Business Phone System Reviews | SE Telecom

July 15 will mark a legislation milestone for residents in Manitoba. Drivers caught gum flapping on, and after, this date will receive nice hefty fines. The fines don’t stop at the driver though. Employers could now be staring down the legal barrel for their employees cell phone use as well.

This might sound like a bad idea to companies who don’t want to be responsible for employees arguing with their kids while driving to work. Have no fear, as muddy waters cloud the legality of this. Let’s take a walk through those muddy waters.

First up is what phone drivers are using. Companies start taking a bit of responsibility when they hand out shiny phones to employees. This is becoming a more common practice as cell phone plans drop in price and people feel some sort of need to stay connected to work wherever they go.

Next on this list is the type of violation and where the violation takes place. Violations concerning accidents that cause damage to property and people are the main concern. Manitoba is a no-fault area. This means the no-fault insurance kicks in and stops any legal retribution for injuries sustained in a vehicle accident.

Step outside of Manitoba to places like Ontario, Alberta, or a majority of the United States and things change drastically. These areas do away with the no-fault insurance rule. Thus, an accident can lead to a lawsuit on the driver as well as the company.

Another issue comes in the call itself. Some employees will argue that talking to family while on the road is a cost of doing business. Companies can rebuttal this by saying the company cell phone is for company business only. Employees chatting with company clients are easy to point out as business related. However, what is the real cost of doing business?

So, what is a company to do? First, companies can setup policies like using hands free devices for that chitter chatter. Companies can also restrict any use of company cell phones while the employee is driving. Some companies are already stepping up their policies.

Canada’s leading trucking company, Bison Transport, has taken it upon themselves to avoid any chance of lawsuits. Bison Transport has recently issued a policy forbidding any use of hand-held devices by drivers. This ban extends to CB radios.

You think your employees can’t cost you money with their yacking while on the road. Think of this example then. An Arkansas lumber company shelled out a whopping $16.2 million after a salesmen hit a 78-year-old lady in Florida. The lady was disabled due to the accident. The salesmen was making a sales call while driving. This may have happened a long way from Canada, but the precedent has been laid down. Time for some new cell phone policies for those employees.

In these trying times of oil spewing forth from the ocean floor, it is great to see companies taking a stand against these big oil conglomerates. Verizon Communications is just one such company. They will take a step towards going green by cutting down their van fleet CO2 emissions.

Verizon Communications has signed a deal with Ford Motor Company. This deal will bring Ford E-250 cargo vans into Verizon’s massive fleet of service vehicles. The E-250 is a cargo can equipped with an engine that burns compressed natural gas (CNG) as opposed to conventional gasoline.

Verizon plans to distribute roughly 500 of the E-250 cargo vans throughout its major markets that have CNG fueling stations. Why would Verizon go with these cargo vans? Natural gas is cleaner than gasoline, thus reducing the CO2 footprint of its fleet. Of course, there is the fact that natural gas is also cheaper than gasoline as well. Verizon can also tout that they have dropped 1.62 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year to their brand image as well.

Technicians will be the beneficiaries of these new clean vans. These people install and maintain all the phones, FiOS TV (fiber-optic connection as opposed to copper wire), and Internet connections for homes and businesses. Let’s put this into a bit of perspective. Verizon Communications added 168,000 FiOS TV subscribers and 185,000 FiOS Internet subscribers in the first quarter of 2010 alone.

Big wig Verizon Communications decision makers will be the only ones who know if these natural gas burning E-250 vans are a way to cut costs, boost company image, or to truly take a step in the green direction. No matter the reasoning, this is a great step to helping reduce smog in cities, cut down on oil dependence, and use alternative fuels to our advantage.

Yesterday was a momentous day for iPod and iPhone users. iOS 4 was finally released to the eager masses. Finally, home screen wallpapers, apps running in the background, Bluetooth keyboard use, and oh so much more. All this awesomeness has also come with a bit of pain.

The first big punch to the face comes with the upgrade process itself. This is not an undertaking you will be doing at recess. Before you even attempt to handle this upgrade you will need to set aside an afternoon. “Why?”, you ask? The average Joe is reporting an upgrade process of two hours or longer. This is still a phone, right? There are computers that take less time to upgrade than this.

The knuckle sandwiches don’t end there though. Once you have painfully waited for your phone to upgrade, you get to see if you will be one of the lucky few to experience the bugs of the upgrade. These bug come in a myriad of flavors. You can enjoy chocolate covered contact list loss. There is the ever-popular strawberry phone freezing up for no reason at all. Lastly, there is the coveted cheesecake app crashing.

If you are one of those lucky people to enjoy this buffet of bugs, the first step to recovery is to go through the whole restore process again. You may remember this process as “the loose out on the phone for over an hour while it does its song and dance with iTunes” process.

There is even more special sauce being added here. First gen iPhone and iPhone 3G users, along with iPod Gen 1 and 2 users, will immediately notice they cannot use a home screen background. Apparently, these devices are far to inferior to handle a picture on the background. Add this to the lack of multi-tasking and what was the point of sitting around for hours on end while your phone upgraded?

Apple makes some fun products, but forcing users to upgrade is not cool. Telling users their gear is too weak is a bunch of hogwash as the jail-broken community has enjoyed some of these features for years. Is it any coincidence that all this happens just before iPhone 4 comes out?

San Francisco Regulates Phone Radiation Level Reporting

San Francisco, California, USA is known for many things. They have the Golden Gate Bridge, street trolleys, and play host to many of America’s big technology companies. Now, you can add the first US city to require that cell phone manufacturers publicly display the radiation outputs on their phones to that list.

On Wednesday, the San Francisco city board of supervisors voted 10-1 on a new law that makes cell phone makers post in stores the phone’s specific absorption rate (SAR), a measure of the amount of radio waves absorbed by the user’s body while on the cell phone.

Though it’s known that humans do absorb some radiation from using cell phones, scientists are still unsure if there is enough radiation to be harmful enough to cause health concerns, such as cancer. Some scientists believe they’ve produced studies that show a link, some believe they’ve disproved that link.

While the makers of the new San Francisco law would likely say that they’re not mandating that phones are made and sold below a certain radiation level, and therefore are just informing consumers, others have a different take.

CITA, the wireless association, says that: “Rather than inform, the ordinance will potentially mislead consumers with point-of-sale requirements suggesting that some phones are ‘safer’ than others, based on radio frequency emissions.” Fair point.

OUR TAKE

Far be it for us to say definitively if cell phone radiation is dangerous or not — scientists much more qualified than us are working on that as we speak. But without a solid answer that the radiation does cause health concerns, it seems silly to take such large precautions against certain phones.

Indeed, without full information, it’s hard for consumers to tell what SAR measures are, or what they really mean. In this case, it just seems like they’ve added another useless number into a cell phone buying process with too many of those in the first place. Now, these radiation level readings will be one more step between a buyer and finding the exact phone that is right for them.

At SE Telecom, we’re in the business of matching phones and systems to people and businesses. The more that gets in the way of providing great personal service to our customers, the worse.

Remember a few weeks ago when AT&T decided it would be fun to cut out that pesky unlimited data plan for phones? This was a bit of a blow, but the world has moved on to new things like the iPhone 4. Well, Sprint has decided to follow suit and do some data plan cutting as well.

Here is the issue with what Sprint has decided to do. Sprint cut their roaming data plan on those users who used their laptops. That’s right, Sprint cut how much data will be allowed by those hard working people on business travels. Cutting data on a phone is one thing, but cutting roaming data for a laptop user is much more severe.

To throw some salt into the wound, Sprint cut their data plan drastically in terms of computer users. Sprint took their 2.5-gigabyte roaming plan and dropped it to a mere 300-megabyte plan. Those of you heavy VPN users will feel this pain almost right away. On that regular chance you go over this allotted 300 megabytes, be prepared to spend $0.25 for every megabyte you go over.

Keep in mind that Sprint has a drastically smaller coverage area than the other two big cell phone carriers. So while this cut in data usage only applies to those who are roaming, chances are many Sprint users will find themselves roaming when they need the Internet the most.

Sprint’s reasoning for this drastic cut was to make a policy for its entire customer base. Sprint had originally dealt with usage violators on an individual basis. Now, all customers will receive a notification as they approaching hitting their data limits.

There is some good news for phone users though. At this time Sprint does not intend to cut your data limits your phone. This should not be a green light to use your phone tether capabilities to stream some Netflix movies though. Sprint will be watching for excessive data usage on phones. You can bet your hard earned dollar on that one.

On Monday, the Globe and Mail reported that large Canadian carriers will take in slightly lower profits this year. The data, taken from a Conference Board of Canada report, seemingly points to increased competition.

The “big three” Canadian telecom companies — BCE, Bell Canada, and Rogers Communications — fared relatively well through the recent economic downturn. But now, with increased competition, they’re regularly healthy profit margins will be more minimal.

“Increased competition is expected to limit price appreciation in 2010, which will lead to declines in profits as costs keep growing strongly,” the authors write in their Spring Outlook. “The industry is going through a transition phase in which the rules and strategies of business are gradually changing.”

We can probably expect more of the same as Canadians turn increasingly to cell phones over land lines, the main profit center for the infrastructure-rich telecommunications big boys. The wireless market also has more competition, as younger upstarts offering big discounts can get a leg-up.

We may see the larger telecom companies pick back up again when this wireless revenue hits its peak, driven by phone makers such as RIM (BlackBerry) and Apple (iPhone). Lately, the large providers, especially Rogers, have seen wireless data revenue -– driven by smart phone uses such as web browsing, text, email, and online video-streaming –- grow exponentially.
While the lower margins and increased competition may pose a slight risk to the big three, and thus have a trickle-down effect in the telecommunications market, don’t expect any of the big telecom giants to go out of business anytime soon. Also don’t expect your bill to go through the roof. If anything, we might see the big telecoms cutting prices to be more competitive with wireless startups.

Meanwhile, the providers will take a back seat to the phones themselves. And the businesses we serve will focus on the technology and networks that drive their profits.

On Wednesday, AT&T came clean on what they’re calling a security “weak spot,” that allowed hackers to gain email addresses of over 100,000 iPad users in the last week.

The breach occurred over AT&T’s 3G network, which users of the 3G-enabled iPad can use (the other iPad model connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi). Apple has sold over 2 million iPad’s, but we don’t know exactly how many of each are out there now.

The security weak spot stemmed from the way AT&T’s website was prompting iPad users to login to their AT&T accounts — asking for email addresses to make the logins easier. The problem, of course, is that the prompts were insecure. In other words, someone left the back door open.

A hacker group call Goatse Security is the one claiming to have discovered the breach, haing already grabbed 114,000 email addresses before notifying the company. AT&T said the problem has been fixed, but said it found out about it from a business customer first.

AT&T said it will contact all iPad users whose email may have been comprised. “We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted,” the company said in a statement.

Apparently, no other information was leaked in the breach, though an email address, as well as the knowledge that the user has an AT&T account and an iPad, could be enough information to make people open an email and download malicious content.

This is an unfortunate security breach, and surely these sort of things will need to get ironed out before the tablet market reaches its full commerce telecommunications potential. But that said, even though AT&T has (a little more) egg on its face, don’t expect this to put much of a damper on the growing iPad mania. People will still be lined up around the block for their shot to buy one.