Express Telephony

The UK’s communications regulator OFCOM regulated in 2005 that BT must provide “Equivalence” to all other companies that wanted to offer BT Fixed Line Services to customers when it provided these services in a wholesale format. At that time it was felt that BT retail had an unfair advantage over the Independent sector offering BT services as BT Retail had access to the wholesale network as well,  including orders being placed on behalf of customer who did not want to deal with BT Retail and there were obvious consequences to this!  BT in response to this formed Openreach a new wholesale division to provide a ‘level playing field’ to independent Telecoms Providers like Express Telephony enabling them to trade BT’s business services to customers competitivly as BT Retail had no access to Openreach databases ensuring “Equivalence” would be met. 

To connect to Openreach to place and manage orders, a standard called Wholesale Line Rental 3 (WLR3) was devised to enable this to happen. 

When we order services from Openreach that you have requested us to supply and bill to you under Express Telephony we use a WLR3 online portal to do so. this portal allows us to access BT’s systems  and this gave us direct access to the engineers’ calendars’ bypassing the need to speak to anyone about the order and giving us control of the process more or less. The time to install on average is now 4 hours quicker than it used to be when the old WLR2 ordering system was in use and orders can be placed 24 hours a day, seven days a week as well as management of customers lines, faults and other services that may need to be dealt with on a day to day basis.

Openreach reports that far fewer orders are rejected using the newer system and the speed faults are repaired in has improved and the number of repeat faults has been reduced by up to 50% as a result of automation of the fault management process.

Not all Independent Operators are using WLR3 Portals yet and have continued to use the earlier WLR2 version which is due to be withdrawn from service in June of this year. This will not affect any of your existing services until you come to move or change them in any way at which point this could make it difficult for your existing supplier to place orders if they are not using a WLR3 Portal to manage your services.

Openreach’s WLR3 portal is revolutionising the way we place and manage your orders for BT Wholesale Fixed Line Services, Broadband, and other services and is evolving all the time.

The cost of calling a mobile phone from a land line will fall significantly by 2014 with all Mobile phone operators in the UK being forced to reduce their termination call rates by as much as 80% starting from 1 April 2011.

Small and medium sized businesses are becoming more switched on to the benefits new technologies can bring to their bottom line. With the old BT network beginning to creak a little BT have embraced a whole new network infrastructure based on the ever increasing concept of IP. This new technology will enable companies no matter what size they are to use the latest technology in the market place bringing affordable technology products and content services to enable faster, easier communication with the office, co-workers, mobile devices, video, voice and data services from any provider who cares to use the new network.

It is already possible to use various products like PDA’ laptops and mobile phones to send email, text, voice and video while on the move but people want these services to be easier to use, more joined up and more intuitive since providing excellent customer service is key to retaining and growing their customer base.

To meet these expectations, 21CN promises a more simple, seamless, integrated communications experience for everyone. In short Unified Communications will allow SMBs to project a global business presence and will give them real choice about which devices they use and how to customise personalise and change their services in real time.21CN is about using the power of the digital networked economy – the Unified Communication of the telecoms, IT, media and entertainment industries – to create better ways and wider opportunities for SMBs to access their markets and to access content.

 All electronic equipment today has the potential to be a network device – from a personal organiser to a vending machine. The industry is already developing services based on the convergence of voice, mobility, video, data and content. Although we can’t predict the products and services of the future, we believe the following are examples of what may well become commonplace for SMBs in the 21CN world:

Wireless hubs to enable businesses to manage PCs, laptops, web-cams and security systems Combating identity fraud by using biometrics to make it easier for people to safely and securely sign up for services ensuring customers feel secure in their dealings with your business Using Voice over IP technology in innovative ways:

People sharing data on their computers could speak to each other over the web at the same time, saving time and improving customer satisfaction Creating shared directories:

Your personal phone number list can be shared with your computer, your mobile, your personal organiser or other devices to improve business efficiency Combine web-based online directories with voice calls:

A single click of the mouse will connect your call improving response handling times and customer satisfaction A phone which enables you to use the fixed line network in the office or at home transferring seamlessly to a mobile network without changing handset while on the move improving the efficiency and flexibility of the workforce while reducing costs Flexible bandwidth will enable SMBs to boost the power of broadband temporarily at the click of a button making the sharing of documents, information and services easier and faster, improving customer satisfaction. Some of these products and services are available now but more will doubtless become commonplace over the coming year or two.

Well you may not need one but you should be aware that when you play any music in a public place to employee’s or customers so that includes Internet radio players on your PC or a radio in your office or workshop or a radio plugged into your Phone system for callers left on hold or a CD Player or MP3 device plugged into any of the aforementioned devices this is in fact breaking copyright law and depriving Writers and performers of the royalties they are justifiably entitled to expect you to pay. Sounds harsh I know but it is law and you can be fined by the PRS (Performing Rights Society) which represents some 60,000 UK songwriters and composers throughout the UK.

Currently the PRS is writing to tens of thousands of small businesses to make them aware of the legal action that can result if you are found to be breaking this law. If you don’t contact them and secure the use of the music you are broadcasting you could face legal action for copyright infringement and may become liable to pay damages and costs.

A PRS license starts from just £66.00 per annum depending on the size of the business and the way it is being played and it’s not all bad news! The PRS is also making us all aware at the same time of how music played to employees during working hours improves efficiency and lowers stress levels etc or in other words trying to add value to the cost of paying the license! For advice and information about where you stand legally and how much a license will cost your business contact the Performing Rights Society as follows: 

Performing Rights Society or 0800 068 4828

Oh, and if your one of my many customers; just call me if your not sure what to do?

Some of you will be using a license paid music on hold disc that is exempt from this law but that does not include those allowing their staff to play any music at all in the office on any device!

When it comes to the Internet, how well your broadband works sometimes is down to just how far away from the exchange you are, how old and well maintained the cable and connections are, the type of router your using, whether the right ADSL filter is working correctly and believe it or not, the state of the weather outside!

Now some people will tell you i know a thing or two about about all these things and that my company aims to target these problem area’s when we take over or install a new service for you, we make sure all these little things are hooked up as best they can be… with the exception of the weather!

Even we can’t do much about that!

So how’s your week been then? 

Have you managed to get the car off the drive or did you have to use what little public transport was working to get into work or were you stuck indoors unable to work because of one or more of these things? Well if you were and could not work because of it and are now in need of a hair transplant as a result of the hair loss you have experienced pulling your hair out when looking at the weather reports, or watching daytime TV which is just as harrowing then read on!! 

You probably needed to have a conversation with me about how you can use technology to help you work from anywhere in the world using a Laptop and a headset to make and receive calls on and a link to your server to enable you to get access to that all important set of spreadsheets you’ve been working on, or the report or emails etc that needed responding too. In short these days you can just about connect to anything from anywhere and do any work online you need to at anytime!

I remember incidentally in the 70′s and 80′s (yes I am that old – get over it!) being told by “Tomorrow’s World” (the TV program) that computers would give us more leisure time. Well I think they may just have got that wrong! In my view we now manage to work for longer hours and as a result of technology now spend more time online than is good for us and can speak or email or Twitter or use other Social networking to keep in instant contact with the whole planet it seems.

Nowadays if i turnover in my sleep I suspect it will appear on Twitter a few minutes later!  The downside of this of course is it means customers expect you to answer the email they sent you at 2am by 2:01am! so as a direct result of Technologies unstoppable progress forwards we now do more work in less time all the time we are awake and we stay awake longer to ensure we can do more work! I don’t know about you but working to live is what I should be doing but I can’t help feeling I spend more of my time these days living to work! 

So use Technology wisely, make sure you get off the net now and then and spend time with your family’s and most of all hope that now and again I fail to keep your broadband working so you can get some respite