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.

So why is this important?

If you are considering future strategies utilizing smartphone applications, through a controlled marketplace such as Apple, their directive should warrant concern.  Many clients have expressed their fear in spending a chunk of their IT budget on these devices, or application development only to see them pulled off the shelves from a disinterested third party.

So what should you do?

It would be impossible to determine what the direction of Apple will be going forward, and even more foolish to assume that even though something has worked in the past, it will always be allowed in the future, a smarter position is to not get any one company to control your strategy.

Here are a couple of tips you should consider for your company:

1.  Write your applications for web access.  Google went around the Apple by allowing iPhone users to access Google Voice once Apple threw it’s support around the HTML5 architecture.  While an application can be disallowed on Apple’s store, access to the internet cannot be hindered.  There is nothing to stop the iPhones from using it now.

2.  Consider alternatives to the “closed environments”.  The Blackberry, Ovi Store,  The Android Marketplace etc.  There are many alternatives available for every user to work with, but you need to check that the phones you want to use will support other application stores.  Don’t limit your company or yourself to one walled system.

3.  Determine if the applications belong on a phone or some other device.  Netbooks, proprietary devices, tablets allow for free flow of applications and programs, we are starting to see more handheld devices that “fit better” in something other than a phone.  What is it your company really needs?

4.  Keep it off the mobile device.  As we move towards more mobile access, we want to have access to our information at the tips of our fingers all the time.  However, does that really make sense?  Ask first, if by putting it on a mobile device, what liability or problems do we open our company up for?  Is it a MUST HAVE or NICE TO HAVE?  Choose wisely.

The future is amazingly bright for mobile devices, don’t make the mistake of rushing into what might be something that is put out of your hands or unnecessary for your company today.  Time will tell.

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?

Somebody will be back in touch with you within 24 hours.  If you would like to contact us, feel free to call us at (720) 837-2327.

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!

The reasons for such an ambitious plan includes the ability access new markets and create business growth in fields in all areas of the US that would require broadband access in order to thrive.  Applications such as distance learning, telemedicine to giving users broadband access for the first time, in fact the chairman sites 100 Mbps as NOT the ultimate goal but he would like to shoot past and provide even higher speeds to consumers, perhaps such as Google’s recently announced initiative of 1 Gpbs speed for up to 500,000 customers.

There are significant obstacles that exist for the plan which are primarily due to the technology available today.   According to electronista:

Current cable modem service often peaks at 25Mbps and is typically expensive at this rate; new DOCSIS 3.0 modems can reach 100Mbps but are only available in a few areas and are so far only served 50Mbps connections. Verizon is the best prepared with its fiber optic FiOS network but would need to complete more upgrades to reach the 100Mbps speed across most of its network.

Internet providers have also traditionally been resistant to any moves to supply broadband to many rural areas that would be needed to reach the 90 percent coverage target, going so far as to sponsor “astroturf” (fake grassroots) organizations and engaging in frequent lobbying to discourage mandates for service in these areas. The advent of 4G is expected to mitigate some of this as it substantially lowers the cost of covering a remote area, although LTE and similar standards may provide much less than 100Mbps in practice.

While the exact method for deployment isn’t necessarily very clear, the plan is potentially good news for the end user.  What companies participate and how this plan is executed will be something we all should watch.  Wireless technology such as WiMax may offer a solution to help make this plan a reality and allow broad deployment, but keep your eyes peeled and those broadband hungry applications ready.