63% Of SME's To Reduce Telecoms Costs Says BT - 02/03/11
Posted by Cloud Net on Wed, Mar 02, 2011 @ 09:48 AM
The latest BT whitepaper on controlling SME costs says that 63% of SME's plan to reduce telecom costs in 2011. Of these, 39% plan to reduce costs by more than 10%.
It is not surprising that most companies are seeking to reduce their telecoms costs. After decades of telecoms costs falling in real terms year after year it is apparent that this is no longer the case - if you stay with conventional telecoms companies then you will be contributing more to their recovery.
All of the old fashioned telcos had a storming 2010 with profits and share prices rising strongly. In 2010 BT shares rocketed 22%, TalkTalk 25.6% and Vodafone 18%. A reasonable amount of this rise is down to the ever more ingenious price plans that they dream up. For example BT is forever releasing new price plans which look great but in fact aren't. A classic example is the capped calling plans that they offer when they say, for example, a call cost is capped at a certain figure, say 10p for the first hour. If you research it – it turns out more often than not that not only is the maximum cost 10p but the minimum cost is 10p. So a 1 second call costs 10p when you add the call set up fee, and the rounded up call cost.
The message is clear if you want to reduce your telecoms costs then you should look away from the old fashioned telcos with their huge pension deficits and crippling debt burdens and look to the new generation companies. At the forefront of the new generation companies are the hosted VoIP people where calls in the network are really free and PBX's involve no capital cost. With the power of the Internet companies like Birchills Telecom
can make dramatic savings for SME's.
By David Hill
Chairman Birchills Telecom
You can download the whitepaper here http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/images/3/Merch/whitepaper/controlling_costs_white_paper.pdf