Telco Independent Consulting Blog

Saving on your phone bill is a high priority for many businesses. Business Phone costs can be expensive so here are a few tips to get your Business Phone charges down. 1. Get low flat-rate mobile phone calls or make sure your capped plan is aligned to your call spend. Ensure you get a single low call rate across all your calls regardless of destination or time of the day. Avoid half price for mobile or landline or cheaper after-hours calls unless you are certain they suit your call patterns. 2. Call charged in 30-second increments are costly as you only use on average 50% of the final 30 seconds of the call. On short calls, this can increase your timed call charges by up to 50%. Ensure you get per second billing on your phone calls, in particular, mobile phone calls and international calls so you only pay for what you use. Most capped Mobile plans have 30-second billing increments. This can be OK as long as the cap is aligned to your call patterns. 3. Flag Falls are a h...

I love telecommunication acronyms, one I’m especially proud to be able to quote instantly is “ISDN”. “Integrated Services Digital Network”, which was born in 1986 and Telecom Australia was one of the first telecommunications carriers in the world to introduce ISDN starting in 1988. Now just over 30 years later, Telstra will commence the disconnection of copper ISDN services from the end of September this year, as the NBN rollout continues to bring business-grade networking solutions online. Telstra issued a “stop sell” to all retail and wholesale customers for ISDN2, ISDN2 Enhanced, ISDN10/20/30, DDS Fastway, Megalink and Frame Relay products on 30 June 2018, encouraging users to find alternative replacement solutions ahead of a “final exit date”. That final exit date on copper ISDN services is approaching, according to a Telstra spokesperson. “As part of the NBN rollout, copper  ISDN services are being disconnected from September 30th, 2019. Remaining c...

Two industry leaders quoting on the  nbn™  recently. Phill Britt in Reddit and ITNews... Aussie Broadband managing director Phillip Britt believes affordable gigabit speeds in Australia are still “a while” away, requiring - in part - “a change of mindset at NBN Co” to become a reality. “I think it will be a while before we see affordable gigabit here,” he said. “Given only a small part of NBN has been built as FTTP [fibre to the premises], and they are limiting HFC and FTTC [fibre to the curb] currently to 100Mbps, it’s going to require a change of mindset at NBN Co to achieve this. The hope is that a writedown of the value of the NBN would mean NBN Co is under less pressure to seek high financial returns, and could therefore drop its wholesale prices. Britt believed a writedown could have a positive effect on 100Mbps prices. These are currently subject to a special pricing promotion, though the long-term future of the discount is unclear. “I believe we will ...

How much of your business Internet traffic goes offshore? How does it get to and from Australia? Here is some Information about the Internet’s Undersea Cables. Australia’s submarine communications cables carry the bulk of our international voice and data traffic and are a vital component of our national infrastructure, linking Australia with other countries. Submarine cables are vulnerable to damage and breakage, which can cause serious consequences for the flow of information to and from Australia. Cable damage can cause data loss, significant delays, and severe financial loss to businesses, cable owners and individuals who rely on communication links with other countries. (Map updated 1st February 2019) Currently, 99% of the data traffic that is crossing oceans is carried by undersea cables. The reliability of submarine cables is high, especially when multiple paths are available in the event of a cable break. As a result of these cables' cost a...