Land Line Plans and Invoices | VOICE NETWORK

The industry for land phone lines is more mature than cell phone plans and is highly regulated. Never sign land line agreements longer than 36 months as telecommunication costs continue to go down. As contracts come up for renewal, you have a lot of leverage for renegotiation. When renewing contracts, it is common to reduce costs by 10 percent by negotiating lower rates that depend on the mix of services, spending commitment, and length of contract. Consider negotiating miscellaneous costs such as damage costs, trade-in costs, etc. Also, consider provisions for annual or semiannual price reviews to ensure discount levels are competitive. Include a price stability clause into the contract as telecom carriers are able to increase rates without informing customers.

The following specific tactics are used by companies to reduce costs relative to land telecommunication plans:

• Consider multiple levels of service offerings, such as gold, silver, or bronze.
• Have clearly defined SLAs, with defined financial penalties in the event the vendor does not meet defined service requirements. Penalties should be large enough to have an impact on the vendor but not so large as to jeopardize their ability to provide services.
• Specify contract termination conditions, such as the inability to meet defined SLAs, a merger or acquisition of the vendor or your company, or a major change in requirements or infrastructure. In general, the easier it is to break the contract, the more the contract will cost. For example, a clause to terminate without cause would be expensive.
• Ensure that you cover all services under the SLA. Often, only outages to the primary service are covered. Also, make sure you cover other services such as service delivery or cessations with specific time frames.
• Consider using callback services to reduce international long distance charges.
• Consider cutting back leased line capacities.
• Consider getting rid of landlines and replacing them with gateway products that run traffic over the WAN, such as Voice over IP (VoIP). Once voice goes over the network, be aware that latency matters more than bandwidth, which means the details of network engineering may change.
• Consider funneling international call traffic through services like Google Voice, which can reduce the cost of international calls originating in the United States significantly.

It is complex to match the invoice to contracts and plans. Errors and overcharges are common. Bundled services and taxes are confusing. Invoicing becomes inaccurate as telecommunication vendors merge and consolidate or your company goes through acquisitions and divestures. Many companies find that at least 25 percent of telecommunication invoices contain errors in billing, usage application, overages, tax application, etc., which causes a 25 to 35 percent overpayment for services. As an example, for over two years, one company paid for 56 phone lines set up for a modem bank that they never implemented. The following are typical errors found in land telecommunication bills:

• Paying for lines, circuits, modem lines, pagers, phones, or voice mail services that are unused or disconnected
• Changes to plans or lines that are not implemented
• Incorrect pricing or plan codes on the account
• Missing discounts or credits
• Duplicate charges
• Inaccurate service charges or charges that do not match the service record
• Services were upgraded but older services not cancelled
• Paying two carriers for the same line
• Paying maintenance contracts no longer in use
• Paying sales tax when the company is tax exempt
• Paying for optional or invalid taxes, such as the federal excise tax, which was repealed three years ago and is still found on many bills

Corporate rate plans

Corporate rate plans
Most accounts only have one cell phone listed on the account. Customers typically activate only one phone at a time, and the phone is handled individually. Because of this, wireless carriers are not exactly sure what percentage of their customer base is commercial and what percentage is consumer. If, however, a business has multiple phones with the same carrier, it may qualify to be treated as a corporate account. Each carrier has a minimum number of phones to qualify for a corporate account. It may be as few as 5 or as many as 50.

If a business does not meet the minimum number of required phones, the carrier may make an exception and allow it to start a corporate account anyway. If a business is only one or two phones short of the minimum, it might cut its overall expenses by adding extra phones to qualify for the corporate account.

What is the advantage of a corporate account?
The main advantage of corporate accounts is that the monthly access charge is significantly reduced. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars a month in access charges, corporate accounts typically only charge $15 per phone. The corporate account for AT&T employees has a phenomenally low $10 monthly access fee and airtime only costs $0.10 per minute.

With individual rate plans, it is a gamble each month whether or not the user will use too many, or too few, minutes. In either case, money is wasted. Corporate accounts do not experience this waste. With a corporate account, high users pay a low rate for each minute, and low users only pay the minimal access fee. There are no surprises.

Pooled or not pooled?
Like small group accounts, some corporate accounts use a pool system for the airtime. A typical pooled corporate account may charge $100 for the first phone and $15 for each additional phone. A pool of 1,000 airtime minutes for all the phones to share is included in the plan. The customer must pay for any additional minutes above the first 1,000.

Nonpooled corporate accounts charge the customer a low access fee per phone and bill the customer for each minute of airtime. You probably will not be given a choice between pooled or not pooled, as most carriers only offer one or the other.

Using someone else’s corporate account
Some carriers allow two businesses to combine their mobile phones to qualify for a corporate account. As long as the carrier separately bills the two companies, this is a great situation. I have seen large companies combine with their subsidiaries, customers, suppliers, and even employees to qualify for a larger corporate account. A large business can use its leverage to help a smaller sister company qualify for corporate pricing.

Avoid fraud and waste on corporate accounts
Some businesses allow their employees to put their personal phones on the corporate pricing. As long as the company does not pay for personal phones or a sister company’s phones, this system works great. Larger businesses that do not routinely track their cellular phones and regularly audit their bills may end up paying for an employee’s personal phone. It is not uncommon for an ex-employee to continue using the company-issued cell phone for months after employment has been terminated.

If you are auditing your bills for the first time, find out the name of the user for each cell phone listed on the bill. Some carriers print the user’s name right on the bill. After reviewing your list of phone numbers and employee names, company department managers should be able to tell you which employees should be using company wireless phones. If you still cannot determine who the user is, call the number and see who answers. If all else fails, temporarily disconnecting the service should flush out the user. Be careful, because you may be surprised to learn whose phone you have canceled. I have canceled the phones of ex-employees, ghost employees, high-level executives, the college-aged children of executives, and even a high-level executive’s mistress.

Before disconnecting anyone’s phone, be sure your company’s executive staff are well aware of the pending cancellation. On an account with 25 or more phones, this type of common-sense audit typically turns up one or two illegitimate cell phones.

Remove high-end users from the corporate account
Customers that use corporate accounts will have one or more phones that stand out because they use more airtime than the other phones. A typical corporate account has 20 phones that each use about 100 minutes of airtime each month and one or two phones that use more than 500 minutes of airtime. In this scenario, the larger users could be pulled out of the corporate account and handled as individual accounts.