Posts Tagged ‘cheap calls to mobiles’

Over the last few years, many businesses in the UK have installed a GSM Gateway onto their phone system to reduce the cost of calling mobile phones.  In most cases, a GSM gateway could reduce the cost of calling mobile phones by around 50% becuase calls from landlines to mobiles were around 12ppm, and calls made through a GSM gateway were around 6ppm.

A GSM gateway could achieve these savings becuase mobile phone companies had more competitive tariffs to call mobile phones and many GSM Gateway users took advantage of cross network call charges and bundled minutes to drive down the cost of calling mobile phones.

The game has changed with the ongoing demands from Ofcom for fixed telephone line companies such as BT and Cable and Wireless to reduce the cost of calling mobile phones and this year calls have dropped dramatically to around 4.5ppm which means that many users of GSM Gateways are now paying the same price or more by routing their calls over the GSM network.

When businesses take into account the extra cost of managing the extra mobile bills, the maintenance cost of the GSM Gateway and the inability of the GSM Gateway to display the landline number of the business (A GSM Gateway can either present the number of the SIM card it is using to make the call, or withold the number), many businesses are switching off their GSM Gateways and turning back to traditional landlines to make all their calls, with a single monthly bill for lines and calls and the convenience once again of being able to present their normal business telephone number so their customers know who’s calling.

It isn’t all bad news for GSM gateway manufacturers, for example, Telecom FM, a leading manufacturer of GSM Gateways that specialise in the smaller single SIM devices known as a premicell or Fixed Cellular Terminal continue with strong sales of these units into vertical markets such as construction and healthcare because this type of low cost GSM Terminal provides an alternative to an analogue telephone line so can be connected to a wide variety of devices that rely on a telephone connection and in many cases the cost of getting a telephone line installed is prohibitive, for example, many construction companies will use the Telecom FM Cellfax to provide telephone and GSM fax connectivity for their site offices and will install the Cellroute GPRS as the GSM Telephone Line for connection to Lift Telephones and Lift Alarms.

Another product area in the same category as the GSM Gateway and Premicell that has shown dramatic growth in the last few months is the GSM Desk Phone, which as the name implies is a mobile phone in the style of a Desk Phone.  These are used in a variety of applications including telesales and temporary or remote site office telephones and are also widely used to provide a Taxi Phone freephone to help taxi companies gain new customers.  Again, the use of this type of product is due to the high initial cost and rental of traditional telephone lines, rather than the savings on the call charges.