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London’s Tube to get free Wi-Fi in time for Olympics

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Free Wi-Fi will be made available to London’s commuters in time for the Olympics. That is, when the Tube drivers aren’t on strike leaving half the network crippled for days at a time.

Everyone loves a freebie, especially if it comes in invisible wireless waves of Wi-Fi enjoyment. Thankfully for the typical grumpy Londoner, users of the Underground subway system will receive free Wi-Fi during July and August.

The catch? There isn’t one as it happens, with anyone able to use the free Wi-Fi during the Olympics and beyond, thanks to Virgin Media. If there were one, however, it would be that once the slightly later Paralympic Games are over, non-Virgin customers will be shuttered out.

London’s Tube to get free Wi-Fi in time for Olympics

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business telephone selection – services and hardware – get your office the service back up it requires

Be sure to select a communications provider that can provide your business with what it needs – not what they want to supply you.

A supplier should have a number of vendor and supply options.

 

Often we have been in competitive situations against a ‘One-man-band’ or ‘man-and-a-van’ whilst a customer may save £50-£100 with such an out fit, there are many downsides, we recommend you look for all these in any new comms provider.

1) Support – a depth of back office support, in telephony, adsl, and mobile technologies

2) A selection of vendor equipment (for features, look and feel, integration to other systems in the business)

3) A selection of Tier 1 network providers, with proper wholesale relationship to provide a higher level of service than if you were direct

If you are a small business looking to save money it may be a false economy to buy cheap today, but have to reinvest a year down the line if the cheap option purchased can’t handle voip or voicemail etc..

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Telephone Systems for Schools and Colleges

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Smartinfo have installed many new phone systems for schools and colleges. Many companies just remove old switchboards like for like, misssing an opportunity to add greater functionallity to a schools facility management.

Some of the features we like to install specifically for schools are:-

1) An Operator console – to enable the receptionist to handle a large number of calls at the busiest times

2) Texting from the desktop to allow student or parent realtime updating of urgent opening times info

3) Mobex – to allow mobile phones to replace DECT systems

4) Paging through phones

5) Scalling of lines up and down at busyest times such as admissions for 6th form colleges

6) Mobile gateway to reduce mobile call costs by 60%

If your supplier has not recommended any, or all, of the above they are not looking after a schools functional needs!

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Phone System Maintenance

It is recommended all owners of telephone systems take out a maintneance contract on their phone system.

A maintenance agreement gives a number of benifits over a pay as you go call-out structure.

A specific telephone system maintenance agreement gives you 1. A contracted SLA (service level agreement) 2. HArdware and Labour cover

As an added benefit Smartinfo also throw in some free moves and changes into our maintenance contracts, that is we provide a number of free dial-ins over the term of the contract, often refered to as MOCs – or moves and changes, such as phone name changes or ring group tweeks.

What is often overlooked is the cheap cost of maintenance, on our survey of our customer base Telephon system maintenance if less than 10% of the price of IT support for the same company. If you consider a company still uses telephony for customer contact at least as much as email and web this offers great value. Also most IT contracts do not offer hardware cover, whereas a smartinfo phone maintenance contract covers all hardware failures and the labour to replace or fix, within an SLA of commonly 4 or 8 hours.

If you refer to our life of a phone system blog post it is interesting to note that maintenance or service contract also covers software upgrades.

Some people relate a service contract to consumer items such as washing machines or fridges, or even business products like photocopiers, but these items tend to have a single mechanical part, and a modernday phone system is software driven and a business critical component – in fact we would argue as important as the business premisis, or staff.

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Major Software upgrade on Virtual Infrastructure

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Engineering work will be undertaking an essential software upgrade within the resilient virtual firewall infrastructure at the London 3 data centre. This work will allow further virtual firewalls to be provisioned whilst also removing a software bug recently identified that is preventing provisioning activites to take place. This work has been recommended by the vendor.

Affecting

No customer impact is anticipated during the works as virtual services hosted on the device being worked upon will be migrated on to unaffected resilient devices within London 2. However, there is a very slight possibility of disruption to services in London 3, mainly the DNS platform but also including DSL and Leased Lines.

Advice to affected users

Please check your connectivity after the maintenance window. If problems persist, please contact the Emergency Support Team.

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Virtual PBX – Modest Office Phone Systems

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Virtual PBX is usually a fantastic alternative, in relation to picking out a smaller Office Phone Systems. With all its improved telecommunication facilities, this cellular phone assistance can help organization communication in a productive and specialist way.

A virtual PBX cell phone system is integrated by using a variety of refined options which might be commonly seen in fashionable phone systems of greater firms. Voice mail box facility, fax mail, fax to email, caller ID, find me follow me, simply call forwarding or no matter what be your modest small business telecommunication necessity, it is possible to have it all by a virtual PBX program, at very reasonably priced rates.

Benefits of a Compact Office Phone Systems

Gains that your tiny office environment may have from virtual PBX systems are a lot of. This phone process can be create simply and features when using the assist of a broadband world-wide-web connection; all calls will likely be linked to the meant extensions inside minimum time. Benefits that PBX cellular phone programs convey towards your small business will not be basically constrained to:

  • Ease-of- use.
  • Slice down telecommunication charges
  • Minimized infrastructure prices
  • Scalable
  • Simultaneous simply call transferring facility
  • Current much larger corporate picture
  • Round-the-clock expert service
  • Independence to operate company even when within the move.
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