Cloud Net Blog

Motorola copies Apples marketing methods

The next big mobile phone that is headed down the pipeline to reach an adoring public is the Motorola Android Shadow. It has a pretty awesome spec with a massive screen, a 720p video camera, and a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor. Oh and it was left in a gym by a company employee.

Motorola are clearly following the trend set by the Apple people who contrived to leave the new iPhone in a bar.

Cloud Net are keen to join in this latest trend and are hoping to "accidentally " leave a preview of their latest business phone system software and the associated IP01 Cloud Net phone in a taxi headed for a gadget blog company.

The problem we have is choosing the right company to accidentally send it to. So we need some help in choosing a company that is willing to give our system the required blaze of publicity, whilst we sack a few employees pointlessly. If you know the correct gadget blog then we are ready to roll.

Cloud Net reviews iPhone 4 Prices.

With the Apple iPhone 4 released today, Cloud Net's Chairman David Hill has reviewed the pricing of the latest must have mobile phone.

The tariff combinations are hugely complex. To try to simplify it a little I chose to compile the following tables.

600 UK minutes 16GB iPhone consumer tarriff 18 months.

Assume actual use 400 mins per month.

Network	Monthly	Phone	Total Cost	Cost per min pence	Data Inc
Orange	35	229	859	11.9	0.75GB
Vodafone	40	29	749	10.4	1GB
O2	40	119	839	11.7	0.5GB

1200 UK minutes 16GB iPhone consumer tarriff 18 months

Assume actual use 800 mins per month

Network	Monthly	Phone	Total Cost	Cost per min pence	Data Inc
Orange	45	129	939	6.5	.75GB
Vodafone	50	29	929	6.45	1GB
O2	50	179	1079	7.49	.75GB

600 UK minutes 16GB iPhone consumer tarriff 24 months.

Assume actual use 400 mins per month.

Network	Monthly	Phone	Total Cost	Cost per min pence	Data Inc
Orange	35	119	959	10.0	.75GB
Vodafone	35	29	869	9.1	1GB
O2	35	119	959	10.0	.5GB

1200 UK minutes 16GB iPhone consumer tarriff 24 months.

Assume actual use 800 mins per month.

Network	Monthly	Phone	Total Cost	Cost per min pence	Data Inc
Orange	45	29	1109	5.8	.75GB
Vodafone	45	29	1109	5.8	1GB
O2	45	29	1109	5.8	.75GB

From this you can see that Vodafone are cheapest on all combinations except the last where are all suppliers are the same.

However I could choose to stay on my current O2 simplicity tariff of £25 per month and pay £499 for the new phone. Over 18 months the cost is £949 compared to the Vodafone £749
Vodafone do the same tariff with the same option as O2 of reducing the price to £20 per month if you sign up for 12 months. So the cost is 390+499 - a total of £889 still £140 more than the best Vodafone deal.

So should you go for 18 or 24 months? With 24 months the supplier has longer to spread the cost and hence the price per minute declines. Choosing Vodafone and 600 mins assuming use of 400 mins a month with a 24 month contract you get to make an extra 40 hours of calls (400 mins * 6 months) for an extra (869-749) £120.00 - a marginal cost of £3.00 per hour or 5p per minute.

So what is one to do? In all combinations this is one seriously expensive phone. I am going to wait for Tesco to declare their hand before voting with my money.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

England 1 Business Traffic 0

The World Cup Game between England and Slovenia which ended with the historic England 1-0 victory resulted in a 93.5% slump in business telephone activity measured by Cloud Net's computers.

Cloud Net uses hosted VoIP technology for its business phone systems which means that all telephone calls are routed through a series of computers housed in the cloud. This not only means that we can monitor activity levels and service quality levels in order to ensure maximal availability and throughput but it means that our clients can monitor their own levels of activity.

So for example if you were running a call centre yesterday but you had decided to pop home and watch the match you could still see how the levels of traffic were shaping up in your organisation, free and in real time. You could watch how incoming traffic declined (or increased) and plan accordingly. The great thing is that unlike almost all competing systems Cloud Net doesn't charge any extra licence fees or charges for this monitoring service.

If on the other hand you had decided to be generous and let your people watch the match you could have switched on Cloud Net's live answering service (CLASS). This is a completely subscription free service which only charges £1 per minute to answer calls with no minimum cost. Since you probably wouldn't have got any calls any way it probably wouldn't have cost you anything but if that big call had come in from one of the few countries who weren't watching, France for example, then you would be perfectly positioned to have a professional answer the phone on your behalf.

Cloud Net's views on the latest BT advert

BT is running an advert which involves a young girl and her mum using the key phrase: "Whenever dad calls he's always on the mobile. It's like he doesn't want to talk to me."

Dad then phones on a landline and they have a chat where the girl says something outrageous and the 30 seconds concludes with the voiceover: "If a conversation is worth having, use your BT landline."

If you haven't seen it you can watch it here http://www.tellyads.com/show_movie.php?filename=TA10583

The advert has raised almost entirely negative comment on the web with everyone more or less saying, "BT landlines are a premium product - they have to be kidding right?"

The issues remain however that landlines are clearer and a lot cheaper than mobiles. They don't fade or crackle, by and large, and you don't irradiate your ear. If mobiles had come along first I am sure the notion of a wired service being at a premium wouldn't have seemed strange. After all making a landline phone call uses a lot more physical infrastructure than a mobile.

BT may be facing an uphill struggle trying to persuade the cynical public about the benefits of landlines, but in the business situation using landlines is almost a must. Occasionally some misguided rep phones me from his car (hands free I am sure) and tries to sell as he is driving to his next appointment. He (and it is always a he) thinks he is being smart using his time efficiently. I just think he is being discourteous, not giving me due attention, being unable to write anything down and giving a rotten call quality all round. And of course when he goes under a bridge he has to redial. Sure if he was a friend then it would be fine but as a sales-call it is worse than useless, it's a turn off. I won't take the call from him next time.

In business you must use a landline to pay your customers proper respect but that doesn't mean you are stuck with BT. The modern approach to landline calling is of course to use VoIP and the service from Cloud Net using a free hosted PBX, allowing you to have a free new switchboard and get low, low call charges, is pretty much a no-brainer. Better functionality, no capital-cost, low call charges and all the benefits of a landline mean you really should check out Cloud Net Connect whilst you fume over the annoying BT ad.

Seven tips on how not to answer your business phone unless you do want to lose customers

1) Get a number that doesn't work
If you don't pay your bills then no one can talk to you or why not leave the receiver off the hook?

2) Don't bother to answer
If you don't answer then you only have the pain of hearing the phone ring for a while and don't need to talk to your customers.

3) Answer aggressively
"WHAT?" said loudly and aggressively usually prevents conversation.

4) Only use a mobile number
If you only have a mobile your company is bound to seem small and unprofessional with all that crackle and fade.

5) Answer with an auto attendant which puts people in a queue forever.

We've found this to be popular option....and don't forget to get a recording that says, "your call is important to us".

6) Thanks to HMRC VAT helpline for this one. Play an advert to the caller before asking them to select an option. When the caller selects another option, play another advert to the caller for a minute or more. Then announce "all our lines are busy please try later" and disconnect the line.

7) Have calls divert to voicemail all the time
Try "All our lines are busy. Your call is really important to us. Please leave a message"

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

Review of the latest BT chief executive Ian Livingston

Ian Livingston was appointed chief executive of BT Group on June 1st 2008. So 2 years on, just how has the lad done?

When he was appointed the share price was 216p and the FTSE at 5908. Today the share price is 130.10p and the FTSE 5126.00. So he has just about destroyed a third of the value of the company (39.7% actually) whilst the FTSE has fallen a mere 13%.

Maybe it's the telecoms sector? Maybe they have been hit particularly badly? There aren't many other British companies to compare with in the sector but the obvious one is Vodafone. Vodafone's share price was 161.5 in June 2008 and it is now 138.00. A decline of 14.5% - pretty much in line with the FTSE. It is too soon to compare BT with the performances of Cable and Wireless and TalkTalk but given they have just debuted one would assume they have done pretty well.

Maybe it's the fixed line business so let's look at France Telecom then. They traded at 17.74 Euro in June 2008 and today it's 15.44 Euro. A 12.9% decline.

So not a great performance then Ian. It is difficult to see why such a lacklustre performance justifies a whopping great £1.2m bonus. I can clearly see why the unions are not happy with the situation. If I was still a shareholder, then I wouldn't be happy either.

We know it's a tough world out there for BT with competition attacking at all sides. Their business margins must be under attack from hosted VoIP companies, like Cloud Net, who provide full business telephone systems for free, include ported telephone numbers and then offer very low call charges.

So overall I'm afraid I won't be buying BT shares any time soon and I do think that Ian shouldn't reward himself further until he does something for his shareholders and his staff.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net.

The cost of phone calls from the World Cup in South Africa

The cost of calling home from South Africa using Virgin, the most expensive mobile network, is £1.70 a minute, reports the Times. T-mobile will charge £1.50 a minute just to receive a call from South Africa. Call charges from South Africa vary from 55p per minute upward, with texts costing between 25p and 50p. Moreover, Customer Focus has warned that thousands of England fans travelling to the 2010 World Cup in South Africa face huge bills for their mobile use. They say that costs for calls, texts and data use could add up to £100 on a match day, more than the face value of £55 to £80 for a ticket.

Whilst mobile charges in the EU are high, the cost of a mobile call is capped at 37p per minute, 9p per text and £42.50 for data roaming. But no such restrictions exist outside the UK and the mobile operators levy very high fees.

Hosted VoIP services, such as those supported by the business phone system company Cloud Net, are location independent. The phones neither know nor care where they are located on the globe. This means that Cloud Net users can make and receive phone calls within the Cloud Net network free and pay very low UK rates outside the network. The phone numbers remain UK phone numbers and the calls are not subject to the reception problems that some areas in South Africa may have.

What is more, because the location doesn't matter no one can tell whether you are in South Africa or not. So if you want to save the price of a ticket and still claim to be there no one will know. If you are there and want to call in ‘sick' to the boss he won't be able to tell either (and the call will be free). Although, Cloud Net would not condone such behaviour.

So, if you are going, pack your Cloud Net IP01 phone and if you haven't got one yet call us and we'll send you one for free by first class post. There is still time to get free calls to the UK. And of course you will enjoy all the benefits of the world's most powerful cloud-based PBX free whilst you are there and afterwards for less than you could spend on a single day's calls to the UK.

Written by David Hill, Chairman, Cloud Net

What happens if BT strike?

We all know how important telephone systems are to a business. When there is a fault or a problem then you need a solution and fast. Now that BT engineers are preparing to strike you may not get a repair service as fast as you'd like (if at all)!

Add to the equation, that mobile networks are maintained by a single company - Ericsson - whose engineers are distinctly disgruntled at the proposed redundancies and suddenly traditional comms companies don't seem the most reliable.

So what are your choices? At first sight it seems paradoxical that a relatively small company like Cloud Net can actually give you a greater degree of resilience than telecoms giants. However, Cloud Net's systems are based on the internet. The essence of the internet is its robustness. Initially it was designed to withstand a nuclear blast by having multiple routing options so if one part goes down, others pick up the load. This is an ideal modus operandi for a robust phone system which is not dependant on location and is exactly what you get with Cloud Net Connect. If your local connection goes down - simply pick up your phone and plug it into the internet using another connection.

Consider what happens you have a fault on your BT ISDN line your phones die. If you have a Cloud Net system and a fault develops on a line you simply switch to another broadband line - if you have one - or take your phone home for the day. There are other options as well. Cloud Net will divert any call to any phone anywhere with no divert fee if you want or you can use our live answering service to field any incoming calls if you want to with no subscription fee.

The great thing is that you can keep all of this flexibility and resilience comes at very little cost. If you want a standby power supply in case the mains cuts out, it costs a fortune. If you want a standby phone system in case of strikes, there is no capital cost from Cloud Net and a very low monthly subscription. Additionally, you have options and solutions (plus a superior primary solution if you choose it).

It does take a few days to configure your system which is a few days that you won't have if the worst comes to the worst so it may be a great time to call us whilst the BT Engineers are still working!

Cloud Net - A business phone system in the hierarchy of desirability

In business a professional telephone system is the single most important tool you can have - and yet many small companies try to rely on just having a mobile. As we have said many times before, providing your customers with a mobile number gives the impression that you are small, unprofessional and don't care about your customers costs or opinions.

I recently reviewed the options available to a small business and this is how they look:

If you really are strapped for cash your first option is the Cloud Net virtual phone. For just £2.00 per month you get all the Cloud Net control panel options, including call divert, call recording, and voicemail, which must make it bargain of the century! You simply pay to divert your calls to any number you like - less than 1p per minute, if it's a landline - or free to a Cloud Net phone.

If you have a slightly bigger budget then consider the full Cloud Net Connect system which include a free phone and full PBX functionality for £8.50 a month. You get all of the benefits of the virtual phone but with the addition of a truly powerful handset and the ability to make outbound calls directly.

You may be coming to the conclusion that the more you pay, the better it gets. For an additional £22.00 per month Cloud Net broadband gives you superior broadband designed for voice traffic - whilst still allowing you to surf the web with unlimited data download.

There is also an option for a high-specification handset - a Siemens cordless DECT which has numerous extra features, such as the ability to wander from office to office without missing a single call. The handset is still free but there is a slight increase in the monthly charge.

If you want even more from your telephone system, then why not bolt on Cloud Net's live answering service which enables all calls to be answered professionally, by a real person, in your name using the details you have provided. The beauty of this valuable bolt-on is that it carries no extra subscription just a charge per minute which is considerably lower than the 118 charge.

And finally you can upgrade to business class broadband for even greater capacity to connect phones and surf the web.

All of these options come with the power of Cloud Net's iconic switchboard in the sky which is simply the most compelling PBX on the planet. It doesn't require any maintenance, it's never out of date and there are no sneaky additional charges or fees.

These are the choices and so the decision on how far to upgrade your business phone system is now up to you.