“‘We can confirm reports of an FCC investigation into mystery fees that appeared on Verizon Wireless bills costing over 15 million Americans tens of millions of dollars,’ Michele Ellison, FCC enforcement bureau chief, said in a statement.”

The charges amount to from $2.00 – $6.00 and according to CNBC :

“The affected customers did not have data usage plans, which allow access to the Internet, and were charged because of exchanges initiated by software built into their phones, Verizon said.”

Errors can occur inadvertently or overtly, it is ultimately the end-user’s responsibility to monitor and demand that your carrier charge you only for what you’ve signed up for and pay for what you can expect to pay.

Most commonly I hear comments from clients about small charges like that not being significant to their bottom line.  Let me put it in a different way for you.

If you manage a dozen phones and were consistently overcharged just $4.00 per month, over a 3-year period that is $1,728 of waste.  Manage 200 phones?  That same time period is $28,800 wasted, when you look at 1,500 phones, we’re talking $216,000 WASTED.  We’ve seen waste in excess of 20% – 80% PER MONTH on telecom bills most people think were only slightly out of line.

Don’t let your company get taken advantage of, a telecom audit can reveal more than you could ever expect to find.

According to the article, CEO Vladimir Katalov:

All data transmitted between a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and BlackBerry smartphones is encrypted with a highly secure AES or Triple DES algorithm. Unique private encryption keys are generated in a secure, two-way authenticated environment and are assigned to each BlackBerry smartphone user. Even more, to secure information stored on BlackBerry smartphones, password authentication can be made mandatory through the policies of a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (default, password authentication is limited to ten attempts, after which the smartphone’s wiped clean with all its contents erased). Local encryption of all data, including messages, address book and calendar entries, memos and tasks, is also provided, and can be enforced via the IT policy as well. With the supplied Password Keeper, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption allows password entries to be stored securely on the smartphone, enabling users to keep their online banking passwords, PIN codes, and financial information handy — and secure. If that’s not enough, system administrators can create and send wireless commands to remotely change BlackBerry device passwords, lock or delete information from lost or stolen BlackBerries.

Sounds pretty secure, does it? As always, there is the weakest link. With BlackBerry, the weakest link is its offline backup mechanism.”

The article goes on to say that while this is disturbing, it effects backups alone, and well, frankly they’re “just backups”.  But Katalov also goes on to say that backups are are evil because they create a new instance of information that might be private or sensitive. Then he explains the hole in the BlackBerry backup scheme:

Backup encryption uses AES with a 256-bit key. So far, so good. An AES key is derived from the user-supplied password, and this is where the problem arises.

In short, standard key-derivation function, PBKDF2, is used in a very strange way, to say the least. Where Apple has used 2,000 iterations in iOS 3.x, and 10,000 iterations in iOS 4.x, BlackBerry uses only one. Another significant shortcoming is that it’s BlackBerry Desktop Software that encrypts data, not the BlackBerry device itself. This means that the data is passed from the device to the computer in a plain, unencrypted form. Apple devices act differently; the data is encrypted on the device and never leaves it in an unencrypted form. The Apple desktop software (iTunes) acts only as a storage and never encrypts/decrypts backup data. This is quite surprising since the BlackBerry platform is known for its unprecedented security, and we’ve been expecting BlackBerry backup protection to be at least as secure as Apple’s, which turned not to be the case.

What does that mean for us? We can run password recovery attacks on BlackBerry backups really fast — even without GPU acceleration, we can go over millions of passwords per second.

So, what does all this mean to you?  Simply put, there is a great deal of potential for any company interested in finding the data you back up to be able to get it.  This exploit means that now that it has been proven there is a method to crack this information, a rogue employee, competitor or even just some random hacker looking for a thrill can potentially get your data.

What would that data loss mean to your company?

Think this might be too much of a stretch for you to worry about?  Espionage and data loss occurs only with Fortune 500, government entities or James Bond – right?  I can show you how for about $500 or less, I can hire a motivated programmer to target your server and steal your data.  Really.

This exploit will undoubtedly be fixed, but until its patched, there are plenty of opportunities for your data to be compromised.  Talk to your experts and see what you can do to prevent this from happening today.

Hence the $8,000 cell phone bill last month grows to $8,900 – eh, it’s probably a okay.  Then inevitably the bill creep continues until after a few months, the bill inexplicably have reached $9,600.  Why?

As industry watchdogs, we see carriers introduce pricing changes that occur from time-to-time.  Some end users find the moves helpful, others find it confusing.

Take for instance today, the Wall Street Journal reports that Verizon is going to be introducing new data plans over the coming months moving away from the “unlimited” data plan of $29.99 per month.  This moves seems to mimic AT&T recent change in their data plans.  What exactly those new plans will look like will undoubtedly be based on usage level and seems to be an answer to stem the money-losing proposition of “giving away” bandwidth for free.

This gives the end-user one more reason to watch over their bills more carefully and yet another way to add to the confusion of how to monitor and mitigate telecom bill creep

As consumers we have little recourse other than to be overly cautious in watching those bills.  Make sure you take time to take notice of rate changes and when signing on the dotted line how that might effect you in the future, one things for certain – your bills aren’t going to be any easier to read, this I can promise.

What is actually real and what is a nonsense charge that the phone company tacks on there to drive up your bills? You review and try and understand but most of the time, you throw your hands in the air and just pay the bill – right?

Every telecom provider works just a bit differently than the every other carrier, but believe it or not, every carrier is required to help consumers.

So, what is required of your telecommunications service provider? Let’s talk about long distance services….

ALL long distance carriers are mandated by the FCC to provide the consumer with information regarding your long distance telephone service. They must provide you with information regarding the rates, terms, and conditions of your service. If your carriers operates a web site, the FCC does require those carriers to provide that information on their website. Essentially, your long distance providers must show the consumers, what and how they charge for their services, rather than just telling the government what they’re doing. These companies “convey” this info to us through their web sites, our bills, and emails. Long distance companies often include information about changes in terms and rates, you’ve probably seen and thrown away those inserts with your bill – right?

Long distance providers are also required by the FCC to:

* Be clearly organized
* Identify the service provider associated with each charge;
* Highlight new service providers and indicate the date the provider change was made;
* Contain full and non-misleading descriptions of charges;
* Identify those charges for which failure to pay will not result in disconnection of the customer’s basic local service; and
* Provide a toll-free number for customers to call in order to lodge a complaint or obtain information. If the customer does not receive a paper telephone bill but instead accesses that bill only by e-mail or over the Internet, the telephone company may provide the customer with an e-mail address or Web site for inquiring about charges.
* Use standardized labels on bills when referring to certain line item charges relating to federal regulatory action

For example, let me give you the example of Minnesota. From the Minnesota Commerce website here are some of the required and non-standard charges you might see on a bill if you happen to live or have services in the land of 10,000 lakes:

Government Mandated Telephone Fees: The following fees are charged by all telephone companies and are not negotiable.

* Telephone Assistance Plan (TAP): $0.07 per line, per month (up from $.02 on August 1. 2008)
This fee is charged on each telephone line you have (not including cellular phones). It is used to help provide telephone service to Minnesota’s low-income residents.
* Telecommunications Access Minnesota (TAM): $0.06 per line, per month (increased from $0.03 on July 1, 2007)
This fee is charged on each line you have, including cell phones. It is used to fund programs that provide telephone service to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech impaired.
* 9-1-1: $0.75 per line, per month (increased from $0.65 on July 1, 2009)
This fee appears on all telephone bills to operate Minnesota’s 9-1-1 emergency response system.
* State or local sales tax
These fees are assessed by state and/or local governments.

NON-Government Mandated Fees
The following fees may appear on your local phone bill and at first glance appear to be government mandated taxes, but in fact are not. These fees are not deposited into the local, state or federal government treasury, but are retained by the carrier. Some companies do not charge all these fees.

* Subscriber Line Charge (SLC)
Also called a “Federal Access Charge,” or “Interstate Access Charge,” the stated purpose of this fee is to help cover the local phone company’s costs of operating the local telephone network. This charge may be up to several dollars per month.
* Local Number Portability (LNP)
LNP allows you to keep your telephone number if you switch local telephone companies. An LNP charge on your bill pays for the cost of providing this service. LNP charges are temporary. According to FCC Rules, each company can collect the charge for five years after implementing the service.
* In-state Access Recovery Fee Several long distance carriers in Minnesota have recently added this charge to their phone bills. The stated purpose of this fee is to recover the companies’ expense of providing long distance service in Minnesota. You can avoid paying this extra charge by selecting one of the many long distance carriers that does not charge this fee.
* Universal Service Fund (USF) Carriers must pay a percentage of their revenues into a national fund that helps provide telephone service to poor and rural customers and is helping to link the nation’s schools, libraries, and rural hospitals to telecommunications networks, including the internet. Many carriers add a line item to consumer bills to recover this payment, but it is not government mandated and should not be in the “taxes” section of your bill. You may also see this charge on a cellular or pager bill.

What fees in addition to the above are “waivable”?  What can you ask refunds for?  In most cases we see, companies choose to ignore fighting any “extra fees” because they may feel they’re non-negotiable or required.  In many cases did you know that you can be incorrectly charged a fee because somebody can mistype a request on your bill or worse, if you were to call in they could actually reclassify your services and tack on a whole string of extra charges?  Yes – you bet it happens.

Let us know if you’ve seen anything funny on your bills – we’ll take a look at them – no charge and let you see for yourself what you could be overpaying for.

Take for example my latest project,  the weather here is starting to really get nice, after all it is Spring.  So it’s time to hit the ole’ “honey-do” list and think about the things I need to take care of around the house.  One of the items on that list is a pretty time-consuming , manually intensive and somewhat complex deck improvement job.

It will take me several days, a number of trips to the local hardware store, certainly it will cost me money BUT I can absolutely do it.

In the midst of me planning on tackling this beast, I was gently reminded (okay, thoroughly encourage by my wife) that our local handyman might be able to do the job for me.

Initially, I “pa-shawed” the notion altogether.  “I can handle this job, probably just as good as he can, and definitely cheaper” I justified in my head.

Then I remembered my last attempt at a project this size and scale.  A cold shudder ran through my body.  In the end my garage organization project  was over budget, took me several weeks longer than I estimated and in the end, I got something that looked akin to a sculpture that would have felt right at home in a Dr. Seuss book.  As a point of pride for those of you reading this, the project did work and does what I need it to do, but isn’t going to win any design awards, in the end I could have spent my time more wisely and had fewer cuts and bruises too.

So here’s my analogy of the day for you: what if you were approached today by a highly-capable professional.  On the table is the proposal that not only HE do handle something you currently give little time or effort to, BUT was part of your monthly world.  In this proposal your professional contractor would :

1.  Pay for and supply all the materials needed to complete your project.

2.  He would pay his contractors for doing the work, not you.

3.  Require NO effort on your part.

4.  The end result is professional, accurate, organized and clean.

5.  Here’s the biggie, your cost for letting this professional handle your project?  ZERO dollars, in fact HE would pay you for allowing him to do the job.  Yes, really.

Sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?  Who could say no to that proposal?

That’s exactly what most people would think as well – but that is what we do all day long and can do for your company.  If you have large phone bills, you’re going to be paying that bill regardless if you have it taken care of by us or not.  In fact, if unmonitored, it will more than likely grow.

Your choices are to either care of the job yourself, which you’ll probably not enjoy or face it – unless you were hired as an auditor SPECIFICALLY it is NOT really your job but it is your responsibility.  If you’re doing it yourself do you honestly believe that you’re really doing the best job?  If you hired a professional telecom cost reduction company like GrayBear, we GUARANTEE to reduce your costs – is there really a reason NOT to do hire us?

GrayBear Resources can do just that for you.  If you don’t want to do the job in the first place, why not let someone who can do it for you?

This particular company that I was hoping to make my way in was also known as not being very “vendor friendly”.  They were a great account if you managed to get, but that was the entire battle – just getting in.  For about a year and half I managed to pester a particular individual about getting in until one day, the contact I had was GONE!  No longer employed at the company.  Scrambling, I somehow managed to find the name of his replacement and after some persistence, I finally managed to secure a meeting with the new manager in charge of telecommunications for the firm.

I was excited the day I met with him.  He was a very cordial and pleasant person, I learned that he had just moved from the West coast and it turned out we has some similar interests.  After some time discussing what we might be able to do for them, he decided it might be a good idea to see what we might be able to come up with as far as providing them some new services and perhaps even reducing costs.

We were given the opportunity to work on a portion of their existing telecom business and if our solution had merit, we would be able to implement it.  I was elated.

When it came time to review their existing services, what I managed to see absolutely left me speechless.  What our team discovered was a mishmash of convoluted and redundant services that was scattered with non-functioning services that, from a cursory view may have made sense but as we started peeling back layers of the “onion” we discovered what was pretty obvious to us was a sales rep who was looking to pad his own wallet.

I kept hearing conversations I had with the previous manager telling me how his sales team at the telecommunications company was “taking care of them”, in reality it was a mess.  In the end, we provided a proposal that lopped nearly 70% from the monthly costs of their prior account and reduced the number of bills significantly.  The lesson here is to make sure you’re aware of what you’re getting is what you need or at a competitive rate.  You have to stay diligent and on top of your vendor, while it doesn’t happen frequently your sales team may not be looking out for your best interests.

Why?

If you pull out your contract, you’ll find easy things such as start date, commitment levels etc.  But tucked away in an obscure place you might see a tiny clause that identifies your ability to seek any refunds for services is limited to a few months of billing history.  Most people are unaware of that.

Case in point, Company A was overcharged for inactive services that were canceled a while ago but when a review was done, the company was able to only get 3 months worth of charges refunded back to them even though the services had been disconnected for 14 months.  While a professional audit firm would have easily been able to get those additional refunds, most customers simply shrug their shoulders and leave that as a lesson to be learned and not worth the effort of trying to get more of a refund.  We disagree, but I think it’s important to know that the carrier will try and site your contractual obligation and try to stress that point.

The best advice for you today is don’t delay, get the money that is owed to you back ASAP!

1.  Missing out on discounts.  When you pool your company’s total spend are you missing out on the newer discounted rate structures that the cellcos are throwing out nowadays?  We’ve seen some dramatic discounts and additionally your company may be able to access added rate cuts by associations or rate plans that are available to your company.  In some cases, we have seen that while the company was reimbursing their employees a flat dollar amount each month, if they had pooled their plan together, it would have been less costly to take advantage of a group plan that they qualified for.

2.  Employees not getting a phone at all.  In some cases, we’re actually seeing that some employees are either just pocketing the money and not getting a phone at all or trying to keep the spend below the reimbursed amount.  In one extreme case the employee was trying to “game the system” by checking out a company-owned phone and still getting the reimbursement.  Sometimes, employees are simply just not willing to actually use their phones because even though they are being reimbursed, the belief is that they are still paying for the phone and look to “profit” from the reimbursement, rather that view it as a business tool.

3.  Security and liability. Phones have essentially turned into miniature versions of our desktop and laptop computers.  Employees can easily access their email, applications and sensitive corporate information from their phones.  With individual liable phones, regardless of what you put on paper, it is nearly impossible to standardize on handsets, carriers or implement restrictions on those phones.  In one case, an employee actually gave a child their cell phone because his daughter was going to camp, and when it was critical that that employee be contacted due to an emergency, they couldn’t find him.  Additionally today, many companies don’t consider that applications on smartphones can be downloaded just like software on your computers can contain viruses, trojans and worms that could potentially be a security breach for your companies “secure” data and make government compliance a headache.

4.  The prepaid and/or restricted access phone.  Depending on your employee and their personal view on the mobile phone reimbursement, they may opt for a phone with severe restrictions or be prepaid.  Restricted phone can mean limited network availability, inability to make or receive text messages, poor network coverage when you need to access your employees.  In the case of the prepaid phone, if your employee really needs to get in touch with you, or vice versa, and they’re run out of minutes – what do you do?  Employees don’t necessarily view the best interests of the company when it comes to wireless liability.

5.  Employee satisfaction and their viewpoint. In one case an employee pulled me aside to ask if their company was going through a tough financial crisis and if they were going to be okay.  I was puzzled because he was asking me such a question, I ask him why he thought that.  “Because they have been trying to reduce costs and when they did this making us get our own cell phones a lot of us started talking.”  The employees perception was that the company was going out of business rather than simply trying to control costs, it doesn’t matter how you spin it, because how you implement and let the employees know, don’t assume everyone is on the same page.  Additionally, many employees view this responsibility as a shortcoming of their employer because they don’t want to manage this.  It’s not about the reality of the situation many times, it’s the perception, so be aware.

6. Lost revenue. In a case where one company told me about why they stopped the individual liable phones program came from a story that was quite costly.  Every sales person was expected to carry their own cell phone and the company would pay them for a flat-rated unlimited plan.  It made sense at the time to control costs, but when a few top sales reps left the company and headed out to the competition, they learned a couple of months later that along with that move the sales reps took the deals they were working with them too.  They lost something  to the tune of SEVERAL MILLION DOLLARS of ANNUAL revenue.  In a paraphrased quote from my client, “That was the dumbest move I ever made, and now that we’re back to corporate liable, we issue phones that are approved by us and when an employee leaves, we keep the phone, the number and any sales that might happen.”

The truth of the matter is that as a telecom cost recovery company, our goal is to help our clients reduce their costs and eliminate headaches.  For many clients, the perception that it is easier for THEM to manage rather than think about what an employee’s viewpoint might be.  A professional organization such as our will show you how to eliminate that headache and still get the best bang for your buck.  We enjoy showing our clients various options, make sure you choose what’s right for your company.

I am not a fan of voicemail.  I think that the guys over at The Doghouse Diaries, captured it perfectly when it comes to the problems with retrieving messages nowadays.  I’ve been accused of leaving a voicemail on my phone for days because I know who called me and I never even bothered checking what the message was because I just returned the call without listening to it.  Today, with newer telephony technologies, there are products that allow you to read your voicemail with a speech-to-text application that translates voicemail to an interpreted text message.  It is not always perfect and sometimes it turns into a cryptic message that sounds more like a nursery rhyme than a message, but you typically get the idea.  It’s actually a nice benefit that allows you to read your voicemail, delete it without listening and keep an organized “database” of calls you have to return.

Some companies charge for this feature, while companies like Google give it away for free.  We’re not advocating any particular company, but it is a feature found on a number of offerings from VoIP companies and worthwhile to consider.  Just think you can check your messages without having to go through that voicemail tree all the time.  So if you’re tired of having to work with voicemail, take a look at increasing your productivity with this new feature.

Additionally, the phone providers (and cable companies) create confusion by creating numerous plans for you to pick from which are pretty ridiculous.  Could you imagine going to your water or power company and have to pick from various plans depending on your usage?  (Do you like to take a lot of HOT baths?  Well then you need our “all inclusive” plan)  Because of the variety of nuance differences I’ve put together a handful of tips that could help you save a little or a bundle.

1.  If you are traveling internationally, don’t assume your rates are only going up just a little.  Depending on your carrier, the country you’re traveling to or even the type of phone you might call can add up to a hefty phone bill.  Even if somebody calls you and leaves you a voicemail, THAT ALONE could cause you to incur a charge.  Check with your carrier, find out the details it is not uncommon to see on our clients bills several HUNDRED dollars in roaming charges from one phone for a short trip out of the country.

2.  International DATA charges are worse.  I can’t tell you the groaning I hear from clients who “just checked their email” from their phones REALLY REALLY quickly but found a $25 charge for doing that.  If you don’t have a data plan, and you travel outside the US, the best advice I can give you is to leave your phone at home, but if that doesn’t work, call your provider and arrange for your travels.  Believe me, it will be worth it.

3.  Texting.  This is a huge gripe with me.  I don’t agree with texting fees, I find them to be ridiculous because it is a small amount of data, like data you transmit when you check your movie times.  However no amount of griping by me seems to have made a dent in the billion dollar phone companies plans as of YET, but in the mean time I offer three solutions:

a.  Text rarely.  If you text a lot (ahem teenagers), then this may be difficult to stop, but for those of us who prefer not to try and text doing it less will keep your bills lower.  At about .20 per message it can really add up so watch it.

b.  Text plans.  At $5 per month, this is money well spent for those who text in the thousands each month.  And yes, I have seen people text more often than you think could be possible!

c.  Go FREE.  If you have access to a smartphone, applications such as Skype, Fring and Google Voice can let you text for FREE.  What these applications do is exactly what I think phone companies should be doing all along is treating texting like bits of data and not upcharging you for it.  If you have access to these applications, use them!

4.  Run the math on Insurance.  “Benny, is cell phone insurance worth it?”  I get asked this question all the time.  Honestly, this is a tougher question to answer that really depends on a few things.  Do you have to have the latest and greatest gadget out there?  Have you dropped your phone into the toilet more than once this year?  When was the last time you had to back to a restaurant to find where you left it?  Many people think that insurance is actually offered by the phone companies themselves, it is not.  It is handled by a third party company that administers your insurance claims and they can be a bit frustrating to work with.  Things like deductibles (anywhere from $35 – $150 depending on carrier and phones) and the fact you may receive a refurbished phone are typically not widely shared.  Your sales reps vary in knowledge of the insurance details. You have options, you don’t have to take the carrier’s insurance, there are other other companies such as  safeware.com, squaretrade.com, Best Buy offer options as well.  Additionally, SOME home and auto insurance companies let you add smartphones via a personal articles policy.  For less expensive phones such as a basic flip phone when coupled with a $39 deductible, it does not make sense.

**Did you know you can buy an unlocked phone on the internet and use that to replace your phone?  With GSM-based networks (AT&T and T-Mobile) you simply swap a SIM card to change phones.

5.   Don’t use 411, there are free alternatives

Dialing 411 can cost up to $1.75 per call, sure it’s easy but you have alternatives to the “old way” (800) FREE-411, (800) GOOG-411, (800) 555-TELL.  Also, don’t forget to use your browser if you have a smartphone.

There you go, I hope that helps.  If you run a company, it would be in your best interests to educate anyone who is has a corporate liable phone.  Developing a wireless phone policy is imperative, the costs for wireless devices can creep up each month, without regular monitoring you may find yourself with a bill 20 – 45% higher than it should be.