The Cost - Cheaper Business Calls

The Cost:


Cheaper Business Calls

Call providers are falling over themselves to get your phone call business. The promise is that you’ll save money, but will you really?

It’s been nearly 3 decades since the telecoms wars began in the UK, sparked by market privatization and a little-known Mercury Telecommunications taking on the newly-formed BT Goliath. Things have moved on since then and BT still stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of size but with so much going on, it’s worth looking around before signing up for the easy option.

Back in the 1980s poor old Mercury didn’t really stand a chance. To use Mercury’s cheaper phone call service you needed special equipment and a lot of patience – the kit wasn’t that reliable and the phone calls took ages to connect. Mercury “Smartboxes” caused more problems than solutions and many telecoms vendors cashed in by selling them on long leases, quickly gaining a poor reputation still residual in the market today.

During the 1990s digital technology combined with better equipment to make call savings easier and reliable, carriers and resellers sprung up by the dozen as Oftel allowed the telecoms market to blossom, and old wounds from years gone by were beginning to heal. Once more businesses were taking the plunge with alternative providers for phone calls; they were saving money, and it was working too.

Come the new millennium and UK businesses could get cheaper phone calls, buy and rent phone lines and get just about any telecoms product or service from one place without having to put up with a multitude of phone bills. Also, the need for additional equipment disappeared as all the technology happened in the telephone exchanges. Hundreds of telecoms companies sprung up, locking horns with existing suppliers who were adding these new services to their equipment-based businesses.

Now you can pretty much get whatever you want, from wherever you want it, easily and cheaply. But what do you actually want? And there lies the problem. The UK telecoms market is so diverse and so technologically advanced, most decision makers find it too confusing and time-consuming to look into. Too many telecoms sales people take advantage of this, spouting loads of gobbledygook before swooping on their bedazzled victims with the hard close.

With so many call providers crammed into a super-competitive market, “creative” marketing is on the rise, often with empty promises and nasty contracts that leave a sour taste in the mouth. Remember the 1980s? Many still do.

So here’s a few simple tips to avoid becoming fodder for the telecoms vultures:

The contract must have a defined duration and a clear notice period. Many businesses are now getting caught out thinking that their contract is at an end, only to find out they have to give a further 12 months’ notice.

Watch out for minimum call charges. Vendors promising super-low call rates compensate by charging you a fee to connect the call, and/or a minimum call charge regardless of duration.

Make sure you get a 3-digit billing service. A call rate of 1p per minute is great, however a 30 second call will still cost you 1p (£0.01) with a 2-digit phone bill. The actual cost for this should be £0.005 – which you would get with 3-digit billing.

Bearing in mind the above, make sure you have per second billing, thankfully most call providers do this but check anyway.

Insist on Tier-1 carriers only. Tier-1 calls go via reliable high-quality, well-supported networks. Many smaller “bucket shop” vendors use cheaper networks which squeeze calls down congested routes, making calls sound like you’re talking in a bucket.

Although not essential, it’s useful if your vendor also supplies other services such as phone systems and mobiles. “One-stop-shop” telecoms companies tend to be larger and less vulnerable in what is at present a difficult market to survive in. For example if you’re thinking of spending out on a new phone system, try out a prospective supplier by having a short-term phone call contract with them.

Southern Communications were established in 1965 and offer a complete top-to-bottom business telecoms service for cheaper business calls & lines, phone systems, business mobiles, VoIP solutions and business broadband. We use Tier-1 carriers for phone calls with flexible contract options, no minimum call charges and per-second 3-digit billing for all calls.

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VoIP and The Internet - Not the same!

VoIP & Internet Telephony – Not the Same Thing?


Since 1999 people have raved about VoIP as the next telecoms technology, and that means getting free phone calls using the internet, doesn’t it? Actually, VoIP and Internet Telephony are not exactly the same thing.

If you have a business with a private telephone system (known as a PBX), VoIP technology removes the need for separate phone and computer cabling. The voice calls and data traffic share the office computer network, which has a single architecture. VoIP therefore saves money on cabling and installation, and allows additional features such as hot-desking, plus is paves the way for video conferencing, wi-fi mobility and multi-media telephones, expensive now but no doubt will be affordable and the norm in the future.

This “Localized” VoIP has the advantage that businesses don’t need separate voice and data cabling systems – the entire data and telecommunications systems can operate with one cabling infrastructure, and the telecoms can be managed and configured within IT policy, no longer being that black art.

Importantly, the office computer network is a hermetically sealed and secure zone, controlled and nurtured by those IT manager wizard guys who put in place network protocols to allow voice calls and data transfer to co-exist in harmony.

And then there’s this internet thing, now a spotty teenager with a jumbled “free-for-all” attitude without management or control. And like most teenagers, the internet still has a few years before it calms down and sorts itself out, from the telephony point of view anyway.

With internet telephony, those quality-controlled voice calls must leave the relative safety of their local network and travel across the choppy sea of data known as the world-wide-web, hopefully arriving at another IP phone or system that will convert the data back to voice. And it can be a stormy trip. Many an important call has been sunk whilst crossing the internet.

Our young internet hasn’t yet learnt to prioritise voice over data, and whereas emails and files will happily dismantle themselves at leisure, with the bits finding their own way to a rendez-voux point at the other end, voice calls can’t be interrupted or influenced by other traffic. This is why so many internet calls take two or more attempts to complete, or sound like they’re underwater, especially when the kids get home from school and start using facebook and youtube.

The same applies for video communications, in fact any live media transmission doesn’t stand much of a chance with the internet at the moment.

What about all these free calls? Yes, if the person you’re calling is also connected to the internet with a VoIP phone or phone system. But that isn’t the case for a lot of the time. Most people across the world are still hooked on mobiles, and many of the older generation use a normal landline (a what?) so your clever high-tech phone calls that have braved the internet find themselves back on the traditional telecoms network, often with extortionate call rates. So make your internet calls short, as they could be expensive before being cut off.

And here’s another thought: businesses who decide to use the internet for their internal office-to-office calls need a high-end broadband connection at each end dedicated for the voice traffic, and these come with rental costs, and that’s not exactly free either.

So what have we learned? VoIP is certainly the future for telecoms. So is the internet. But unlike telecoms, an old soldier that’s been around the block more than a few times, the web still has some growing up to do.