Mobility
According to the report, around a quarter of EU households have mobile phones but no fixed line, indicating that the flexibility of mobile phones encourages users to abandon landlines. With businesses and consumers demanding constant communication, a mobile phone offers the always-on contact that fixed line telephony can never give.
Price
The European Commission found that the average fixed line bill was higher than the average monthly prepaid mobile phone package. This is proof again that mobile phones are no longer expensive commodities, they are essential communications tools. With more mobile phones than people in Europe (112 phones for every 100 people), it is clear that the mobile is ubiquitous throughout the EU.
From the Commission’s findings it is clear to see that users realise that fixed line telephony is no longer the essential communications tool it once was. With the cheapening of cross network calls and the increase of functionality and sophistication of handsets, businesses are realising successful business practices with mobile phones alone.
Evidence of this can also be seen with Tesco and Cable & Wireless agreeing on a £100 million deal to build the supermarket giant a mobile network to connect its UK and international offices. This deal will see Tesco replacing all of its deskphones with a mobile.
The GoHello ALLmobile Switchboard as a Service (SaaS) is based on the two principle findings of this report – mobility and cost saving – and is designed to allow growing companies and employees based in the field to focus more on their business and less on their landlines.
The system operates using a virtual switchboard that enables calls to a fixed line number to be forwarded directly to a mobile handset, without call forwarding charges and without the need for desk phones. This allows remote workers be connected to a main number and be based at an alternative location.
Similarly, when out of office, employees can receive calls when on the move – ensuring they will never miss that important call from a customer/colleague/client ever again. As an added bonus, the caller will not be aware that the employee they are calling is not in the office because they have dialled a land line and been connected automatically over a carrier-grade network.