefits. These hard advantages have a clearly defined cost savings like the amount of money saved every year by replacing a PBX with a VoIP server. Soft benefits, however, may or may not save the company actual money. An example would be the increased productivity of employees able to access their phones while traveling.

The first reason for VoIP’s popularity is that business VoIP is easy to use for any company that has computers and an Internet connection - in other words, basically every company around. When companies add a service provider, they almost never have any trouble making the transition or setting up and using their new service. Transitioning takes a little planning and usually it’s made easier when a Telecom Management professional is involved. A company is now usually able to keep their old phone number when they switch.

Reason number two for many is the perks that are offered by service providers to the companies that use them. These include multi-line services, call waiting, caller ID, call return, call block and more. The expansion of VoIP providers in recent years means that there is little you can get from a regular phone line that you can’t get at better rates with the new technology.

Again, the overall costs for business VoIP are also a big plus to its users. Small businesses have to pay a bit more, but for the most part, rates are still much lower than those offered by normal phone service companies. Add-ons are cheap as well. Many companies only have to pay about one cent a minute for international calls and some simply have unlimited calls.

Business VoIP allows companies to better use tools they already have. Instead of having to pay for an entirely separate system of phone lines, companies can just use the broadband Internet connection they probably already have. VoIP maximizes the potential of this present outlet without requiring the installation and fees of an additional one.

Yet another thing that companies love about VoIP service is the ability to have their plan custom fit to their individual needs. Nearly all VoIP providers will work with businesses of any scale, letting them have features adapted to a very large or small number of users. This way, each consumer gets the best deal for all of its employees.

VoIP phones are equipped with features like call forwarding, voice mail boxes, and call records which will make company communications more efficient. Portability is another great feature with VoIP service. Employees who travel frequently can make calls through the Internet and have their same extension number and user applications still available to them. This enhanced mobility lets companies allow employees to have more flexible work options. This could improve productivity and reduce facility and real estate costs for some companies.

The addition of voice mail, email and fax integration, the application of Unified Messaging - the ability to retrieve your messages anytime, anywhere and in any way - is another alluring productivity enticement. Also, the ever-annoying game of phone tag could be eliminated with advanced call routing. Call routing can also be integrated with CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management) to check customer information and route calls to the appropriate number. There are always new features and applications to use and these new features can be added to VoIP phones more quickly and easily than traditional systems.

When they really start to look at business VoIP, companies will find that they don’t really lose anything in exchange for lower prices - in fact, they gain a lot. Fast and trustworthy, VoIP phones aren’t really that different than landlines - they just don’t have all the bills. For those struggling with hard economic times, that’s great for a better bottom-line.

Author: Nermine Shaker is a Partner at THE SYGNAL GROUP, a Telecom Management Company that offers unbiased reporting, analysis and implementation of telecom strategies to businesses of all sizes. http://www.SygnalGroup.com

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One of the most effective methods to increase the uninterrupted period of a telephone work is to replace the source of energy. It is possible to buy higher capacity cell phone batteries that provide more talk time and stand by time between calls. High capacity batteries do weigh a little more, so they might not be the best choice for those wanting a featherweight cell phone. If there is no such battery for a certain model of the phone one can purchase another standard battery in case the basic has discharged.

So, Replace your original battery or keep an extra battery on hand as a backup for you.

Type and capacity characteristics must be taken into consideration when selecting a battery. Nowadays different types of batteries are available in the market.

Nickel Cadmium (NiCd) is the least expensive of rechargeable batteries, but suffers from inherent shortcomings like memory effect. Here, if the battery is not fully drained before recharging, the unused portion crystallizes hence the complete capacity of the battery is not fully used.

The Ni-Cd battery, which originated in the generation of black and white display mobile phones, is loosing its position in the market. The NI-MH battery also has little demand nowadays.

The colour display generation leads to wide application of Li-ion battery (Li-ion). The prime advantage of these batteries over NiMH is that they hold more energy for same weight and volume. Therefore, Li-ion batteries are much smaller and thinner in comparison. Also, they don’t have any inherent memory effect. The only disadvantage is that they cost more than others.

Li-Po battery is the most new type available for your mobile phone. Li-Po batteries have evolved technologically from Li-ion batteries. A significant advantage of these batteries is that manufacturers can shape the battery almost however they please, which is very important to mobile phone manufacturers constantly working on smaller, thinner, and lighter phones. Many latest phones use these types of batteries. Their limitation is lower energy density and decreased cycle count compared to Li-ion. They are also expensive to manufacture - once mass-produced, the Li-ion polymer has the potential for lower cost.

Capacity of a battery is another index of a telephone quality. 600-800 mAch is an average index for ordinary phones. More modern models like smart phones and pocket pc are applied with batteries capacity reaching 1500 mAch.

Mobile phones manufactured by different companies support differently designed and developed batteries. But frankly speaking not many manufacturers at present time supply batteries with high capacity. Motorola company offers a few variants of High Capacity ion-lithium Battery for the popular series of V300/v500/v600/v620/v80/ E398, capacity ranging- from 750 to 1100 mA*ch.

You can significantly increase your talk time with Nextel i760 cell phone batteries. With Nextel i760 cell phone extended battery you can chat with friends and family longer than with a standard cell phone battery. Motorola also boasts Maximum Capacity Battery for Nextel i870 i875. It’s up to 420 Minutes Of Talk Time Or up to 150 hours of standby time in digital mode.

Also Siemens famous lately for the small terms of continuous work of its telephones, at the beginning of 2006 made users happy, producing the model of Me75, with a battery on 1000 mA*ch.

BlackBerry Company comes with a great battery. The BlackBerry 1000mAh Battery (C-S2) used in many BlackBerry devices is reliable. On the 8700c it usually keeps going for 4 to 5 days. For those of you who speak hours and hours on the phone everyday, you will definitely want to consider the Extended Batteries. Instead of the regular 1000mAh, you can get up to 1800mAh providing anywhere from 60% to 80% more talk time.

If the term of non-stop work for you is critical, you should pay attention to Nokia 6310i and 1100 (a week without charge) or the Philips Xenium that boasts best-in-class battery performance. It’s almost 2 weeks without charge!

So its possible to choose long lasting battery although you must be aware that it will cost and weigh more than average.

The question of continuous mobile phone work stands as never sharply today. By 2006, the colour display phone dominated the market. Along with the frequent appearance of camera phones and multimedia phones, functions of photo shooting, receiving and sending multimedia messages, and downloading high-capacity games are used more and more often. However, facing the more powerful 3G mobile phones, battery capacity is obviously insufficient. Mobile phone batteries tend to be lighter, thinner and higher capacity. Various new battery types such as fuel cell, Zinc-air and solar cell are in the R and D process.

AugustaM Sourcing LLC is a leading manufacturer and distributor of premium quality battery technology products. While worldwide customers require a partner who can reliably meet their demands for high-quality batteries at very competitive prices AugustaM Sourcing LLC provides high-quality, high-performance battery products at the lowest possible cost that could be delivered at the required time. You can take advantage of services from this internet shop if you want to buy new battery - AugustaMBattery is a useful address for you.

The company produces Wireless Phone Batteries including Motorola-iDen Batteries, Nextel-iDen Batteries, RIM-Blackberry Batteries and Spectralink and Nortel Batteries.

Its product range includes aftermarket replacement battery packs and charging solutions for portable devices such as Two Way Radios, Speciality Phones, Barcode Scanners, Barcode Printers, and Laptop Computers. All batteries are precision-engineered and rigorously tested for voltage, capacity, compatibility and safety to meet or exceed OEM specifications.

Author: Margo Konnor takes care about advertising at AugustaMbattery.com, AugustaMbattery.com specializes in global broad line electronic component sourcing with offices in both the Americas and Asia, selling wireless phone batteries, laptop computer batteries, lg cell phone batteries, motorola cell phone batteries, samsung cell phone batteries etc

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