Yes, You ARE Overpaying For Your Phone and Data Lines

By: John Shepler

With the economic future highly in question, every business needs to take a long, hard look at what it takes to survive. With future income uncertain and likely reduced, a good place to focus is on reducing expenses. Telecom lines, including data, telephone and Internet, can be a major monthly bill. It’s highly likely that right now you are paying more, perhaps much more, than you could be for the same quality of service.

Who’s Gouging Me?
Probably no one is cheating you or even taking advantage of your business. If you like, blame it on the gremlins. You know, those sneaky little critters that make everything break at the worst possible time. They also know how to bleed your budget without you ever knowing.

First, Get Rid of the Waste
You are paying for stuff you don’t need. I suspect you are paying for stuff that you don’t even use. How can that be? Anyone who has ever cleaned house has discovered all sorts of unopened christmas presents, products still in their original packaging, and food way past its safe date. The same is true in business. Things get bought. Some never get used. Others are used awhile, then the situation changes and they are set aside… just in case. Just in case never comes back again.

The worst offenders are subscriptions and contracts you pay for monthly but don’t get any value from. Right now, pull the bills for the last few months related to computing and telecom services. Services are especially sneaky at bleeding your budget because they are often out of sight and out of mind. You don’t trip over them like you do a big piece of equipment.

Now, grab a cup of coffee and go to a quiet space with your bills and some highlighters. You have to walk through these from top to bottom and question everything. Are there lines installed that aren’t being used anymore? Are there cell phone numbers that stopped being used when people left long ago? What about special fax machine lines, alarm connections, direct lines to buildings you got rid of? More DID numbers than you can possible use today? Toll Free numbers you don’t even advertise? Highlight them all. They’ve got to go.

Save a Bundle on What You DO Need
Now that you’ve made arrangements to delete all that extra costly clutter that adds no value, you’re left with the essentials. Of course you need phone lines and broadband service. You may need a direct connection to a cloud service provider or another office. You may well want managed security instead of having to keep someone on staff to fend off cybercriminals. Don’t cut so far to the bone that you hurt your ability to do business. Just get a better deal.

There’s a little secret about telecom services that escapes notice most of the time. Business lines, especially the dedicated ones like T1, DS3, SONET and Carrier Ethernet, are sold on contract. Usually you commit for at least a year, but probably take a 3 year contract for better pricing. Nothing wrong with that. It’s what happens at contract expiration that matters.

You might be tempted to simply renew the same contract at the same price, figuring you are lucky to avoid price inflation. Wrong. This industry is highly competitive and technology is advancing constantly. That translates into lower prices, not higher. For the same money you should get more bandwidth. Otherwise you should get a lower price for the next 3 years at the same bandwidth.

When New is Cheaper
Upgrading your technology could actually save rather than cost. Still nursing an old PBX system that needs maintenance and has pricy replacement parts? Have a look at
VoIP cloud service providers and let them manage the switching gear. All you need is phones and a SIP trunk to the cloud. You also gain new features that old analog desk phones can’t support.

Fiber optic bandwidth connections used to cost an arm and couple of legs. Not anymore. If you are in a built-up, not rural, area there is probably lots of fiber in the ground and overhead. Even the cable companies are leasing out extra fiber capacity. You might find that an upgrade in bandwidth could cost less than you pay for copper service now.

Running your own servers used to be the only way to go. Not anymore. In fact, it’s hard not to save money by pulling the plug and getting your infrastructure in the cloud. This is especially true if you need special high capacity lines to handle customer traffic. That bandwidth is likely cheaper at the remote data center and you’ll only need a lower bandwidth connection to manage the cloud services from your location.

Well, what do you think? Is there opportunity for cost saving in your business? Give these ideas at least a good look before you decide you are doing as well as you can. That includes getting a new current set of competitive quotes on all your line services, telephone, wireless and cloud services to see what might be available that you don’t know about.

Strategies For The Hunkered Down Economy

The calendar has turned, but the economy has not. We’re still looking at double digit unemployment, public companies making their numbers by cutting expenses rather than increasing sales, and a lot of angst over what it will take to get things moving again. In the meantime, consumers are hunkering down to spend less and save more. That means businesses large and small are left with little to do except hunker down themselves. It’s hard to get excited about taking the big leaps when you don’t know how wide the abyss is.

Does this mean that your company is permanently stuck in the mud or that your ship is sinking with nothing more to throw overboard? For most, that’s way too dire a scenario. But you are faced with an opportunity that requires a choice, at least in your telecommunications expenses. Do you want to maintain the same level of service and pay less for it, or do you want to maintain your budget at current levels and get more service?

Many managers consider this an enviable position. There’s really no way you can lose. The only one who isn’t going to make out in this arrangement is the overpriced service provider who either isn’t sensitive to your needs or has failed to optimize their own business to offer you a better deal.

Perhaps the first thing to do is to honestly assess your needs for the coming year. Do you need everything you have now, more, less, or just different? For instance, if the phones aren’t ringing off the hook, then perhaps you can get by with fewer outside lines and no one will be the wiser. If your staffing levels have dwindled, you may have more broadband capacity than you are really taking advantage of at the moment. You can almost certainly save by matching the level of telecom services to your current reality. In some cases, you may be able to dramatically save by combining your telephone and broadband in an integrated T1 line or SIP trunk.

You may be concerned that downsizing your bandwidth puts you at risk if business suddenly bounces back. That can be mitigated by ordering scalable bandwidth services. Metro Ethernet is a good example. The connection that’s installed may be capable of 50 Mbps, but you only pay for 10 Mbps. If business doubles, you call your provider and tell them to take it up to 20 Mbps. They can do that quickly and easily, since no hardware changes need to be made.

For some businesses, opportunities are available to increase activity. What’s holding them back is the unavailability of bank loans or a reluctance to make long term commitments to expenses that might not be covered if the ramp up in business activity doesn’t happen as planned. What you don’t realize is that you may be able to get more and better service without spending more money. This is commonly the case with companies that leased line services years ago and have been paying month to month since their contract ran out. Telecom service rates have been dropping, sometimes dramatically, over the last few years. But you’re still paying the old rate to the old provider who makes no effort to offer you a better deal. How can you be sure you are getting the most for your precious expense dollars? Get competitive telecom service quotes quickly and easily online.

The services we promote are offered through a telecom broker who’s job it is to research the best rates available for your business location. When you request a competitive quote, a Telarus consultant will be working on your behalf to understand your current and future needs and then find the best deal available from dozens of service providers. That consultant will check back with you from time to time to make sure that what you are leasing is still the best cost solution as your situation changes. Best of all, this is a free service. It’s truly one of the best deals you can get in any economy.

Preserve Your IT Budget

It's a new year and a new budget cycle. You may be flush with capital and operating expense funding, but before you rush out and start placing orders think about how you can stretch that budget beyond what you've planned. With the economy still on the rocks, you may be asked to cut line items. There may even be a freeze on spending at some point during the year. If so, you'll be glad you were able to get more value while spending less.

So how can an IT manager preserve the budget while under pressure for upgrades, maintenance and new projects? One of the easiest ways is to simply get more for the same expenditure, or pay less for the service you've planned. During boom times, that might seem a bit fanciful. When resources are in short supply, you'll have to take your place in line and pay whatever is asked or do without. But we're in the opposite part of the economic cycle now. Most companies are anxious to make any sale they can. Your requests to get more for less will be taken seriously this year.

Good strong purchasing negotiation always makes sense. But instead of just going through the motions, you now have an excellent chance of working every contract to your advantage. In some cases, new players hungry to build a significant market presence will fall all over themselves to wrench your business away from staid and unresponsive incumbents.

A perfect example is voice and data bandwidth. Not so long ago you had one carrier to deal with and pricing was pretty much take it or leave it. Not any more. You may be shocked to find that there could be a dozen or more competitive carriers anxious to vie for your business. You can pick the one that offers the most capacity for the least amount of money or negotiate for extras such as a free router.

Telecom carriers are more numerous due to deregulation and the mere presence of aggressive competitors has been driving down service pricing. There has also been something of a glut of excess capacity from the boom times of the late 90's that has needed to be worked off. But perhaps the biggest advantage to businesses has been the recent development of new search tools that can quickly locate a plethora of services that meet your exact criteria. These tools are a family of online search engines under the name "GeoQuote (tm)."

GeoQuote is the patented software that connects to carrier databases and calculates near-exact line prices within seconds. If you need T1 lines, ISDN PRI telephone trunks, or DS3 bandwidth, GeoQuote can return results to you in a matter of seconds for an online query. The Ethernet GeoQuote will show you maps of where nearby "lit" facilities are for fiber optic bandwidth services such as 10 Mbps Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, and Gigabit Ethernet. There are also versions of GeoQuote specifically for SIP Trunking for enterprise VoIP and MPLS networks for connecting multiple business locations.

Beyond your WAN connectivity needs, there are plenty of opportunities to get better deals on your hardware purchases and installation and maintenance services. For that, there is another online tool called the VAR Network search engine. This free service lets you specify exactly the equipment and services you want. That request will go out to qualified VARs or Value Added Resellers in your area that wish to bid on your business. You can then negotiate your best pricing and perhaps save a significant percentage over your budgeted amounts.