27 AUGUST 2009 - New research from Moneypenny, http://www.outsourcedreception.com/, the outsourced reception specialist, shows SMB staff are spending one working week in four dealing with incoming calls. And with the summer holidays seeing most businesses working at reduced strength, employees are spending more time taking calls than focusing on the job in hand.

The findings show a business of 100 people will receive on average 2300 inquiry calls a month, each lasting approximately 70 seconds. This equates to staff spending 67 days a year on the phone dealing with incoming calls, rather than focusing on their main job.   Ed Reeves, co-founder at Moneypenny explains, "Most people find a ringing phone a distraction, something that interrupts their flow of work.

HSL, the mobile network and provider of mobile infrastructure, are today announcing a service for mobile network operators to enable their subscribers to gain the benefits of the HSL 2.75G Femtocell without the need for operator CAPEX and with minimal OPEX.

Many mobile users in rural, suburban and urban locations experience problems using their mobile phone indoors due to poor coverage. As a result of this users can experience very low mobile service availability or no service at all. This problem is particularly acute for 3G mobile users but also greatly impacts 2G mobile users. Poor coverage prevents a mobile user from making use of their mobile phone in a location important to them such as their home or office. Given that on average at least 30% of calls occur when at home, poor coverage in the home is a real issue for mobile operators.

Dial-in phone service for delivering recorded voice alerts immediately available in the UK

London, 25 August, 2009 - PageOne, the UK’s leading provider of mobile messaging solutions to the public and enterprise sectors, announces the immediate availability of Voiceblast, a service that can quickly and simultaneously send a personalised voice message to the landline or mobile number of thousands of people within an organisation. Combined with PageOne’s SmartGroups, which allow users to set up predefined groups of individuals, it offers a powerful and flexible means of delivering high-volume broadcast information to multiple devices independent of network.

Voiceblast has been designed to offer organisations the option to extend the power of group messaging, by adding a voice messaging capability to their critical communications plan. 

• 200% price hikes* as OFCOM legislation comes into force
• ‘A third’ of UK businesses could be affected

  Opal, the B2B division of the TalkTalk Group, is warning that tens of thousands of UK businesses could face soaring 0870 telephone bills in September with increases of up to 200%, because of failure to act over new Ofcom legislation.    On 1st August 2009, in an attempt to promote transparency for the consumer, Ofcom changed regulations around the use of the number sequence ‘0870’. The number is currently used by tens of thousands of businesses across the UK, to generate income through call rebates, often to finance enhanced call services.   However, Opal’s research indicates that up to a third** of UK businesses using the number sequence have been unable to implement the changes in time despite intending to – due to time and manpower constraints.