News and Events

BT Strike - Alternatives

With Ian Livingstone BT chief executive of awarding himself a massive bonus whilst asking BT engineers to take a lower than inflation pay deal it is looking even more likely that the result of the strike ballot called by the Communications Workers Union will be in favour of downing tools in August. BT has a monopoly in the "last mile" of telephone lines and so a strike will leave all "normal" users of the telephone network including the internet at risk whether they subscribe via BT or not.

 

Any industrial action would mean that reported faults on phone lines and broadband services would take a lot longer to fix, and could leave small businesses and households without phone and internet services for a long period.

Customers of BT get a serious fault on average every 18 months. This means that there is an 8% chance in the first month of the strike that customers will have a fault which may not be fixed. BT is planning to deploy middle management to help solve any problems. It is unlikely that middle management will take on the commitment of the engineer featured in the latest edition of the BT magazine pictured below.

David Hill, Chairman of Cloud Net says that his company can offer small businesses a robust alternative to BT so that companies can avoid being reliant on the telecoms giant and its thousands of unhappy workers.

"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 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" communications companies don't seem the most reliable."

So what are the small business owners' choices? Cloud Net can provide a greater degree of resilience than telecoms giants as its telephone 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.

Consider what could happen if there is a fault on a BT ISDN line, which many small businesses use, all company phones die and there are few options to reconnect quickly if no engineers are available.

Cloud Net's phone system uses the internet and allows users to make and take calls anywhere there is a broadband connection. If one connection goes down, then users can take their phones and plug them into an alternative broadband line, for example an additional line in their office. Alternatively users can take the phones home and plug it into their home broadband service and work there for the day. This means that users will still have use their usual office phone numbers and all the switchboard features they are used to, including the ability to transfer calls within the business.

If users want to benefit from Cloud Net, then there is no guarantee that BT will allow the porting of numbers away during the strike - so now is the time to act.

Cloud Net will still be able to configure systems in the period of a strike but may not be able to transfer numbers - so new users would have to use new telephone numbers which would not be ideal.

There are other options from Cloud Net as well to help small businesses survive the BT strike. Cloud Net will divert any call to any phone anywhere with no divert fee and also provides a live answering service to field any incoming calls.

"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," says Charles Chance, MD of Cloud Net.

For further information, please visit, www.cloudnetuk.com, call 01922 21 33 33 or email solutions@cloudnetuk.com

-ENDS-

About Cloud Net
Cloud Net supplies business phone systems to SMEs and start ups with the advantage of no capital expenditure necessary to run a professional PBX and dramatically lower running costs. Cloud Net has developed a dedicated small business VoIP network providing free calls within the network. The company has a happy and growing customer base. Cloud Net is privately financed and started trading in March 2009.

Cloud Net call charges

Landline UK
Tariff (up to 4 phones) 1.2p per minute
Standard Tariff (Between 5-20 phones) 1.0p per minute
Standard Tariff (Over 21+ phones) 0.9p per minute

Mobile UK
Tariff (up to 4 phones) 9.5p per minute
Standard Tariff (Between 5-20 phones) 9.2p per minute
Standard Tariff (Over 21+ phones) 9.0p per minute

Contact for media information
For more information, to review Cloud Net services or for case studies, please contact Ranbir Sahota or Sara Pennant of Vitis Tech PR agency, on 0121 242 8048, ranbir@vitispr.com or sara@vitispr.com