With the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continuing to take its’ toll on society during our third run of lockdown, some internet users are finding it more difficult than ever to stay connected.
A study from Citizens Advice found that more than a sixth of UK households are struggling to pay broadband bills due to using it so much being at home, and essentially leaving them cut off from the services, and in turn the rest of the world. It was found that ‘Towards the end of last year, an estimated 2.3 million people had fallen behind on their broadband bill’, and this is only set to get worse as large comms providers seem to be overlooking the advice to offer lower tariffs.
Over the last year, millions of brits have been placed on furlough, particularly those within the hospitality and retail industry, and being locked down at home day in day out means that they are already disconnected from friends and family. Many of us have found solace in the ability to host zoom calls and take part in virtual events, but such things cannot be done without a reliable, affordable internet connection.
As the times change and technology becomes a more integral part of our daily lives, it can be seen as one of the most essential services available to society for a number of reasons, and no one should be without.
At SCG, we pride ourselves on providing only the best to our customers at remarkable prices. Please get in touch to find out more about how we can help – we can’t wait to hear from you.
One of the interesting aspects looking back on my ten years in the telecommunications business is that today, the main service that I was working with at the outset is becoming an endangered species…
Back when I first started in the industry, the UK had 10 million landline numbers being used by domestic and commercial premises from Shetland to Lands End, and everywhere in between. Since then we have seen that number dwindle by 35% to just 6.4 million numbers.
Interestingly, the number of landlines has decreased and to boot the number of calls that are made over those landlines has fallen by 50% in that period.
With minutes of calls made over mobile networks increasing from 132 billion in 2012 to 148 billion now, is it any surprise that companies are looking to ditch their traditional phone systems altogether?
There are some great options now in the marketplace to move landline numbers into the Cloud and make use of the ability to take your office phone with you when you leave, using your mobile. If signal is an issue, SCG has you covered with our unique network guarantee.
If you’d like to discuss this or any other aspect of your telecommunications, all you have to do is call our team on 0131 445 2846.
It is no secret that businesses are becoming increasingly reliant on a good connectivity solution as data usage in the UK more than doubles every two years. A poor internet connection can quickly reduce business productivity and efficiency, ultimately impacting our economy.
The Government has hit their Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) target and 95% of UK properties now have access to this connectivity, meaning a far superior speed and reliability experience compared to traditional broadband services running wholly via copper.
FTTC connections still involve the use of the old copper network to connect a premises to its local cabinet, next generation Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) or ‘full fibre’ however, removes the legacy copper network from the equation. The capabilities of FTTP go far beyond what can be provided over existing copper-based services and is able to provide gigabit services (that’s much faster than FTTC). Removing the copper portion also increases reliability and resilience, giving businesses the certainty they need to grow.
According to the Government’s Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review, UK coverage for next generation Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) – or ‘full fibre’ – is currently only 4%. The Government is investing £30 billion to increase coverage to 100% by 2033 so you will have access to this service in the future, if you are not one of the lucky few who already has it. This article detailing how Openreach are investing in new technology shows just how seriously the fibre roll-out is being taken by everybody involved.
Whatever the connectivity availability in your area and your requirements as a business, 2 Circles has the perfect solution for you. As experts in helping our customers benefit from additional Government grants to upgrade their connectivity, you can be sure that you are receiving the best products at the best pricing.
Contact us on 03456 200 200 to find out more.
One of the fastest-growing areas of the telecoms industry is mobile data, specifically with regard to ‘things’ or ‘machines’ that use sim cards.
The phrases “internet of things (IoT)” or “machine to machine sims (M2M)” are now becoming known by the general public, not just by us telecoms nerds!
Well-known ‘things’ that carry sim cards vary from traffic lights to Amazon Click-and-Collect machines. In the 3rd sector, M2M technology has now led to a radical change in how people can donate to charities. One of the most novel uses is displayed by a charity in Cardiff, who allow passers-by at their city centre shop to donate by tapping their debit/credit card on the shop window! A simple tap on contactless payment device in the window and you’ve donated £3! This makes donating to charities much more accessible in a time when charities need to be savvy about the way they market to – and gain donations from – the general public.
If your charity could benefit from contactless payments, please contact Ali Marshall on 0131 300 0102.
This is not a new story (in fact, I wrote about it last year too), but at this time of year with offices being closed for extended periods, it is the most relevant story you should be reading in the lead up to Christmas.
Telecom Fraud is still a relatively unknown phenomenon, however you should be aware of the following headlines regarding cyber crime and fraud;
- 332,570 crimes were reported to Action Fraud.
- £706 million lost by victims.
- 62% of reports were from businesses and 38% from individuals.
Fraudsters generally hack telephone systems over long weekends, to maximise the time they have to rack up huge call costs before the office re-opens and they are discovered. With the majority of offices closing for over a week during the Christmas period, it is the busiest time of year for fraudsters to commit their crimes.
Were you aware that businesses are liable for any costs that are amounted due to telecoms fraud?
What can you do to prevent this?
There are several steps you can take to lock down your telephone systems. Speak to your telephone maintainers to ensure all remote access is locked down and not set up with standardised admin passwords. You can also set up international call bars to high-risk destinations, set daily spend limits and alerts for any out-of-the ordinary call traffic.
W offer services such as Voice Safe and VoIP Safe that will assist our clients by covering the cost of fraudulent activity up to the sum of £10,000.00. Please get in touch with your account manager to discuss these options, or for any further information regarding telecom fraud.
Land Rover has returned to the mobile phone market with a new smartphone that will suit those looking for a rugged phone that can survive a drop or a dunking and can be used whilst wearing gloves… This is less Evoke and more Defender or less Hunter and more Aigle!
The farming community have a long-term love affair with Land Rovers and these handsets will compete directly with the CAT range of Smartphones, which have proved very popular across our customer base over the last couple of years.
For the style conscious who may like the look of a Range Rover Sport, this phone is more substance over style, despite incorporating just a hint of the iconic Land Rover styling.
Whatever your mobile handset requirements, we have the perfect solution. Contact us on 0131 445 2846 for more information.
Adventures require technology, but while there are a handful of rugged phones available, most smartphones are slippery, terrible in freezing conditions, and lacking in the battery power required to fuel their feeble GPS skills. Cue the Land Rover Explore, an Android handset that contains a lot of unique outdoor tech It includes a proximity sensor, compass, accelerometer, gyroscope, barometer, a GPS patch antenna and a 4,000mAh battery that can be almost doubled with a clip-on module that comes with the phone.
As previous articles have highlighted, Openreach will be switching off the digital phone network – known as ISDN – in 2025, and will no longer be providing new installs or support from 2020 onwards. Businesses using this old technology will need to make the switch before then, and over 50% of businesses in the UK have already done so. Openreach will also be extending this switch-off to their PSTN, or analogue line, services meaning ALL voice phone lines will need to be moved to VoIP.
Openreach are now in dialogue with service providers like us on how best to help businesses move to the new VoIP solutions to ensure no customers are left behind by carriers not pro-actively advising their clients on the implications of the switch-off.
SCG has been providing VoIP services since 2009 and we are well placed to advise businesses when and how to make the switch smoothly. If you have ISDN lines, or aren’t sure if you do, then please get in touch on 03456 200 222.
“Openreach, Britain’s digital network business, today launched a consultation with its Communications Provider (CP) customers and industry groups about the move from analogue telephony to digital voice services. The consultation will help prepare the industry for the upgrade to ‘Voice Over IP’ technology and the withdrawal of wholesale products and services that run over the traditional analogue telephone network – which is due to close in 2025.”
As the nation struggled under the burden of The Beast from the East, many of us in metropolitan areas were able to keep working due to good use of Cloud services for accessing emails and the use of hosted phone systems to work from elsewhere.
As the extremity of the weather that we see seems to increase year on year, spare a thought for businesses in rural locations who are continuing to genuinely struggle with poor broadband provision.
I was very interested to read The Scotsman Article yesterday concerning Glencoe Mountain Ski Resort – a resort that, by popular local repute, on a good day can be as good as skiing in Colorado!
Despite having a full fibre local area network, up and down the hills, they are so poorly served by broadband that their business is materially affected. There are options available, but at a high cost, and if rural businesses are to be capable of operating on a level playing field with their Metropolitan cousins, more must be done!
“At the moment we’re relying solely on mobile data to take card payments, send emails, do everything, because the [landline] connection we get from BT is so bad. We get a maximum of 0.2 mbps [megabytes per second] on old copper lines that run through one of the oldest exchanges in the country at the King’s House Hotel. If we lose our mobile signal we’re basically just dead in the water. We can’t do emails, we can’t do payroll, we can’t do anything.”
It’s time to ‘Flip the Iceberg’
Back in 2009 when I began with 2Circles, the country was bouncing back from a worldwide fiscal crisis and the priority for the majority of businesses I spoke to was: ‘Save money, cut costs’.
Helping businesses drive down their monthly telecom spend was the priority, and the value of investing in new technology, along with the complete lack of affordable fast broadband products meant looking at anything else except ‘cutting costs’ was lost both on the customer and I.
Fast forward to 2017 and, although the Brexit bombshell may be stifling some businesses, on the whole things look much rosier and with such dramatic changes in the telecoms landscape, the priorities for business have changed considerably. Yes, businesses are always keen to cut costs, but with the improvements in internet connectivity and reliability, the areas where these cost savings are being seen have typically been below the surface. I have written previous posts about the value of a high-quality, guaranteed broadband service and the power of our cloud-managed Meraki firewall devices but in some cases the true value of these services is often overlooked as the solutions are often looked at in isolation. Decisions are made without factoring in the other areas you would cut cost like the reduced IT support contracts required, the savings cloud-based solutions offer over the existing cumbersome and energy-heavy onsite servers – not to mention replacement costs when they go bang and the time-cost to your business.
Having a secure reliable, monitored connection also means less downtime on your broadband meaning the days of the significant time-cost of staff not able to work without internet connectivity are gone too.
Yes, better broadband and cloud managed services do cost more than your ‘off the shelf’ broadband products, and arranging a private fibre connection does cost more, however it’s time to flip the iceberg and ensure that the additional costs of NOT having a guaranteed and monitored connection are a thing of the past.
What has Tequila and Tacos got to do with WiFi and 4G Calling? Well it may be a bit tenuous but bear with me…
I was recently lucky enough to attend a most fantastic charity event. We gathered together a group of fun-loving people and were offered a superb talk on Tequila, (the good stuff, not the one that you slam back and regret the next day). There was a Burrito van offering the most wonderful food, 500+ pints from a local brewery and a marquee full of tequila, oh yes and a rodeo bull and a bungee run inflatable, all in the name of Charity – what could possibly go wrong?
Not much; the event was a huge success and raised large amounts of money for a very valuable cause. And as we looked out at the beautiful view from the stunning rural host location, you could almost excuse all the mobile networks for having such limited coverage; some even said that it was refreshing. I, however, got on my high horse (rodeo bull) and explained that there was no excuse as WiFi calling was available and that on my phone (on the O2 network), I could even pick up the host’s WiFi. So, after negotiating the WiFi access (I am sure that you can imagine the challenge: one Tequila, two Tequila, Three Tequila – FLOOR! Well, we had three Tequilas to taste in the official tasting!), I was finally on the WiFi and smug that I had enlightened the group. I exclaimed, “WiFi and 4G calling is here – see!”. My reward was a Tequila – FLOOR!
We’re delighted to announce that we’ve switched on WiFi and 4G Calling, giving our customers yet another way to stay connected with O2.
The service is currently available on O2 for iPhone 7, 7 Plus, 6S, 6S Plus and SE. It’s also available on Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 edge and Sony Xperia XZ Premium devices that are using the O2 firmware variant.
What is WiFi and 4G Calling?
WiFi Calling uses any available WiFi connection to help you make and receive calls. It’s perfect for when customers don’t have a phone signal but do have a WiFi connection e.g. O2 WiFi, home or office broadband. Although the free TU Go app offers O2 customers the ability to make calls over WiFi, WiFi Calling means no app is needed – just dial a number as normal.
4G Calling means customers can make high-definition calls over the O2 4G network. This can bring benefits like better quality voice calls, a faster call set-up, better indoor coverage and longer battery life. It also means customers can make a 4G call and get online using 4G at the same time.
WiFi and 4G Calling also work together, meaning a call made over WiFi will continue over 4G seamlessly if your customer loses their wifi signal and they’re in a 4G Calling supported area. And however they make the call, a minute is a minute – there are no extra charges from O2. 4G calls won’t use a customer’s data allowance.
Customers can use WiFi Calling wherever there’s WiFi coverage. 4G Calling is currently available in Belfast, Bradford, Coventry, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield and Slough. More cities will be added in the coming months until O2 reach national coverage wherever they currently have 4G data service.
“The launch of Wifi Calling gives customers the option of making and receiving calls over Wi-Fi even if they can’t connect to the mobile network, whilst 4G Calling provides our customers with clearer calls and better indoor coverage over our fast 4G network. Both of these work together to provide a seamless, uninterrupted experience and less dropped calls when moving between the two. Customers can use Wifi Calling wherever there’s Wi-Fi coverage, while 4G Calling will initially be available in Belfast, Bradford, Coventry, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield and Slough. To find out more about O2’s Wifi and 4G Calling rollout, visit o2.co.uk/connectivity/wifi-and-4g-calling. What devices are compatible? Apple iPhone 7, 7plus, 6S, 6S plus & SE Samsung S7 & S7 Edge Sony Xperia XZ Premium”
It staggers me that IT and Telecommunications, which are now an integral part of how modern day business is run today, are the only services that are expected to get cheaper every year and the only services that businesses are happy to cut corners on to save an extra £10 per month.
The recent BA outage highlights the importance of working with the right company to provide the right solution even if it means spending more money.
When looking at your next IT and Telecommunications supplier ask yourself not ‘How much can I save here?’ but ‘Have I got the right solution for my business, how much would it cost me if I lost communications for 3 days and how much would I pay for the services to be fixed there and then?’
Then decide if that additional saving is really worth it…
“While it is too early to quantify the cost to BA of its IT outage, a similar problem at Delta led the US airline last September to cut its profitability guidance for the third quarter. At the time it said the knock-on effects of the IT outage would cut its pre-tax income by $150m.”
📷https://www.ft.com/content/36f5f2dc-43af-11e7-8d27-59b4dd6296b8
With the recent spate of hacks affecting businesses across the globe, most notably a number of NHS trusts, the Scottish Business Resilience Centre has offered advice on how to protect your business against this. Simple steps such as updating your operating system software and making sure your anti-virus is up to date are great places to start.
Other things to monitor are back-ups of all your data so if your data IS encrypted, you have another copy elsewhere which can be restored. These backups can be on-site, or cloud-based solutions and your IT company can offer advice on the best solution for your business.
Although the hackers quite often use email and ‘social engineering’ to access your networks, one area often overlooked is ensuring that the hackers can’t gain access to your network simply by dialling in through your broadband! Just as a burglar would have a tough time if you had a secure front door, there are solutions you can implement which will stop them gaining access to your network in the first place.
Our managed firewall solutions can help to protect against the hackers gaining access to your network be it in the office, at home, or on the road. As more and more businesses are moving to a BYOD (bring your own device) model, our firewall solutions come with mobile device management solutions that allow you to protect not only your internal network, but also the mobiles you hand out to staff members, wherever they go! The below image shows just some of the features which can be controlled and monitored.
So when you lock the door at the office or your home tonight, consider how secure the door is on your network, and should you double-check it.
“A cyber-security body has urged Scottish companies to update their IT systems in the wake of Friday’s ransomware attack”
