Author: matt

For once, when we talk about lines going down, in the case of Paddington Station and the Great Western Railways on this occasion we do not mean telephone lines.

On Wednesday 17th several hundred metres of overhead power lines apparently came adrift, causing a cancellation of all services into London Paddington station. For many 10,000s of travellers heading into the city from the west, including Slough, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury etc, the result was a major problem. Just from a mobile telecoms perspective, Vodafone, O2 and Three are headquartered along that very route.

Then the following Wednesday 24th London Euston also experienced a signal failure which once again seriously affected routes in and out, having a major impact on business and, of course, social travellers.

From a business perspective, what can we learn from these incidents and how can we ensure we maintain business continuity (BC) when major events threaten to impact our ability to access our workplace or even do our job?

Businesses are increasingly taking a ‘whole company’ view and also exploring how individual key staff members can be kept connected when circumstances conspire to offer otherwise.

The real key in our opinion rests in the phrase ‘work is a thing that you do as opposed to a place that you go’  and so many of the very best BC solutions lie in mobility and remote working.

Some popular options include:-

• Video Conferencing. We are all familiar with FaceTime and these days businesses can also benefit from similar solutions. These are available not only via Microsoft options (Skype for Business/Office 365) but also via many communications specialist options such as Webex, Avaya Equinox and many more.
• Connecting your mobile device to the company telephone system via a dedicated mobile app – e.g. UCS mobile for Ericsson-LG, One X or Equinox for Avaya and the mobile app available on our Gamma Horizon Hosted offering. These are fabulous in that they also offer additional Unified Communication features such as:- availability (presence), instant messages and an ability to group call or group message from your smartphone device – very cool!
• Providing users with work connectivity (company funded business broadband) and perhaps even a company telephone handset at home, connected via a secure VPN.
• Or perhaps a softphone on users’ laptops, with a suitable headset, turning a laptop into a business telephone when connected to home or external (secure) WiFi. Again Ericsson-LG offer their UCS product, Avaya offer Equinox and Gamma Horizon their softphone app.
• Finally, once you have the above in place it’s very easy to enable your phone system to automatically re-route incoming calls to your remote colleagues without the need for reception or your primary call handler having to take calls and field messages on their behalf. Simple, professional and efficient.

So, the next time the lines go down (train that is), or your team are suffering from the wrong signals (ha ha), why not be ahead of the curve and have them already enabled for business as usual, taking stress out of their day and helping them to deliver your cracking customer experience to colleagues and clients alike.

If you’d like to know what options might be available for your business why not drop us a line (bad pun I know) at sales@evoketelecom.local or your smile as you dial 01509 278278 and have a chat with our sales guys ‘n’ gals.

We have zoomed into the month enjoying the fresh air, glorious Autumn landscape and peace and tranquillity of the kids being back at school 😊

We have enjoyed working with some super new customers in September in the hospitality, food and retail industries whilst having a jolly good catch up with our lovely existing customers post-holiday season. We have been delighted with all the positive messages, and in the main, we can report that UK plc is in wonderful health. What is more (and we’re not going to use that ‘B’ word here you’ll be pleased to know) there is a definite air of optimism around what new trade opportunities the future might bring. I’m sure like all of us, you have fingers, toes and everything else crossed for a continuation of this wonderful ‘purple patch’.

There seems to be a lot in the news at the moment about 5G from the mobile network providers. Indeed Vodafone recently made a hologram call between Manchester and their Newbury Head Office. But what does it all mean? To help a little we have included an article on Digital Britain which we hope will in some part demystify this popular topic.

Last month we shared just how busy schools and colleges had kept us during the kiddies’ summer break. We thought that with the return to school things might quieten down a bit, but nothing could be further from the truth. Our safe-schools campaign continues to go from strength to strength as we focus on helping schools up and down the country with their safe schools strategy. It is already clear that October half term and even the Christmas break are going to be very busy indeed for our engineering teams, but more about this next month.

Read our September updates here:

• Customer Corner – Best Western Mount Pleasant Hotel
• Evoke Informer
  • New Rules for Mobile Billing
  • Ericsson-LG End of Sale Notice (some older phone system models)
  • Digital Britain
  • Foldable tech
  • The unusual and slightly quirky Plantronics Elara 60

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Each month we email out our updates which include sneak previews of the latest comms technology, exciting case studies on how we’ve employed different solutions for our customers, important updates which may impact your own communications, business and communications tips, competitions and offers.

Click here to see our past editions and subscribe to future editions. 

OK, so let’s be honest, we’ve seen this before haven’t we? I don’t know about you, but I had the wonderful folding Ericsson with the flip and the cool blue screen when it was first launched. And of course, who can forget the ice cool Motorola Razr V3?

When it comes to larger devices, well I don’t know about you, but my laptop folds closed, and my iPad has a keyboard that closes around it to offer protection?

So, what is the big deal about FOLDABLES?

Well, this area is simply massive and a game changer if you ask the major smartphone and tablet manufacturers. If you look at the two mobile phones above the main things that stand out are how small the screen size is and how the hinge creates a definite break point between screen and keyboard. Pretty much the same with laptops and tablets two. The phone, laptop, tablet becomes a device of two halves.

Of course, as we all know, smartphone and tablet surfaces are getting larger. This is driven by the increased use of smart devices for more than simply talk and text. They are now used for a wide variety of business and social requirements, from mirroring a PowerPoint presentation to watching an episode of your current favourite box set on Netflix. But as devices get larger they become increasingly impractical. So, is folding tech the answer? For sure a foldaway phone will not only provide a larger working screen but will also provide additional protection for the screen.

Rumoured to be coming to market as early as 2019, Samsung appear to be currently winning the race to launch the first device. Analysts are expecting the new product to join the current ‘Galaxy’ family ~ catchy names such as the Galaxy ‘X’ or perhaps the Galaxy ‘Wing’ have been rumoured.

But don’t expect the first handsets to be cheap. With screen sizes of up to 17 or 18 cms the new devices will need extremely powerful batteries, whilst remaining slim when folded and light to carry. As we all know, new tech comes at a prices and the anticipated price for the first launch models is anticipated to be somewhere in the $1500 dollars region – ouch!!

So, watch this space and Evoke will keep you updated as events “unfold” 😊

This is a huge industry hot topic that screams loudly from every piece of telecoms industry press. What is this ‘Digital Britain’ that businesses, suppliers and the government is continually obsessing about?

The concept of Digital Britain envisages the nation joining the ranks of other European countries currently streets ahead in the race to full fibre. According to government figures the UK currently has only four per cent full fibre connections, lagging behind countries like Spain (71 per cent), Portugal (89 per cent) and France (28 per cent).

The targets set out in the Governments Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review (FTIR) has set targets for UK-wide full fibre by 2033 and 5G access by 2027. This ‘full fibre’ promise will replace an aged infrastructure that’s no longer fit for purpose (based on copper wiring) with one that delivers against organisations requirements for speed, capacity and resilience.

What is full fibre?

Full fibre describes an internet connection that is entirely served by a fibre optic cable, from the exchange all the way to your house or business. This is known as Fibre To The Premises (FTTP).

This is not to be confused with one of the present systems, which uses fibre optic cables under the pavements and then a traditional copper cable running from the green box in your street to your premises.

This process, known as Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC), can offer a speed increase but ultimately, it’s putting a plaster over the problem, which is that the internet is still being served by a copper cable.

What is driving this major change?

Technology is now a way of life. From the way we shop and consume media to the way organisations operate and communicate, advancements in technology are changing our daily lives at rapid pace. But with so many services on-demand at our fingertips, we expect everything to be ultrafast. 5G promises to create more reliable and responsive mobile internet connections, enabling the widespread adoption of technologies like 3D video, virtual and augmented reality in apps and services, smart cities and self-driving cars.

At the same time the business environment has been evolving. The UK’s workforce is more mobile than ever before. They expect to be productive wherever they are, work smarter and remain effective. But to do so they need the tools that allow them to stay connected and work from anywhere.

It’s not just mobility that’s changing. Openreach’s announcement on completely closing the PSTN network by 2025 (Analogue/Digital lines) changes the dynamic for UK organisations. Everyone will need to migrate to an IP voice service. This means catering for customers that may have many barriers to becoming ‘all IP’. The Evoke team have been discussing some of these challenges with our customers over the last few months.

What challenges have we identified within our customer base?

1. Main or satellite/branch location not currently able to support IP services (ADSL only – no FTTC/FTTP)
2. Old cabling that either can’t be replaced due to age/protection of building or the expense of re-wiring large buildings/campus environments with new cabling (CAT5/6).
3. Budget constraints around replacement of old legacy telephony system that doesn’t support IP.
4. The myth that you must replace your digital phones to move to IP. On this note we have just exposed on business media a company who were targeting UK business by using this myth as a selling tactic. One of our customers alerted us to this when they received a very pushy and confusing call.

At Evoke we will help you to understand and embrace all the upcoming changes at your own pace. We will keep our customers abreast of the mandatory changes within the technology space whilst ensuring all existing assets are maximised in terms of lifecycle and investment. Here’s a few ideas that could be used to help our customers on their ‘own pace’ journey.

If you would like to know more about how Evoke can help you understand the impact and benefits of any of our September Informer topics, pick up the phone or email one of our super sales team on 01509 278278 or sales@evoketelecom.local.

If you have any of the following Ericsson-LG Systems, please be advised that from the end of December 2018 Ericsson-LG will no longer support software licence downloads for LIK, eMG80 P1, ipLDK and AriaSOHO systems. Licence swaps will be supported through to June 2020. This will protect you in the event of a system failure that requires a replacement main server.

You may purchase licenses for these systems through to the end of December 2018.

End of Sale Summary:

For all our existing Evoke customers, we will contact you individually if this affects you and discuss all options with you. For all other customers, please do give us a call if you need any help or advice on this notification.

*Please Note* This EoS notice does not affect Evoke’s ability to maintain your existing system, it will just mean that from December 2018, you will no longer be able to expand/add on to your existing system if it is one of the model numbers listed.

As many will be aware, BT are raising prices again, with new prices taking affect in just a few weeks’ time on 1st October (2018).

If you still have your telephone lines, telephone calls and other associated products with BT, you should have been notified already, probably by a note on a recent bill, or perhaps via letter or email directly from BT or perhaps your BT Local Business provider?

However, if you have missed this notification here is a link that will take you to the list for all the services that will be affected:

https://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/44306/?s_cid=btb_FURL_october18prices

We understand that sometimes this information can be rather fulsome and on occasion time consuming to trawl your way through. But do not worry, we are happy to help and will gladly work through your services for you and explain what the increases might mean for your business bottom line.

Don’t forget, if you are thinking about moving, you can of course email us a copy of your most recent bill and we will do a free of charge comparison with Evoke Telecom rates and tell you exactly how much you might be able to save! What have you got to lose?

So, why pay more, when you can move to Evoke Telecom for your telephone lines and calls, plus of course for your broadband services? You can then invest the savings that you will undoubtedly make, elsewhere in your business. Now that sounds like good business sense.

Why not let the team help you now? You know the drill, all you need to do is email us or send a copy of your latest bill to sales@evoketelecom.local or smile (before the prices go up of course) whilst you dial the team on 01509 278278.

In recent months Evoke Telecom have seen a massive increase in demand for headsets. What are the benefits of using a headset instead of (or in many cases as well as) a handset?

The first and most common requirement is for teams where typing is necessary, (or database look ups on a PC or laptop) whilst on a telephone call.  Craning a telephone receiver between chin and shoulder has become an office art form – but for many it often leads to a sore neck and general discomfort. Not to mention the heat during our current wave of wonderful weather.

For others a headset helps to drown out distracting office noise whilst on a telephone call “sorry could you please repeat that” is often not popular with a caller when it is said for the 3^rd time!

Another good reason for a headset, when wireless, is that it provides the option to walk around when on a call, rather than being fixed for a long period to your seat. OUR ENGINEERS can often be found in corridors, or between racking in the kit stores, whilst on a call. After all, ALL DAY is a long time to be in your seat at your desk isn’t it?

Finally, the other popular need is for when you need a connection to your laptop or PC – probably the most popular need of all, when using video conferencing, a soft phone on your PC, Skype – or just listening to a recording or perhaps some soothing music whilst you work.

But why would you need to talk to the experts? After all, headsets are headsets, right?

Well, actually there are literally 1,000s of headsets to choose from:

• Hundreds of manufacturers
• Many different types
• One ear (monaural) or two ears (binaural)
• Wireless or wired
• Laptop, telephone handset, or general Bluetooth connected.
• Business grade, general none business standard.
• Do they need noise cancelling technology included?
• £25.00 each or £300.00 each and what is the difference.

I’m sure you are starting to get the idea – headsets are a massively complex industry with a bewildering choice that can often be confusing and difficult to navigate.

To help, below are some of the headsets our customers have chosen in June and in introduction to the headsets that we use ourselves at Evoke Telecom.

Well in June – far and away most popular were:-

Jabra 930 Pro USB – very popular in office and contact centre environments for connection into the users laptop or PC. One customer took a top up consignment of more than 50 this month.

Also very popular with our Ericsson-LG and Avaya users are the Agent AG-2 headsets with bottom cords – for connection into their desk phones. These are proving to be high quality, high specification, and with a 2 year warranty, extremely good value.

So what headsets do we use in our offices?

Well despite having handsets with wireless / Bluetooth receivers, there are often times on calls and conference calls where we need both hands. Under those circumstances we use our Plantronics headsets.

…and when we are on video conferences, listening to things on our laptops and PCs ~ or simply relaxing with some music whilst we work we use these rather funky Jabra Evolve 40s.

For this month’s main topic in Evoke informer, we have taken an article by Nigel Dunn at Jabra to review the merits of working from home as seen from some headset manufacturers prospective.  

The home office is considered to be the most productive workspace in 2018, according to research by Jabra. The global survey of business professionals in the U.S., U.K., Germany and France found that nearly one in three U.K. employees considers working from home to be the most productive. Yet strangely the majority are not allowed to. This highlights that U.K. businesses still have a long way to go in providing flexible working options for their employees.

Nigel Dunn, managing director of EMEA North at Jabra points out that to be productive, employees need to be able to concentrate.

“That’s not always possible in today’s busy, open-plan environments where distractions abound. It could be colleagues coming up to ask questions, meetings that fall right when you’ve got into the ‘zone’ or merely the general hubbub of day-to-day office life. There is also the fact that the strict office working regime often isn’t conducive to productive working. Not everyone works best between the fixed hours of 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., with many employees preferring to work early in the morning or late at night.”

Dunn argues that there is an outdated belief that every employer is deaf to its workers’ arguments about homeworking.

“Many businesses are looking for any opportunity to increase productivity and if employees can prove that they work better at home, then most sensible managers will at least explore the option.” 

However, Dunn added that homeworking was far from commonplace.

“A large part of that is down to issues of trust. It’s understandable that employers might be nervous about surrendering oversight of their workers, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Today’s technologies mean that it’s easy to check in and communicate with employees who aren’t in the office; they also enable workers to collaborate with each other no matter where they are.”

The survey also explored what hindered productivity in the workplace where noise was considered the number one deterrent to productivity, with the most annoying type of noise for office workers the sound of colleagues talking to each other in their direct vicinity. Unsurprisingly, given advances in technology, the workforce has become more mobile in 2018. A higher number of people claim that more time is spent away from their primary workplace. In the U.K., on average almost half a working day is spent away from the desk at the office, be it walking around (13%) or driving to places (9%).

Dunn believes that as homeworking increases, workspaces need to be rationalised.

“That means businesses have to support mobile workers whenever they drop into the office, with a balance of open plan and meeting areas/rooms for smaller meetings, one-to-one chats or as spaces where someone can find peace and quiet to concentrate on their work.”

Thank you to Nigel Dunn at Jabra for this article.

If you would like to talk to our sales team about this article, or options around home and mobile working options, then please feel free to  email us at sales@evoketelecom.local or smile whilst you dial 01509 278278.

Following a recent audit of broadband across our base of customers,  we established that only 31% of them had more than 1 broadband connection. So, by default that means that the other 69% are wholly dependent upon the performance and availability of a single connection to run their business.

But, why is that a concern, why might that be important?

We’ve all heard the one about the digger going through the cable, or the local BT exchange kit going down…. But surely that never happens, or does it? Well, do you know what, it does as you can see below, where both of these events have happened to our customers over the last 12 months:-

An outage experienced just 4 weeks ago by a customer on 30th May 2018 due to a trencher going through a cable connected to one of our customers in Gloucestershire.

July last year we had another circuit go down when cooling kit failed at a BT Exchange near Luton in Bedfordshire. In that instance our customer lost their internet between Friday and Monday.

In both cases I’m pleased to say that our customers had secondary failover broadband in place and so had the ability to continue their business operations whilst network repairs took place.

But, as we become more and more dependent upon internet and cloud services, more dependent upon increased bandwidth and in many cases dependent upon our broadband link for our telephone calls. What would you do if you had a serious outage of your broadband services?

So, ask yourself, what would happen if my internet had a serious service effecting incident? How would it impact my business? How much would a secondary internet connection cost and how does that compare to the financial impact that no internet service might have on my business?

A prediction? By this time next year 69% of our customers will have a secondary broadband line and the other 31%? …. Well they will be waiting for theirs to be installed.

If you would like to talk to our sales team about this article, or your broadband diversity option email us at sales@evoketelecom.local or smile whilst you dial 01509 278278.

Using Unified Communications

Nice and simple, we thought that we might share this latest infographic from Avaya. There is a lot of reference to mobility and remote working, which is a hot topic in our newsletter this month with more articles further down. So, take a look and see what you think.