“‘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.

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.

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?

If you’re outside of the corporate environment, it can take a minute to explain what our business is but usually we get the job done.  In other words, I sometimes don’t really do a good job explaining to those who don’t understand how tough the telecom market can be for clients.  One day, I thought what is the best way to tell those who don’t get what we do to understand it?  So I offer this as my explanation:

Okay, so maybe it doesn’t EXACTLY tell you what GrayBear Resources does, but we thought you might get a kick out of this.  If you need some help with your company’s telecom expenses, we can audit, support, manage and provide you with tools to help you.  The end result?  A guaranteed reduction in costs and overall better control on this sometimes nightmare for companies.  GrayBear Resources we are your Telecom Management experts.

More often than we care to hear, we get feedback that what we offer makes absolute sense for them to do, then we hear the fatal word “BUT“.  “We know we need to do this but, I don’t have the time to put toward making this happen right now”, “I know we’re paying too much, but I need to think about it”, “I want to do this but we don’t have time for all the long and drawn out meetings” (which there are none) – BUT BUT BUT.

Ultimately, companies we’ve talked to about our services a majority of the time do eventually decide to move forward, and inevitably we hear – “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”

Let’s take a company that spend on average $20,000 monthly on telecommunications services each month.  It can encompass local, long distance, internet, data, PBX and wireless services combined.  If for instance your savings was able to provide you with an average 20% savings, you’re currently missing on $4,000 PER MONTH of savings unnecessarily.

If you take a look at the chart below you can see, depending on your spend and savings your operating costs could be reduced easily and with NO EFFORT on your part by engaging with a telecom cost recovery company.

More than likely, your company is wasting money unnecessarily, don’t let telecom be one of those expenses.  Our goal is to NOT to create disruption, nor will it involve any great deal of time investment.  If you can see by spending less than 2 hours TOTAL with us, your savings could be tremendous.   Contact GrayBear Resources Group and let us show you what we can do.

According to Engadget “Without giving a hard figure, the company[SPRINT] says that it expects to launch WiMAX service in “many” markets this year, with several notables among the lot: Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC are all called out by name. SF and the Big Apple in particular will be huge wins”

The deployment of Sprint’s WiMAX will offer technologies to rival the Long Term Evolution (LTE) projects that many carriers around the world including Verizon and AT&T are adopting to build a the last leg of the 4G networks for the demands of speed and capacity consumers are asking for.

The race is interesting to watch and could decide what technologies dominate the next iteration of data communications.  Billions are at stake, we’ll see how this shakes out for the next chapter of data communications.

BONUS MAKE YOURSELF LOOK SMARTER TIDBIT:  If you’ve heard all the rah-rah about 3G networks and heard about 4G, all that the “G” means is generation.  3rd generation, 4th generation, it has nothing to do with any scientific mumbo jumbo – but it sounds cool doesn’t it?

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.

What about treating yourself and your company to a little luxury called telecom management?  Psshaw right?  Have you ever heard of such a ridiculous thing?

The idea of a “telecom luxury” is really not too far from reality though.  The concept is by reducing interaction with one of the most important but time-intensive aspects of business can give you more of what you’d rather be doing.  Having this “luxury” works like this:

1.  You never need to worry about verifying if your billing is correct and eliminate the need to look at each line of the phone bill ever again.

2.  You never have to chase down sales reps or deal with long waits from customer service to work out an issue or find a credit that is due to you.

3.  Forget the “time sink” of having to find solutions for new communications issues, create an RFP or even just find the best price for a couple of phones

4.  The  daily management headache of  telecom would completely dissapear.

You can give yourself more time, freedom and eliminate all of those issues by hiring a telecom cost recovery expert to do ALL of that and potentially more, but even if such an organization existed, would it made any sense justifying paying for those services?  Your job is to keep those costs down and part of what you’re paid for is to deal with that right?

What if this type of service was brought to you with an undeniable advantage?  If telecom management was actually justified with a ROI to show you how any money spent was returned 10 fold?

What if you didn’t have to justify the ROI because there was no cost, the service was actually FREE?  Not ROI-justified free, but actually FREE?

A number of times we have made presentations to telecom stakeholders only for them to realize that our services are not only zero cost, but we aim to reduce telecom spend.  Many times during our presentation we are met with incredulous looks and open mouths.

“You’re kidding me” I believe was one such remark.  “Why are we not doing thing already?” was another.

In fact, I’m happy to report the freedom, time and effort we have afforded a client by not having to deal with telecom issues and reducing his spend was very well received.  When this client moved on to another company, we were one of the first calls he made to bring us in.

Many telecom managers don’t realize that by freeing themselves from the malaise they feel each month when having to deal with telecom bills and related issues, they gain time and reduce costs SIGNIFICANTLY.  At worst, some companies are guilty of ignoring any telecom audit each month, the cost to a company for not reviewing?  About a 20 – 50% higher telecom bill and over several years hundreds of thousands to millions are wasted.

So, get ready be prepared for the greatest “luxury” you’ll ever have to deal with and not spend a dime.  Let us help your firm or your client, we’d love to spoil you!

This morning, the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC) has announced their intentions of creating a unified open platform that would allow develops of applications to create an application program one time and that app would be able to be deployed to work on any carrier, device and operating system – universally.

The number of companies backing the WAC are 24 and include some of the biggest names in the wireless business today.   Of the largest names participating include AT&T, China Mobile, Orange, Verizon, Sprint and device manufacturers LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.  Such an idea, if successful would be an incredible dream for mobile developers as it would allow them to create an application one time rather than have to redesign the same application for different platforms and networks.

While some view it as a huge announcement that could potentially change the face of the applications, there are a few who view it as a potential disaster.

We’ll leave the pundits to argue whether such an organization’s grand plans will actually work or fail, what is obvious to us is absolutely certain, mobile devices are NO LONGER simply communication services that can be regulated from a spreadsheet.  There is potential for your organization to at the very least incur added charges to your monthly bill to, at the worst case  incur a data breach or malware attack from a rogue app.

The role of the mobile device is quickly changing, it is your responsibility to find the right way to manage those devices such as a software application that knows everything from keeping a mobile device policy, average departmental spend and accounting for inventory control.  An automated program can alleviate those type of headaches.  Talk to your telecom management firm to learn more about your options and how you can get ahead of the ever-changing mobile landscape.

If you study certain aspects of his management style, you can learn how to implement his techniques when dealing with your company’s telephony, and how to leverage it to your advantage.  Never really thought about an approach like this before?  Here are 5 tips you can start using today:

1.  “Don’t follow the rules, make them.” What most companies typically do when evaluating a telecom provider or telecom services  is to determine if what they offer make sense (technology and cost) and accept that service.  Depending on what your needs are and overall spend, those services may not fit precisely OR even be the company’s best program.  In most cases, your sales rep will work only as hard as they perceive they have to.  If there is plenty of competition out there they will work harder than if they feel the for instance as the, incumbent provider they don’t have to give their best offer or research how they can be the best fit for you, so you have to let them know they will have to work to make the cut.  If your budget is less than $100K per month, it is hard for you to demand customized solutions from your carriers, but not impossible.  So think how can my carriers give me what I need and what are they doing for my competition?

2.  “Be relentless with your vendors and service providers when they have the business.” Steve Jobs isn’t scared to let a company always be on pins and needles.  IBM once handled the processing for their computers before giving it to Intel.  Providers that build their computers are held to strict confidentiality clauses that if a peep gets out about a new product, they could be axed before they event know what hit them.   Similarly, once you’ve awarded your providers with your business, you need to keep pressing them.  Increased levels of service, price reductions when warranted, updates to new technologies.  It is completely your responsibility to make sure you have the best of the best from your carrier.  Unfortunately, as businesses have many responsibilities to conduct every day, it is nearly impossible to dedicate time to making sure your vendors do their best for you, don’t miss this one as telecommunications is integral to every growing business.

3.  “Continuously evaluate and review, are you getting better service and technology than the competition?” Apple continuously asks “How can we leverage our size, technology, intelligence etc better to stay ahead of the competition?”  All too often, companies view telecom as a necessary service that is used and never leveraged.  That type of thinking can leave your company behind in your market.  When 800 services, faxing, email and the internet starting becoming popular – many companies reluctantly starting using those services only when the world started shouting “YOU’D BETTER USE THOSE SERVICES BECAUSE YOU NEED TO!”  For the companies that studies the services before they became popular, and started to adopt and leverage those technologies, they were ahead of the curve and made millions more than their competitors.  Slowly other companies started getting on the bandwagon because they had to but other companies where ahead of the curve already had quite a head start.

4.  “Push those services to the limit.” Apples asks “How can you make this happen?” every day from their partners.  They want to squeeze the most from them and push the thinking of their company AND vendors.  How much can you get from the platforms you have at your disposal today?  Are you getting the types of service levels you can from your providers?  Are there services that are offered by your carriers that are unique that you could take advantage of?  Does your sales rep or engineer from the carrier not get what you’re looking for?  If not, ask for another one.  If your business has a large reliance on the phone, perhaps you’re missing something that other companies are using or something you all should be using but aren’t.  Ask, ask and ask some more.

5.  “Be creative where no one else is.” When the iPod was introduced, the MP3 player had been around for a long time.  Because Apple’s Steve Job’s was at the helm when it the iPod was introduced it was elegant, simple and innovative.  Their approach to music has become legendary and changed the industry completely.  Cheap single songs from the iTunes store, that could carry huge libraries that eventually started carrying videos and video cameras and eventually a phone and who knows what for the future.  How long was that type of device around before Apple got into that business?  How much as the industries they’ve entered into changed since they brought their products on the market?  Once upon a time, there was no clear leader is when Steve Jobs entered the ring they started to dominate those fields. How are you looking at your telecom services and how are you being creative with your business with those tools?

There you go.  When you take a fresh look at the same old services, you can get a new perspective and understand what a quality telecom auditor and management company can do for you.  It’s not always practical for a company to use telecom services in this way, but a smart choice is to choose a zero-cost firm like GrayBear for you to do these services and more for you.