Business Mobile World

Businesses looking at their landline phone bills will know that a large proportion of their monthly spend is likely to be outbound calls to mobile phones. As more consumers rely upon mobile phones and don't even have a landline the cost of calling mobiles is going to rise further still.

Obtaining free calls to mobiles would considerably reduce the average bill of most business users and there are options available. A GSM Gateway, also known as a Premicell, is a hardware device which contains one or more SIM cards and allows a landline based call to be routed through a mobile phone in the most cost effective way.

It allows your telephone system to differentiate between numbers beginning with 07 (mobile calls) and others, routing calls to mobiles via the sim card and other calls over your landline. The sim card can belong to your standard business mobile contract, meaning that calls to your own company mobiles should be free and to other mobiles come from within your inclusive minutes.

Whilst this solution would save companies money, it will not be the solution for everyone. For many SMEs the answer is to obtain the best landline call rates for mobile phones. Check your latest bill and see how much per minute you are paying to ring a mobile number. Expensive?

We offer a free service to all businesses. You show us your bills and we will show you where savings can be made. In many cases savings of 40% can be achieved and this is not to be ignored even with a low call spend.

Obtaining the best business landline contract, reducing your line charges and call charges, will save your business money each and every month. These savings really add up. At the same time we can advise you about telephone systems, call management and other measures which could improve your customer service and deliver increased profits.

Even if you are in contract currently give us a chance to show you what your savings could be and we can then contact you nearer the contract expiry date and give you a firm quote based on the latest call details.

Savings are not limited to mobile phone calls, we can also save you money on local, national and international phone calls. We have our own bespoke tariffs and billing engine to ensure you get the best business landline deal.

The cost of business mobile contracts could be set to come down soon as a number of networks launch new business tariffs.

Vodafone have launched Business Choice which is aimed at SMEs with 2 to 50 mobile phone handsets. This is a flexible tariff with a number of paid add-ons allowing companies to mix and match their requirements and build a tariff that reflects their usage.

Businesses can choose the number of minutes to be shared, data allowances and technical support, and the basic plan includes free calls to UK landlines, free UK calls to company mobiles on the same plan, 150 standard UK text messages and free voicemail retrieval as standard.

As an incentive a £5 monthly discount for all businesses signing up to certain options before August 15th is available. Contact us for more information.

At the same time the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile, Everything Everywhere, have announced their intention to launch an assault on the UK business market. The combined power of these two networks should produce better tariffs for business mobiles than are currently available.

With a merged network, coverage, which is essential for business users, should no longer be an issue meaning that both networks will be able to increase their business customer base.

Full details of any new business tariffs from Orange and T-Mobile will be printed here as they become available. In the meantime to take advantage of the enhanced coverage and low cost business tariffs currently available from these networks get in touch with us.

One of the newer services we offer is search engine optimisation (SEO). Internet usage in the UK is still growing with more people being able to access the internet and those who already have it increasing their access speed and time spent online.

This means that if you want to maximimse the reach of your business an online presence is essential. Getting a website designed, built and up and running is a relatively easy task, however that is only the start. Having a website with no visitors is not going to increase your profits!

Whilst there are plenty of good web designers around who will produce you a good looking site, many of them have little clue about even the most basic of search engine optimisation strategies. Those that do may not have the necessary time to dedicate to your website to get it improving its search ranking and starting to deliver enquiries and sales.

As part of the 21c Telecom Business Phones group we have a dedicated business website SEO department. This enables us to dedicate the necessary time to search engine marketing for our website clients.

SEO work is a time consuming business and it is likely that you will be charged an hourly rate for a set number of hours per month. This could be as high as £60 per hour which means that many SMEs could not purchase enough hours to make it cost effective. Our charges are a fraction of this amount and we work out a budget with you that makes us both happy!

We want to deliver results and we will not take on a SEO job where we feel there is little chance of getting results based upon the amount of time we are being asked tp put into it. We want to build long term business relationships which means delivering tangible results to our search engine optimisation clients.

SEO quotes are free. If you already have a website but are disappointed by the number of visitors you are currently getting get in touch with us and we will take a look at your site and see where improvements can be made.

From there we can do some research into your likely keywords and keyphrases, the competition within your sector and put together a quotation that will get you results as quickly as possible. Bear in mind that SEO is not an exact science and that the target is moving all of the time with changes to search engines and how they find sites and deliver results. Also it could take a little time for rankings to improve, particularly in competitive areas of business. This is the same for ALL seo companies - don't let anyone tell you they can deliver instant results for organic search engine ranking improvements.

With the latest closure of UK airspace and no sign of the Icelandic volcano abating (last time it erupted for 15 months!) many businesses are suffering inconvenience, not to mention loss of revenue. With the announcement of higher thresholds for flying through the ash hopefully any future problems will be minimised and airspace kept open.

However, further costs of the volcanic ash problem are now coming to light in the form of mobile phone bills. With April's bills for call charges dropping on people's doormats come some nasty surprises for many.

For many of those that were stranded abroad for several days and unable to return to the UK as scheduled have run up sizeable bills. Several of these bills have been £1,000 plus, with the highest we have heard of being over £7,000!

This was due to a traveller stranded in Italy using his dongle to stream live radio on his laptop so he could keep in touch with what was happening. Mobile data roaming overseas is still extortionately expensive, but this traveller was either unaware of just how expensive or was relying upon his mobile network's cap.

This cap had been lifted by the network to help stranded travellers who needed to keep in touch. The sms message informing the traveller of this removal appears not to have been received. The network have reduced the bill to around £2,000 but this is still in dispute.

This story does show the need to be aware of all of the costs when entering into a mobile phone contract. If you are thinking of using data overseas via your mobile, or even calling and texting, you should pre-arrange it with your network and add a bolt-on if available to make it considerably less expensive.

Most of the networks offer packages for those going on holiday which offer reasonable value and can even include utilising your inclusive minutes overseas. Terms and conditions vary according to networks so make sure you read them carefully before using your mobile phone abroad.

As SmartPhones continue to sell by the bucketload and increase their market share month on month it brings another factor into the equation when buying your business mobiles - the operating system.

There are currently several different Operating Systems for mobile phones on the market including:

• Windows Mobile
• Android
• Symbian
• BlackBerry OS
• iPhone OS
• Maemo
• Bada

The OS making the headlines at the moment is Android, an open source operating system developed by Google. This features on a number of phones from a range of different manufacturers including HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG.

Being open source means that anyone is free to develop applications for the Android operating system meaning that the number of apps available is increasing daily. These can be obtained from the Android market which contains many free (and paid for) applications making your business life easier.

One factor in the choice of business SmartPhone is the need to sync it with your existing server for email usage. Many IT workers find it easier to get the Windows Mobile OS up and running with a Windows server leading them to recommend this OS. However all operating systems should be capable of delivering push email for business users.

The range of applications available could be another factor, particularly if you rely upon particular applications which make your life easier when out and about. Also familiarity will play a role - once you get used to a particular OS it can be a pain to transfer to another. Even if they largely work the same and provide the same features their GUIs (Graphical User Interface) can be radically different leading to confusion and a steep learning curve.

For SmartPhone advice get in touch with us and we will guide you through the various options, getting you both the best handset for your usage in combination with the best business mobile tariff.

Whilst Nokia always show up well in our Top 10 business mobile phone lists, April proved to be an even more successful month than usual for them with 6 entries, including all of the top 5!

At number 1 was the Nokia 1209. A no frills handset this one has not been seen before in any of our lists so it's a bit of a shock to see it go straight into the top spot. However fulfilling an order for a single large company can skew the figures a bit so don't expect it to retain its crown next month!

The Nokia 6303 shows up at number 2. Rarely out of the top 5 and the deposed number 1 business mobile handset from February and March. At 3 is the Nokia 2323 retaining its top 10 slot from March.

New entries at 4 and 5 for the Nokia E52 and Nokia 2600. And another Nokia E-series phone, the E55, rounds off the top 10.

In between are the usual suspects. Two BlackBerry phones in the form of the 8520 (6) and 8900 (9), the hard wearing Samsung M110 (7) and the Apple iPhone (all variants) at number 8.

No major surprises in the list overall in terms of manufacturers. Sony, LG and HTC are noticeable by their absences. May's top 10 business mobile phones will be provided here around the 2nd June.

We have added a new page to the website - business mobile phones. This page consolidates a lot of the other information from around the website into an easy to understand overview of how to get the best business mobile phone deal.

Regardless of your current mobile phone contract all businesses stand to benefit from a complete review of their mobile phones. This review can also look at landline phones and other communication methods. It's free of charge and without obligation.

To get a free telecoms review for your business simply contact Business Mobile World.

All businesses are welcome to apply from sole traders to large corporations. The opportunity to save some money and improve communications at the same time is available and within your grasp.