Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

Yes, you can save money on your AT&T bill.  If you do what I do, you can do likewise and I believe the same principles apply for other service providers like Verizon, Comcast, DirectTV, TimeWarner, etc.

1.  Call AT&T and ask them to review your bill and tell them that you need to save money.  Depending on your service area and depending on the day you call, there will generally be some type of  special offering.  

2.  Ask for something for free to keep you as a customer.  Do your homework.  I just got 3 free months of HBO, just for asking.  Shop around with offers from competitors and tell the person at the other end that you have a competing offer.  Make sure it’s true and make sure it’s comparable and / or better than AT&T’s offering.

3.  Have a set goal of 20%.  Assume you are spending $100 per month on your service, a $20 savings may not seems like a lot, but when you add it up, it comes to $240 per year.  When you calculate what it takes you "earn" $240, based on your tax bracket, it could be a gross amount of $300 per year or more.

4.  As a rule, AT&T’s offerings expire – and expire automatically every six months.  AT&T is not going to call you to remind you to renew your offering.  Remember, they expire.  So, put your expiration date in your calendar and call them the day after your offer expires and tell them you want to renew, or get another savings offering that is equal to or better than your present offer.  

AT&T is a terrific company with a great service offering, but I think they are dumb for not reaching out to customers when service offerings expire.  It would be a real PR coup for them, but someone inside AT&T who makes the decisions to do otherwise.

Give it a try and remember that your milage may vary.  Be diligent and be prepared to cut them off and move elsewhere if they don’t save you money.  The cost of replacing you as a customer is high.  It’s called customer acquisition.  

If you get a call center agent who does not budge, ask for customer retention and try this approach.  Let me know how it goes with a comment on this blog or an email to:  alan at weinkrantz dot com.

Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

Source: www.voip-news.com

There is a new tool available for commercial maritime operators that can add an additional dedicated VoIP telephone line specifically for crew calling on KVH’s maritime VoIP services. The mini-VSAT Broadband Crew Calling System from KVH Industries

“In the highly competitive commercial maritime industry, offering affordable communications is an easy and effective step to help attract new crew members, improve crew efficiency and satisfaction, and reduce the costs incurred by crew turnover,” explained Brent C. Bruun, KVH’s vice president of sales and business development. “In a recent survey by ShipTalk, Ltd., professional mariners ranked access to a telephone as the second most important facility to have on board a vessel. By adding our crew calling option to a new or existing TracPhone V7 system, vessel owners and operators will take full advantage of their mini-VSAT Broadband service connection while enjoying the benefits to crew morale and retention rates that come when crew members are able to stay in touch with friends and family anywhere on the globe.”

According to KVH:

Adding the crew calling option is a simple process. A dedicated Crew Calling Gateway is connected to the TracPhone V7, thereby establishing a link for a dedicated crew calling phone. Crew members will be able to purchase a calling card from the ship’s captain or buy minutes directly from KVH via credit card. They will then be able to place calls anywhere in the world via this dedicated phone while the ship’s business is handled via the two enhanced VoIP lines that come standard with mini-VSAT Broadband service.

Together with the KVH TracPhone V7, the mini-VSAT Broadband service comprises the first end-to-end 24-inch VSAT hardware, service, and support package available for maritime communications. The mini-VSAT Broadband service currently offers Voice over IP telephone and Internet access as fast as 512 Kbps (upload) and 2 Mbps (download) at fixed monthly rates to mariners throughout North America, the Caribbean, the North Atlantic, Europe, the Northern Pacific, and the Persian Gulf. KVH also recently announced an agreement with SP-JSAT to expand mini-VSAT Broadband coverage into Asia Pacific waters and the Indian Ocean.

Source: www.voip-news.com

World Discount Telecommunications is going to deploy Stratus Telecommunications’s ENTICE telecommunications platform. WDT offers landline and mobile long distance services as well as residential VoIP. The company has chosen the technology to simplify the management of different technical platforms by combining them into one, which will also help reduce the costs of operation.

“WDT laid out a clear road map for changing their network infrastructure, and they wisely did their due diligence based on the entire plan rather than taking a piecemeal approach. That led them directly to our ENTICE platform,” said Nathan Franzmeier, President of Stratus Telecom. “Our end-to-end integration delivers the streamlined administration and one-stop source they were looking for, and it remains a major ENTICE competitive advantage for the market at large.”

According to the companies:

The first phase of the project, completed in late 2008, involved installation of clustered ENTICE session controllers to allow more efficient port utilization enabling connectivity to international carriers as well as to handle wholesale routing and billing. The ENTICE solution made it possible to mix IP traffic from multiple gateways previously dedicated to calls to and from a single country to provide a unified routing and billing platform.

The second phase, completed in April, added Dialogic’s CSP hardware to allow interconnection of WDT’s ENTICE switch with its Nortel DMS-250 programmable TDM switch. This portion of the project is enabling WDT to cut costs by transitioning TDM traffic from traditional carriers to IP. Configuration and management of the Dialogic hardware are built into the ENTICE interface, yielding additional savings by consolidating ENTICE/Dialogic administration. The Cisco gateways that the Dialogic CSP is replacing had to be programmed separately.

Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

My $99 per month U-verse  plan that gives me the whole enchilada of the U-verse 400 package, 6 MB of Internet and U-verse Voice is expiring in mid-June.  TimeWarner in my market is offering something similar, but not quite as extensive at $99 per month.  Plus TimeWarner will give me a $100 rebate to switch, minus the $40 installation fee, giving me a net rebate of $60 per month.

Having made several calls over the last week, I did manage to negotiate the following:

Everything stays the same, but with the following modifications.

 They offered to keep the plan at $99 if I agreed to go to the U-200 plan.  That meant losing Showtime, HBO and a few other movie channels.  I can do without most of the movie channels, but I really do like HBO.  

The friendly customer service person offered me HBO at $14.95 per month.  I said no.   He countered with $5.00 per month.  I said yes. 

My landline service still costs $25 per month, and I am still on the fence about it.  That’s $300 per year for service I hardly use.  I could use that money to buy a Kindle or just save it.  I kept the land line, but am inclined to kill it.  

For now, I have won a small victory.  What was going to go back to costing me $179 per month, will now cost me $104 per month – minus of course a few movie channels I can live with out.

I have a video that I am making the tracks the conversations with AT&T which I will try to post this week.

I still believe that AT&T offers a better and more comprehensive service than TimeWarner does.  I just was not prepared to pay a massive premium.  

Stay tuned.

Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

I still have until June 11 to make a decision on what to do about my AT&T U-verse service.  

Source: alanweinkrantz.typepad.com

Source: www.voip-news.com

VoIP Watch now covers video too! Andy Abramson is shifting his focus a bit to keep up with his evolving interests.

Smith on VoIP says that the game is changing in the IP communications realm.

Nimbuzz 2.0 has been released and can be used by even more phones. Read about it on Mobile Pakistan’s Blog.

Source: www.voip-news.com

Solectek is going to be providing infrastructure for VoiceNetworkx’s 3.65 GHz WiMAX deployment in Southern California.

“We have researched the space for almost a year and are very satisfied with the technical analysis and real world deployment capabilities of our partner. But as far as the wireless portion of the deployment, it is settled,” said Malcolm Leal, Ph.D. President and CEO of VoiceNetworkx, Inc. “The proximity and availability of the engineering team at Solectek, the experience and reputation in the market of this company provide a level of business confidence that is unmatched, in our opinion.”

According to VoiceNetworkx:

Installation of the base stations and related infrastructure will begin at selected Points of Presence promptly in accordance with VoiceNetworkx’s deployment schedule. VoiceNetworkx plans to develop 12 Points of Presence along their 100 mile long fiber optic circuit that extends from Hemet, CA to 1 Wilshire, in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

Source: www.voip-news.com

Microsoft’s Tellme has announced three core speech and network innovations that pave the road to cloud-based voice services. The advancements include a rollout of VoIP carrier service that reduces the costs of customer transport, advanced speech services and a new technology for more natural text to speech reading.

“Our goal is to give enterprises technology that improves the customer experience but also affords them the ultimate financial flexibility when deploying voice services,” said Jamie Bertasi, senior director of Business Solutions at Tellme. “From initial deployments we’re seeing impressive cost savings and results that we’re sure our customers will be excited about.”

According to the company:

The new speech services are a result of collaboration between Tellme and Microsoft’s Speech Components Group. These jointly designed technologies will be leveraged to advance natural user interfaces across Microsoft products to benefit billions of customers worldwide. Because Tellme operates as an on-demand service, the new capabilities are immediately available to enterprises across Tellme’s platform. In addition, Tellme is now using these technologies to power its mobile services, including the Windows Mobile 6.5 application announced today.

Tellme is working with Global Crossing on the VoIP service. They are also using a new voice font called Zira for the text to voice improvements.

Source: www.voip-news.com

This is a holy cow moment: According to new research from Light Reading Communications Network and Pyramid Research, there will be 97 percent mobile penetration in Egypt by 2014. That’s a mega increase over 54 percent in 2008. So what’s driving the projected change? Changes in competition.

This has been largely driven by the entry of a third mobile operator, Etisalat Egypt, which has ignited the market with lower prices and innovative services; it was also the first to launch 3G and is investing into upgrading to HSPA,” says Yejide Onabule, analyst and author of the report. “Other operators compete to attract the untapped, lower-income segments, developing very successful low-ARPS business models. This has led to a boom in the number of mobile subscriptions, which grew by 37 percent in 2008. We expect the current rapid growth to persist through the forecast period, with mobile penetration reaching 97 percent by year-end 2014.”

The report, Communications Markets in Egypt, looks at how new technologies including WiMAX and VoIP will spread as well.

Check out an excerpt at http://www.pyr.com/downloads.htm?id=18&sc=PR042309_CIREG

Source: www.voip-news.com

We’ve all heard about the Stimulus Plan that President Obama passed soon into his presidency. But what does the influx of money earmarked for IT development actually mean for IT organizations and how should IT org actually optimize their networks this year? How can you apply for grants for your organization?

These questions and more are going to be addressed in a new webinar slated for today at 1 p.m. EST. Hurry and get in on the action. Click here to sign up.

Here’s the detes:

See how Obama’s stimulus plan is spurring IT opportunity in the Government and Education sectors, and hear real-world stories of how IT organizations are optimizing their broadband and wireless, network infrastructure, energy efficiency and security in ’09:

• Economic Stimulus Plan and IT impact in ‘09
• How IT organizations should optimize their networks in ‘09
• Hear real-world stories of how IT organizations are optimizing their broadband, network infrastructure, energy efficiency and security this year
• Key bandwidth, network infrastructure, energy efficiency and security considerations
• Act Now! Get an action plan and tips to apply for your stimulus grant