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martin — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 19:38:16 +0000

Ofcom bans rollover voice and broadband contracts

martin — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 21:10:13 +0000

Ofcom today confirmed that rollover contracts, which tie landline and broadband customers into repeated minimum contract periods unless they opt out, will be banned from December this year.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/arcs/statement/Guidance9_3.pdf

The contracts, also known as Automatically Renewable Contracts (ARCs), roll forward to a new minimum contract period – with penalties for leaving – unless the customer actively opts out of the renewal. The ban will apply to ARCs for landline and broadband services sold to residential and small business customers.

BT is the largest communications provider currently offering these contracts and Ofcom estimates that approximately 15 per cent of UK residential consumers are on rollover contracts. Other residential providers include Adept Telecom, Axis Telecom, Eze Talk and iTalk, while TalkTalk Business, Titan Telecoms, and Optimum Calls offer ARCs to business users.

Ofcom Chief Executive, Ed Richards, said: “Ofcom’s evidence shows that ARCs raise barriers to effective competition by locking customers into long term deals with little additional benefit. Our concern about the effect of ARCs and other ‘lock in’ mechanisms led to our decision to ban them in the communications sector.”

Removing rollover contracts from the market

Ofcom has set out a timetable for the removal of rollover contracts from the telecoms market which takes account of systems changes that will need to be made by communications providers.

The sale of new automatically renewable contracts to residential and small business customers will be prohibited from 31 December 2011.

Ofcom will also require communications providers to move all residential and small business customers currently on rollover contracts to alternative deals, and to completely remove rollover contracts from the market by 31 December 2012.

Ofcom has published its statement on ARCs on its website:

For the record, Express Telephony wherever possible offers 1 month contract periods with one months notice to terminate the contract and no penalties to pay. The exception to this sadly is Superfast Broadband from BT, the fibre optic service and EFM leased line services with minium 12 month contracts. We are activly seeking to negotiate out these contract terms with our providers also but realise hardware costs from vendors takes a lot longer to recover than a month or two.

BT CEO Sets out Broadband Vision to Prime Minister and Cabinet

martin — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:17:03 +0000

BT chief executive Ian Livingston has outlined the company’s vision for Broadband Britain to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and the cabinet.

The Prime Minister and the cabinet were visiting BT’s research headquarters at Adastral Park near Ipswich in Suffolk, which has long been the centre of BT’s R&D activities and the home for a cluster of supporting high tech companies.

Livingston explained how the UK is set to strengthen its position as one of Europe’s leading broadband nations thanks to BT’s investment and the funds that the Government is making available via Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).

The BT chief executive told the cabinet how the UK’s communications infrastructure could be transformed. Within the next five or six years, fibre based services could be available to more than 90% of UK premises with the majority able to access broadband speeds of up to 100Mbps or above.

Livingston also reassured the cabinet that this fibre investment would benefit areas that do not currently enjoy fast speeds.

This is because the number of homes unable to achieve more than 2Mbps is set to plummet from 12 per cent of homes to less than two per cent. He also updated the cabinet on how BT is trialling new technologies such as TV White Space and LTE to improve this still further.

Livingston said “I’m delighted to be able to welcome the Prime Minister and the cabinet to Adastral Park. This is the home of the research and development that supports progress in many areas of technology – from broadband in the UK to global communications networks in the 170 countries in which BT operates.

“Superfast broadband can be a catalyst for economic growth. We have recently recruited a further 800 engineers to help deploy it but it is what it can do for business that is so impressive. The Government has been a great supporter in recognising that this type of infrastructure investment can drive the UK’s long term growth.”

source http://www.comms-dealer.com/industry-news/bt-ceo-sets-out-broadband-vision-pm-and-cabinet

6th National Digital Conference 2011

martin — Sat, 14 May 2011 15:47:49 +0000

Karen & I attended Day One, of the 6^th National Digital Conference in London http://www.nd11.co.uk/. The day was in support of Race Online 2012, an organisation of which Express Telephony is proud to be a partner. The event brought together many digital champions and partners from around the UK to say thank you for their efforts getting colleagues, friends and family online.

We all take our inspiration from Martha Lane-Fox, who has been tasked by the government to lead this campaign. The Prime Minister – David Cameron has hailed the initiative as “the UK’s biggest-ever cross-sector volunteer force”. He said that “by supporting this vital campaign we really can become the first nation in the world to get everyone online and ensure that something the vast majority of us take for granted can be enjoyed by all of us”.

When I leave my BNI Meeting this morning, I will be travelling back to Old Billingsgate for Day Two of the conference. Today’s event is addressing the issues of how to build a fully networked nation in terms of our society, economy and the latest technology, through partnership with Government, Industry, charities and individuals. I will be meeting a world class line up of digital leaders, commentators and policymakers. Together we will debate the UK Digital Agenda.

There is also a new initiative launched by Martha Lane-Fox and praised by David Cameron to include a range of refurbished computers available for less than £100 each, with broadband access and telephone support. you can find more information out about this offer which is sponsored by Microsoft at the following web address http://www.getonlineathome.org/

I would like to ask my customers, suppliers and anyone else reading this blog, to give some thought into helping Race Online 2012.

Express Telephony has made a pledge:-

“Express Telephony will help in it’s local community, training it’s employees and customers and getting invoilved in events such as Silver Surfers Day”

If you would like help with getting colleagues, friends or family online, then call us on 0800 0522323 or email raceonline2010@expresstelephony.co.uk

Faster Broadband Arrives!!

martin — Sat, 14 May 2011 14:39:05 +0000

ADSL2+ Annex M Product Launch - We now have access to an LLU ADSL2+ Annex M service. Giving up to 2.5Mb upstream bandwidth and 16Mb downstream bandwidth, this is a true next generation business-class ADSL service.Along with this service we have successfully added the ADSL2 + range of enhanced broadband services to our platform and are now able to offer these improved services where local exchanges support it. We will provide these services by default if your local exchange has access to them.

With business coverage for 55% of the UK over 1000 exchanges, this really is the next leap in ADSL technology. Our partner Griffin Internet will be launching further engineered versions of this product shortly, which will give much higher guaranteed through puts and performance SLAs. Griffin has been trialling this service for many months now, with a view to getting the best speeds, and as Annex M is exceedingly sensitive to different router firmware and needs a fast processor in the CPE, they have spent much of there time trialling different manufacturers’ products to connect it with.

The best router we have found for upload speed so far is the Draytek 2820 range and the Zyxel P660H – D1, We will therefore be using these router when supply of an Annex M product is called for. Costing from £165.00 +VAT these are recommended by us for the Annex M product.

What is WLR3 I hear you ask?

martin — Sun, 08 May 2011 22:09:55 +0000

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.

Mobile Phone Termination Call Charges to Reduce

martin — Sun, 08 May 2011 15:46:16 +0000

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.

The main mobile operators – O2, Everything Everywhere and Vodafone charge 4.18p a minute to connect other phone companies calls and this is the charge that will be reduced to 2.66p next month and will drop to 0.69p by April 2014.

Ofcom expects the savings to be passed onto customers and should offer more choice in the marketplace as a result.

The Exception to this has been 3 UK who has enjoyed a higher charge of up to 4.48p a minute which is more than it’s rivals were allowed to charge. 3 UK will also now be forced into reducing it’s charges in line with everyone else in future starting from April 2011. Termination rates have already declined by 35% since 2007 when Ofcom last imposed caps on the rates.

Whilst this will obviously impact mobile phone companies revenues, it is clear that the trend towards smart phone technology will replace these loses given that Data services such as mobile broadband and Internet access already accounts for a large proportion of mobile phone operator revenues and is set to grow by 90% over the next few years.

The termination rate caps apply only to voice calls, which are likely to account for a less significant proportion of mobile phone companies’ revenues over the next four years anyway, added Ofcom.

its is thought that this reduction in charge will also manifest itself in higher handset costs and longer contract terms and the loss of “so called free handsets” as the subsidies currently offered to customers will be much more difficult to find and pass on in this way.

Overall, this change in the regulation will be warmly welcomed by consumers as they will see a reduced monthly bill for calls even if handset costs rise as consumers pay for the “free mobile” one way or the other with the way the market place is currently structured.

Rather a change from the increase in the cost of living we have all been experiencing of late!

Netlinked – LinkedLocal Exhibiton

martin — Sun, 08 May 2011 14:51:09 +0000

LinkLocal Networking Exhibition

Express Telephony will be an Exhibitor at the linkLocal Show at the Stevenage Holiday Inn on May 17th and it should be a great exhibiton of local businesses in the SG Postal area.

FREE LOCAL BUSINESS EVENT• Guest speakers • 30+ exhibiting local businesses • Local FREE networking opportunity • FREE Business Advice Clinics

Turn up free to meet with others that want to do business in the SG Postal area

Book in at Business Growth Show

Hope to see you there!

Hosted Telephony?

admin — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:34:21 +0000

BT’s modernisation program of all Exchanges and all local street cabinets to Fibre Optic cabling and Next Generation Networking (NGN) promises to bring a vast array of products and services to an already complicated communications market but, admittedly some companies ‘the early adopters’ as we call them, have taken the bull by the horns, invested heavily in VOIP technology and are probably reaping the benefits of Broadband based IP telephony integrated hosted voice networking products and applications. (Yeh heavy I know!) They may well have found out the hard way that whilst this technology will help you reach some of your IT goals this is only if you can integrate the product with some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) Software to enable a professional, streamlined customer experience to improve not just phone calls but also the handling of the clients call - from initial contact to the completion of their project. In my experience, most of the small to medium sized companies I deal with have neither the time nor the money nor the desire to look after a complicated communications network, but in most of these companies at some point, someone will have to do just that along with their own job; the one they where actually employed to do! In most companies it is clear that, as the technology becomes more and more complex to use it will take up more and more time to ensure the technology is used correctly and is working properly. Rarely does it stop there as, before you know it, your new system is out of date and all the aspirations you had to wrap it around a nice ‘business critical application database’ to help improve and streamline the way customers calls are handled, are left high and dry because the product is now obsolete!

So here is where the traditional IP Telephony solution that you purchase from a Telephone system Vendor and have them install it, commission it and maintain it for three or four years losses it’s appeal over the newcomer.

The VOIP hosted Telephony system removes the need for costly hardware to be installed and maintained in your building and instead allows all users to be issued a phone, plug it into a LAN socket and start using it. Added to this a key benefit is this provides instant disaster recovery as you can move the solution to any building with a serviceable broadband connection. Other key benefits are the same as the traditional PABX such as Auto Attendant, Voicemail, call Divert, speed dials Hunt groups for sales departments and Call centre applications in short if you can do it on a traditional system it can probably be done on a Hosted Telephony system.

Coupled with this ease of integration with products like Outlook and other CRM applications is becoming simpler and less costly to add to your new Telephony platform than with current IP enabled PABX systems that need costly middleware to enable the product to work with your database or CRM software.

Sure it is not yet possible to enable integration of your Hosted Telephony offering with all CRM databases but this will come as will a host of other key benefits like call recording, call management software and other applications to aid the small business user ensuring he gets the best out of his investment.

Speed of installation is another factor along with significant reductions in upfront startup costs, and ongoing operational costs. Further to this the platform you so carefully picked is not kept up to date by you anymore but by your Telephony Vendor so no more software updates or hardware replacement costs to budget for; well maybe the odd phone now and then will need replacing but not the whole system. Simply setup a gateway, plug in your phones and you’re away with a little help that is!

In short if it falls to you to look after the implementation of the PABX system and it’s upkeep and general support of the users who need to use it…….A Hosted Solution will make you redundant leaving you to go back to your day job!!!

My advice is take a closer look at this technology as it will be implemented by your competition soon!

21CN What does it mean?

admin — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:33:49 +0000

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.