Cloud Net Blog

7 Reasons Why Business Telecoms Has Changed Forever

1)      The Old Fashioned PBX is Dead

The idea of having a dedicated box of electronics hidden away in a broom cupboard to direct all phone traffic in and out of a building will soon seem as quaint as the penny farthing bike. All telecommunications traffic is going to be transmitted via a computer network. If you are a large organisation then the servers that control everything may well be in your building – if not they will be in the cloud. The choice is now only between on-site VoIP and hosted VoIP such as Cloud Net hosted VoIP.

2)      Telephony Costs are Falling

There used to be a time when the capital cost of phone systems was significant. The systems needed repairing, replacing and maintaining. If you changed your mind or needed more phones it cost a fortune. The new generation of hosted VoIP systems cost nothing and are always up to date and calls between sites and handsets on the network are free.

Telephone companies such as BT are trying to charge more for line rentals and coming up with ever more complex calling plans – but it is a forlorn hope - hosted VoIP with its inherent efficiencies is driving costs and prices ever downward.

Hosted VoIP is now also driving down mobile communication costs with mobile enabled PBX applications connecting anywhere over data lines. The model of charging a premium for landline to mobile and mobile to landline calls is nearly over.

3)      Location Doesn’t Matter

Now with hosted VoIP anyone can have any dialling code anywhere. Call centres are already buying minutes anywhere in the world and buying connectivity solutions everywhere. Companies such as Cloud Net are making this flexibility available to every company, everywhere simply.

4)      Nothing is Forgotten

Recording telephone conversations used to be only for big corporates. Hosted VoIP brings the ability to record all conversations or some conversations within the grasp of all organisations.

5)      True Flexibility to Respond

With follow me services where the call follows you around as you move and mobile pbx services you can take any call on your mobile or on your landline.

But maybe you don’t want to take the call and then live answering services with real live people can save a fortune. We recently organised an event where all the bookings were taken by the answering service for less than £60 – compared to the usual cost of hiring a receptionist for 2 weeks.

However you want to organise your world you are no longer tied to any one way of answering calls or responding in any other way you choose. Everything is affordable, flexible and on demand. No more waiting for anything – and if you don’t like it, you can change it.

6)      Advertising No Longer Cuts It

BT spend upwards of £50m a year in advertising and Vodafone are not far behind. In the Olympics year, BT will be spending close to £200m on advertising and related activities. It is all part of a concerted effort to persuade everyone that paying enormous sums for telecoms is OK.  Customers want value for money they don’t want corny commercials or adverts with introductory rates that double after the first three months.

7)      Customers are fed up of complex business phone websites and customer support lines

Companies that want new telephone systems seek out their knowledge on the web. Cloud Net keeps it simple: all our information is online and is all based on our hosted PBX.  We provide telephone systems for small companies and have a standard fixed rate online switchboard with multiple features and users pay for calls only.   Our promotion doesn’t drive you to a website with hundreds of options and a support number that requires you to choose from 8 options before reaching a real person.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

Making business calls from a blocked telephone number – how will your customers know who you are?

There are a lot of people, including me, who won’t take calls from a telephone number which shows up as blocked on my phone’s display. We all assume that the call will be an unsolicited sales call and we don’t want those.

I have never understood why anyone would want to make such calls in business. I know in a private situation you might want to call a business without them being able to phone you back. The other way round though – presumably a business would want the person who called to be able to see their number so they can be reassured that it is a business calling and call you back if they want to.

There are, however, many companies that block numbers, such as solicitors and banks. If I were being cynical, I guess this must be some kind of a comment on how they regard their customers – a bit of a nuisance from the really important stuff.

In reality, the explanation is straightforward – it is simply because they have old fashioned switchboards which don’t allow calls to be made back to the extension they originated from. So, for example, there are several solicitors in an office – one makes an outside call and the switchboard can only give out either the main number to the receiving phone or “block” the number. If the switchboard is programmed to do the former then when you call back you get reception and they have to find out who called you – if it is the latter then unfortunately you can’t call back as have no idea who called in the first place.

For companies that want to ensure that their customers know that they called, the solution is simple: use a business phone system which allows individuals to have their own numbers and gives these out when a call is made. The online switchboard system from Cloud Net is such a system and comes with a whole host of other flexible and useful features. There really isn’t any excuse or reason for business calls to come with a blocked number any more.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

EMF’s Probably Don’t Cause Health Problems

It is good to know that away from all the hype and media frenzy there are a number of world class institutions working in the UK. The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is one of them.

There follows a transcript of an article on their latest release  – it is well written and thoughtful – so there seems little point in paraphrasing. It provides a balanced view of the situation and is an example of how useful their work is.

This is an issue that affects us all and whilst the media will always scream about any paper that even hints at health problems – it is good to have a report and statement that is both considered and helpful.

Thanks guys.

“Many of its members, the public, elements of industry and academia, and government expect the IET to have a position regarding any possible harmful health effects from the low-level exposure we all incur due to the radiation which emanates from electrical power systems, industrial heating, radio and television, stock control wireless systems (e.g. RFID), mobile phones, WiFi, radar etc. Listing just some of the sources shows how ubiquitous these electromagnetic fields (EMF) are in our environment and how it is difficult not to incur exposure as we go about our daily lives.

Public awareness and concern about our exposure to EMFs started in the early 1980s in relation to living near electrical power infra-structures such as pylons and sub-stations. This concern was extended to cellular telecommunications in the mid 1990s as the number of base-stations for the (then) analogue mobile phone services proliferated. Up until then, there appears to have been little concern about radio and television broadcasting or the few private business radio masts providing primarily taxis with a mobile means of communication.

Realising that it did not have all the necessary expertise within the (then) IEE to adequately address the subject of whether there were harmful health issues, the Institution formed an invited group of UK experts that did have the necessary skills and knowledge to advise it and give their time freely. The Biological Effects Policy Advisory Group (BEPAG) was formed in 1992 with an initial brief to consider any health issues related to the electrical power infra-structure - nominally 50 and 60 Hz systems. This brief was extended in 1998 to cover the electromagnetic spectrum up to 300 GHz and include known and envisaged wireless services such as the burgeoning mobile telephone services around 1 and 2 GHz, as well as broadcast TV and radio frequencies.

BEPAG is an expert group of six scientists and engineers whose expertise includes the topics of low-frequency electric and magnetic field interaction mechanisms with human tissue, cellular biology, epidemiology, animal and human cancer, and both radio frequency and power frequency dosimetry.

The group does not itself carry out experimental research (although several of its members do as part of their 'day job'). Rather it assesses each month the global published peer reviewed literature on the subject, and places their assessments into a database which forms the evidence for reporting every two years on the trends in the scientific knowledge base as to whether there are harmful health effects resulting from low-level EMF exposure. Typically each year 800+ papers are reviewed and assessed - no small undertaking when each of the members involved has a high profile job and is in considerable demand to participate in related public communication activities. Three of the group are Fellows of the IET.

The IET is indebted to the group for their dedication, professionalism and tenacity which they bring to the IET's understanding and public guidance on the subject.

So what does the latest Position Statement tell us? There are three main points. Firstly, there is the reassurance which comes from the fact that after almost 30 year's research (and hundreds of millions of dollars expenditure) into the subject of EMFs and health there is still no unequivocal, and importantly repeatable, laboratory study of scientific evidence that low-level EMFs cause any adverse health effects. That said science can never prove a negative [in this instance that low-level EMFs cannot cause adverse health effects] and it must therefore remain a possibility. Thus society would be wise to adopt precautionary exposure avoidance measures if they are practical, deliver suitable benefits, and are economically justifiable. [Especially given the apparent small statistical association (shown in a few ELF epidemiological studies) between childhood leukaemia and power frequency magnetic fields - see Position Statement for more information.] Secondly, that the widespread use of electricity and telecommunications has demonstrable value to society, including health benefits and this along with the balance of scientific evidence should be taken into account by policy makers when considering the costs and benefits of implementing precautionary approaches to public exposure and in the development of public exposure guidelines. Thirdly, BEPAG is concerned about pressures on scientists to publish potentially driving down the quality of research and notes that few, if any, published laboratory studies prove to be replicable by other groups.

This subject is highly emotive and many laypeople, and a few scientists, will assert the harm from EMFs, as demonstrated, for example by claims of cancer clusters around some power and telecommunications structures. Much of this is anecdotal, rather than scientifically evidenced. The government (through its Health Protection Agency (HPA), and OFCOM) monitors the situation and ensures that our exposure to EMFs is regulated in accordance with international guidelines (ICNIRP).

The IET's Position Statement can be found at: www.theiet.org/factfiles/bioeffects/emf-position.cfm”

See http://kn.theiet.org/magazine/member-news/23/changing-opinions.cfm

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

Oh Joy - MBA With Telecoms Management

The world of the MBA (master of b…. all) continues to advance. More and more people perceive the value of getting an MBA whilst more and more people in industry think they are a waste of time. I am in the latter camp.

If you want a business telephone system I wonder if the fact that someone has an MBA will influence your buying decision – I thought not. Your decision as always will be around price, reliability and functionality. This means that you will inevitably choose Cloud Net’s systems.

OK advert over. My old college, Imperial College London has now taken the MBA  genre to new heights – you can now specialise in your MBA. Currently, they offer specialisations in Entrepreneurship, Customer Focused Strategy, Investments and Risks, Health Management, and Telecommunications. In our context an MBA in Telecoms management is the one of interest.

Imperial’s adverts helpfully invite us to type in the url http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/programmes/distance-learning-mba.

If you get that bit right you get to learn that:-

“The telecommunications industry is undergoing dramatic change; this change is fuelled by advances in technology, the rise of the world-wide web and Internet, regulatory reform, new forms of competition, and increasingly sophisticated customer needs.  Industry convergence is bringing together information, entertainment, computing and telecommunications to form new business models around ICT.”

Nothing to disagree with there – more a statement of the blindingly obvious. The website then helpfully says:-

“This module aims to explore these issues by providing a holistic view of the industry. It examines market developments such as globalization. [Sorry, it should be globalisation – ed.], convergence and commodatisation [Sorry, it should be commoditisation– ed.] It teaches an understanding of the underlying technologies – both as they operate today and how they will develop in the future. It covers the impact of these technologies on products, services and customer care. Finally it pulls together all the key threads to look at the business models that apply in the new ICT industry; the financial implications for existing and new players; and all the future challenges.”

So there we have it. I couldn’t find out how long this riveting course took or how much it cost. I am delighted to have provided my ex-college with free publicity and encourage you to test your typing skills by typing in the url. Please take the course and that will distract you from competing with Cloud Net.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

How to save money with phone systems

1) Don't buy a pbx use hosted VoIP - the phones and hosted pbx are free with Cloud Net

2) Using a hosted VoIP service means you don't pay for electricity to run the hosted PBX

3) Using a hosted VoIP service means you don't pay any maintenance charges

4) Using a hosted VoIP service from Cloud Net means you don't pay any licence fees

5) Using a hosted VoIP means you share your telephone calls with your broad band and save money

6) Using a hosted VoIP service means that you talk to other people on the same network free

7) Using a hosted VoIP service means that you get low low call charges

8) Using a hosted VoIP service means that can appear to be anywhere without the physical cost of an office - you can have as many geographic codes from anywhere as you like. This means you can operate expensive London numbers from say Bradford.

9) Use a live answering service means that you can save the cost of a receptionist

10) Using a live answering service from Cloud Net means that you don't pay any set up fees or subscription fees you simply pay for what you use.

11) Go one stage further than hosted VoIP don't even have a hosted pbx just have a virtual number - £2.00 per month to get all your calls - savings don't get much better than that.

12) Using the hosted VoIP business service from Cloud Net means that you get unified communications for free

13) Using the hosted VoIP business service from Cloud Net means not paying in advance for calls

14) Using hosted VoIP business service from Cloud Net means no time consuming and wasteful credit checks

Skype To Float

Skype has filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission in America to allow it to make an initial public offering of its shares.

Skype describes itself in the documents as “a software-based communications platform that offers high-quality, easy-to-use tools for both consumers and businesses to communicate and collaborate globally through voice, video and text conversations. …We have 124 million connected users and our users placed 95 billion calling minutes over Skype in the first half of 2010, approximately 40% of which were video. Skype can be downloaded onto computers, mobile phones and other connected devices for free at www.skype.com.”

Skype was owned by eBay until 2009 having paid $2.6bn for the company. They sold a majority stake to an investor group in November 2009 in a deal worth $2.75bn to an investor group lead by a company called Silver Lake. Ebay kept a  35% stake.

The flotation will be jointly co-ordinated by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley. A preliminary prospectus will be available from Goldman Sachs but is not available yet.

Skype have around 50m active users using the service every day (as opposed to the 124 million cited above). They make around $100m profit a year. ($44m 2007, $117m 2008, $76m 2009).

It seems that the offering of the shares will be a limited affair designed to give liquidity for the company and assign value to the shares allowing the company to use stock for amongst other things, incentivising employees and give a capability to raise further funding if needed. It will become more obvious once the prospectus is released.

Although Skype has tried several forays into the business arena it continues to be almost purely a consumer to consumer brand insisting as it does on prepayment for calls. SIP continues to be the preferred model for business, such as that offered by Cloud Net,  which gives the benefits of free calls within the network plus billing on account and complete PBX functionality.

It will be interesting to watch the long term battle between the proprietary Skype and the open SIP protocols. It will also be interesting to see an open market valuation for Skype which will then be put into a context for share prices for other large telecoms providers such as BT and AT&T .

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

Telecoms, Where Are They Now - Who Bought Whom?

In the telecoms world, knowing who was bought by whom is almost a mark of knowledge and experience, so if you speak to a telecoms professional they “know” when you say ‘Bulldog’ you mean ‘the company bought by Cable and Wireless’.

Until now there hasn’t been a simple list that you could use to pull the wool over their eyes and appear to be a true (telecoms) professional. Of course if you are a true professional you might not agree with my selection of memorable takeovers, so please let me know.

So here is my instant guide to who bought whom and when:

May 1998	Demon bought by Thus
1999	Racal bought by Global Crossing
January 2002	Global Crossing, by Hutchison Whampoa and Singapore Technologies Telemedia
November 2002	Opal Telecommunications bought by The Carphone Warehouse
March 2004	Uniworld Communications bought by Gamma Communications
May 2004	Bulldog bought by Cable & Wireless
August 2005	Energis bought by Cable and Wireless from administration
December 2005	Tele2, by The Carphone Warehouse
March 2006	Telewest, by NTL, now called Virgin Media
June 2006	Be Unlimited bought by O2
July 2006	Toucan bought by Pipex
July 2006	Bulldog (retail customer base) bought by  Pipex
August 2006	Video Networks bought by Tiscali
October 2006	AOL UK bought by Carphone Warehouse
July 2007	Pipex bought by Tiscali
June 2008	Thus bought by Cable and Wireless
June 2009	4Com customers bought by Daisy Group
July 2009	Tiscali bought by Carphone Warehouse
August 2009	Eurotel bought by Daisy Group
August 2009	Redstone Telecom telecom and mobile divisions bought by Daisy Group
June 2010	Kingston Communications changed name to KC

A Review of Cloud Net from Freelance Advisor

Cloud Net recently recieved this positive review from Freelance Advisor here it is as follows.

"I’ll be honest, I’ve never set up a VoIP phone before. So I decided to try out a Cloud Net telephonic solution which enables you to make calls via a broadband connection. The good news is, it was pretty simple to set up and provides an effective service for small businesses.

There was, however, one small problem which every prospective purchaser of a VoIP phone needs to keep in mind before they make the leap…

Getting started

I happily take the Cloud Net phone out of the box, chuck the instructions to one side and have a go at setting this thing up. And to be fair it was pretty simple. In fact, I couldn’t really hope for it to be any simpler. I connect the professional looking phone to my broadband router and activate the system online with the account codes I’d been given. The online dashboard isn’t particularly scary looking which is a good sign (though I’m unlikely to delve into most of the options anytime soon being an impatient technological type).

Very quickly I’m able to make calls which can only be a good sign. And the sound quality is pretty impressive.

Oh no, I’ve cut someone off!

One drawback: because of my broadband set-up where everything is running off the same connection – I did experience an abrupt halt to a conversation! Luckily it was a dull conversation and I now had a legitimate excuse for hanging up. But what caused this? The broadband connection? Or a problem with Cloud Net itself?

Of course, it turns out it’s the broadband connection that’s the problem. And this is an aspect which any prospective purchaser of a VoIP service needs to keep in mind. In this instance, because I’m running everything off the same router it means there’s naturally going to be interruptions on the line. This would be the same regardless of your VoIP provider.

To avoid this scenario you have to ensure your broadband set-up is able to handle and maintain a strong connection for telephonic purposes. The solution is often referred to as Quality of Service (QoS), which is something that Cloud Net can provide for an extra charge – they offer voice quality broadband for small offices at £22 a month plus set-up fee.

In summary

Cloud Net works on the same logic as the likes of Skype, i.e. if you phone someone also operating via the same service then the call is free. Naturally, Cloud Net users won’t be as numerous as those of the aforementioned Skype but the service is more business orientated.

The phone itself provides all the options you would expect of a professional business service. Fairly standard features include: 4 lines, call transfers, conference calls, put callers on hold, a call log, call diversion, phone-to-phone intercom and call recording.

If you’re a freelancer who often has to get on the phone to clients then having a professional business phone will be pretty important and Cloud Net provides a decent option. Just make sure your broadband set-up is suitable."

Written by Mel Dixon

Click here for the Article

A great review, it seems however that Mel would benefit from our specially designed voice broadband which helps prioritise voice over data.

Most of us have heard stories in the past about VoIP and they usually involve poor quality and broken conversations. This is very common because your internet connection is used to carry many different types of traffic including web pages, emails and documents - many of them consuming large amounts of bandwidth.

Now the problem is that these different types of traffic share the same connection without any levels of priority - they are all battling for the same bandwidth and as a result things inevitably get delayed. This is fine for most types of traffic but voice is very sensitive to delay and packet loss - each word in a conversation needs to be delivered on time and in the correct order.

Introducing Quality of Service

Quality of Service (QoS) is used to guarantee that certain types of traffic can travel from source to destination within a given time and enables the network to prioritise traffic depending on its class.

Most providers are either unable or unwilling to provide complete end-to-end QoS and as a result their connections are usually not optimised for VoIP.

Cloud Net on the other hand offers ADSL and SDSL high capacity broadband services which not only offer greater throughput, but also provide true end-to-end Quality of Service resulting in a much more enjoyable VoIP experience.

Privacy Is Important.

Privacy is important to us all. This is not because we want to do something illegal, as the government seems to thinks. It's because every ailment I get seems to be embarrassing and I have no wish to share that with the world, and frankly I don't want to know about yours either. When I talk to the man who claims to be my bank manager, I don't want anyone else listening. When I negotiate a contract I don't want the other person to know my bottom figure. So if I want to have a private chat on the phone what should I do?

The worst option is to pick up my mobile in a crowded building or a train and assume that no one will listen. In any case the mobile phone is like a homing beacon transmitting your position back to your network provider every few minutes or so who then records the information. So not only do they know where you are, they know where you've been. Worse than that, all of the conversations go through Echelon, the government's spy network, so they know what you said.

The only protection you have is the amount of noise and pointless talk around you which make it difficult for anyone else to hear your particular news. If it is really important stuff you are talking about then it is dead easy for any self respecting spy to use his receiver to pick up your broadcasts on his receiver.

Normal landlines are pretty awful as well. Your phone call goes out unencrypted in real time along a copper wire. It is so old-fashioned Queen Victoria's spies could have eavesdropped on this technology. It takes a matter of seconds for anyone to simply clip a transmitter to the cable and listen in. It is stupidly simple and virtually undetectable. The only reason that more of this doesn't go on is because of the amount of drivel that we all spout which makes it difficult to pick out the important stuff.

I'm afraid that VoIP services aren't perfect either, but they are better. Your phone call is translated in the phone into a series of data packets which are then sent over the Internet to the person that you are calling. This means that it is almost impossible for anyone to find out where you are. It is true that the data packets can be "sniffed" out and deciphered so that a determined hacker could hear a conversation. However finding the one useful conversation amongst the billions of other things going on is not the simplest thing to do.

If privacy is really important to you then you can agree with your caller to encrypt the VoIP phone calls which makes it impossible to capture the conversation within a reasonable period.

So of the three phone systems that are available to you, if privacy is important to you, you should clearly choose VoIP and, of course, we would recommend business-class, hosted VoIP by Cloud Net.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net.

Why Are Telecoms Shares So Cheap?

Telecoms companies in the 1990s used to be regarded as high flying tech stocks. However, many have been badly run and most destroyed huge amounts of value by overpaying for acquisitions at the height of the dotcom boom. Added to these factors are rising capital expenditure costs, stricter regulation and new technologies such as VoIP destroying margins for traditional telecoms companies.

If that’s not enough new fibre networks represent another drain on company finances since they require heavy investment to ensure that these companies keep hold of their competitive positions.

That is why for example BT is doing all it can to make its cash position look more attractive to investors: from altering billing dates, to altering the cheap period for calls to simply raising prices.

It’s thanks to these billing moves that companies such as Cloud Net, which offer high quality VoIP business phone systems, become more appealing to small businesses looking for straightforward pricing.

Regulation has controlled many aspects of telecoms profits for years and the government can be seen to be improving the situation for consumers by leaning more heavily on the companies. The cuts imposed recently on mobile termination rates are a case in point.

Cable and Wireless recently announced a profit shortfall because of a reduction in government spending. The share price reacted with a 25% fall.

Brokers are regarding telecoms as utility companies sharing their high borrowings with strong cash flows which enable the debts to be serviced. However, regarding them as utilities does mean they are not stocks that need to be held in a portfolio. Indeed as a utility stock their profits are not as guaranteed as say, an electricity company. After all you need light at home you don't need to make that phone call in the same way.

The technology that drives the internet is both a blessing and a curse for the Telco’s. On the one hand the ever increasing demand for data is a positive thing requiring ever more fibre but on the other it does need more capital investment. The charging models are complex and there is a fragmentation of the network with some companies cherry picking parts of the network to develop and sell, which puts pressure on the large incumbents.

The bottom line is will I be investing in BT, Cable and Wireless, Talk Talk or Vodafone in the near future? The answer is that although the stocks are cheap - they are cheap for a reason.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net