After hanging up from the telemarketers and closing the door on the door to door sales rep, you try to refine your google search to “Business Mobile Plans Australia”. You actually are a little relieved when you see there are about 339 Million search results in the google search enginer. You try to search around this maze and after a short time you figure out that there are so many options even within the one provider that you are more confused than ever confused. You determine you have other priorities to worry about.

This is a very typical process for many small and medium businesses. The market has become extremely confusing to navigate with more plans coming out each week from the telco’s to meet the insatiable appetite for mobile phones, in particular smartphones and tablets.

The path of least resistance now seems like the best path to take. That is, talk to the incumbent provider and tell them what you need when the contract is up (presuming that they are actually speaking with you and not taking your business for granted).

The path for business optimisation is to meet with one of our trained professionals to go over what you need in a sensible manner focussing on cost reductions and productivity gains. Forget flashy adds, catchy slogans and easy to recall jingles; what we offer is simplicity and peace of mind. In less than 30 minutes we can review your spend and requirements so as to suggest solutions that are suited to your business that will reduce cost and increase productivity.

Isn’t this a better use of your time rather than navigating hundreds of millions of sites to determine who you should even talk to?

To simplify your business, go to www.telechoice.com.au/business/contactus and fill in your details and we will give you some time back, as well as some much needed advice to navigate the mobile maze in Australia.
 

So there we are, 40 degree day, sunscreen on and ready to enter the water when I broke into laughter. Entering the water I saw 2 people entering the water holding their smart phones. After having a really good laugh about it, it actually demonstrated to me how much people are addicted to their phones. I thought there was some new crazy app – iswim that records water temperature or conditions (who knows, there might be one) and that’s the reason for the phone in the water.
As it turns out, what the people were actually doing was sharing their beach experience live on social media. This is as live as it gets – take the photo, put it up on facebook or whatever site you use, and bang, share with friends in real time. Imagine what this will be like in a 4G world with people posting videos live.

This got me thinking between the boundaries of work time and personal time in a connected world, where the mobile device links not only your work life, but also your personal life. Importantly, it got me thinking about is this allowable in the scenario where this is a company provided mobile.

In a normal operating environment, most organisations as an example lock down their PC’s and Laptops to avoid too much personal content being place – that is, they are strict business tools and enforced as such. The mobile is a strict business tool also, otherwise, why would you pay for it for your teams. The difference with mobility is that staff use these devices (handset or tablet) inside and out of work hours. Question therefore – if a user is provided a desktop at the office, should they leave their mobile provided by the company at the office? If the answer is no, the next question is why? Logically if the work the staff member performs does not require a laptop, why are they being provided a mobile? There are many reasons - such as safety which are valid reasons, but looking at this situation, it raises an interesting point.

The questions that then arose were, as more and more people work off their mobile (phone or tablet), what security measures are companies putting in place to avoid loss and leaks of information? Are company policies up to date to take into account the usage outside of business hours for these company supplied devices? Who owns the content that is created is also going to be a growingly considered legal opinion in the future, especially when a user is utilising a company provided device?

Mobility is an excellent platform that provides so many business benefits. In order to ensure the business benefits, please ensure your policies and securities are up to date to cope for a shift that is continuing at rapid rates. For more information please vist us at www.telechoice.com.au/business/mobilitysolutions to help you navigate through this emerging grey area.
 

That’s the way most of our discussions start with new customers, especially when we are discussing mobile technology.

Smartphone and mobile tablet technology today provides the computing power seen in desktops just a few years ago. With the evolution in mobile chipsets, processing power and carrier networks - smartphones are now full blown devices with exceptional capabilities.

Many of our clients want the latest and greatest handsets, with maximum processing power but end up only utilising a fraction of the capabilities of the device. The typical user will use the mobile device for traditional calling, e-mail and web-surfing. More and more customers are starting to look at their smartphones as part of their IT environment, considering the requirements for e-mail and integration into back end systems to deliver the required productivity benefits.

The question we ask clients is what do they want to be able to do on their mobile devices – regardless if they are smartphones or tablets. More and more the answer is “everything we can do in the office, we want to be able to do on the mobile”. The discussion therefore is much more than one of rates as it is quite clear at this stage that bottom line benefits through productivity lifts will deliver far greater ROI than any reduction in rates. We do understand that rates are important – in fact this is a given as no customer will sign up unless there is a commercial rate benefit – this we totally understand and deliver to each and every new client.

With rates as a given, we can then collaborate with clients to provide this required level of integration through a consultative process that brings to our clients our vast experience and thought leadership in mobilising small and medium businesses. This process allows our customers to better compete and grow locally as well as globally. If you want a partnership beyond rates that propels your productivity, please visit us at www.telechoice.com.au/business
 

So there we were, inside the church, waiting for the ceremony to start. In traditional fashion the bride was late. As the kids started becoming restless, and older participants shared their frustration as to why don’t young people today make things on time, I jested to those around me that I would wager them $10.00 that if you got onto facebook our beloved addicted relative would have already posted their current location and ETA.

After the laughter of the wager settled, peoples eyes turned a little bit more serious. You know the look in someones eyes when they see merit in a joke and consider whether it is just possible that our Facebook addicted relative had nothing else to do and posted their current status and ETA on Facebook. I won’t go into further specifics than to say that I won the $10.00 bet and I advised me relative to get out more and try a 40 hour facebook famine to regain some control over her life.

It certainly was funny and the cause of much laughter – but also quite scary at the same time. With ubiquitous access many people have become their own reality TV stars through social media. What’s worse, in many of these cases – you are providing them the handset and paying for the carriage for this to happen, and this is not funny.

The line between work and non-work time continues to be blurred. Have you mitigated your risks? Are you paying only for what you should be, or are you paying for mobiles so people can have a great time on the weekend? This may seem harsh, but consider the example that if staff took paper from your office to print personal documents each night and on weekends – would you allow this? No way you say. Why therefore do we not provide similar frameworks around mobility?

To help navigate through these complex problems, in a sensible manner, please speak with our team who can provide plans to ensure your business stays connected, whilst allowing your teams to be social super heroes outside of hours in a secure and cost controlled manner.
 

Terms and Conditions: Bonus $100 Visa Gift Card Offer: Available to credit approved consumer customers who sign up to a new service or port in an existing service via Telechoice between 1/1/12 and 29/2/12 (inclusive) to a Nokia, BlackBerry, Android or Windows handset on a $59 Optus Cap Plan or above over 24 months. Customers will receive a $100 Visa Gift Card per eligible service successfully activated. Offer is limited to 3 gift cards per customer. The Visa Gift Card will be given to the customer with their handset at point of sale. Cancellation fees apply. Offer excludes business customers. Offer cannot be redeemed for cash, transferred to another account or exchanged for any other Optus product. Standard Visa Gift Card terms & conditions apply, see www.telechoice.com.au for details. Offer cannot be combined with any other offer, unless specified, and may be withdrawn at any time without notice. Information correct as at 28/01/12.

When travelling, it is important to understand that once you cross Australian borders you automatically move to new tariff structures for mobile communications. Whilst many organisations have understood this for voice communications, the prevalence of smartphones has meant that staying connected to e-mail whilst travelling is placing great cost pressures onto organisations.

This paper looks at tips for both mobile voice and data whilst travelling:

Mobile Voice:
VoiceMail – Many users are unaware that whilst travelling overseas that calls to retrieve voice-mail are actually charged at global roaming rates. There are some simple steps you can take to reduce this cost:
1. Leave a detailed voicemail to users stating that you are currently overseas and please send an e-mail and do not leave a voice mail message.
2. Upgrade to Optus SurePage service whilst travelling. Optus SurePage sends voicemail messages as a text. Using SurePage is a great option as it reduces your global roaming costs, but also ensures that you never miss a message. Each of your callers are greeted by a real person who takes down the message details and sends them to you.
Receiving Calls - This is one area that is hard to limit the cost structures, especially when a client calls. There are some measures however that you can put to use for your internal teams:
1. Call only when emergency, otherwise e-mail.
2. Set up a conference call time if you need to need to speak to a number of different stakeholders within your organisation.
3. Quick phone calls and call back at a time when you are at a fixed location or can use an alternate method.
A hard measure is to unconditionally transfer all calls to voicemail with a detailed message that you are overseas with limited access to voicemail. Some customers in this voicemail request callers to send an SMS instead of leaving a voicemail as voicemails will not be checked while you are travelling.
Planning is the Key:
If you are in a set destination for a set period of time, it may make economic sense to purchase a pre-paid SIM card within the certain destination. Utilising this approach means that you do not pay any global roaming charges to receive calls as an example. Further, if you are using a SmartPhone then you will pay local data rates which are typically much cheaper than international data rates. This requires some work by the end user, however, if the stay is for a longer period of time, then this approach makes a great deal of economic sense. If you choose to go down this path, it is recommended that you update your voice-mail with a message that provides your alternate contact number and that you will not be retrieving messages from this number whilst overseas.

Check you plan before you go:
A quick 5 minute phone conversation with your communications partner can greatly relieve many costs. Many carriers are offering global roaming bundles as additions to the current plan that you are on. These bundles typically offer a reduced rate to standard global charges and are an excellent option for many businesses. These are offered in many cases as either a 30 day pack, or an on-going pack that continues month in month out. It is important to note that although these provide additional cost benefits to standard global roaming, you need to still ensure that you play within the included value in order to reduce excessive global roaming charges.
Whilst speaking with your communications account managers, you should also check whether your handset will work in the destination that you are going to. As we are now a much better connected global marketplace, this is becoming less of an issue – but in some remote destinations, and even in developed nations, this can still be an issue due to handset frequencies.

Control of Data Usage Whilst Travelling:
We have become so used to performing many tasks through our Smartphones that it is often hard to change this behaviour when we are abroad. Competition in the local market has greatly reduced mobile costs across voice and data and we now have a seemingly insatiable demand to being glued to data on our smartphones. Although this has many productivity benefits, when we operate the same way abroad, there is the risk of high global data roaming charges. There are some easy steps that can be taken to avoid this, below are a few:
1. Suspend the data service on the mobile when you are travelling. By doing this, you ensure that you cannot access data from your mobile handset when travelling. This may seem a harsh move to make however, it is important to note that many smartphones natively use data simply to sync to the network for location based services used by many applications loaded onto many market leading smartphones.
2. Change the settings on your smartphone to manually sync rather than automatically sync for e-mails. Many of the latest smartphones automatically sync for e-mail under a terminology called “push” where e-mails are pushed from the e-mail server directly to the smartphone. If we consider that 50% of the e-mails we receive are not really meant for us (being cc or bcc recipient is just one example), then when roaming, it is important to upload e-mails at periodic intervals (ideally when connected to wifi), rather than continually. Undert his method you manually pull your e-mails in a batch, rather than one by one.
3. Utilise wifi connections for mobile data when travelling. Typically you will be located at a hotel when travelling. Hotels have lifted their game globally and most hotels offer wifi-internet in the room, and in many cases around the hotel. It is very simple on many smartphone to access wifi connection through a change in the setting section of the smartphone. This is an excellent approach to take as many regions have extensive wifi networks that you can harness. Wifi is prevalent in many eating establishments and shopping centres also, as well as within corporate offices.
SMS:
SMS is a great application for global roaming. SMS allows you to convey a quick message to colleagues and family when travelling and is much cheaper than making and receiving phone calls. This is often overlooked by many customers and is yet such an easy and effective tool to utilise when travelling abroad.

Technology can greatly alleviate global roaming charges:
An excellent example of how technology can alleviate global roaming charges is a unified communications system with integrated voice-mail that transfers voice-mail to e-mail messages. Further, many of these systems allow the ability for a soft client where all you need is an internet connection and you can pick up and make calls on your same extension number via your laptop. The soft client is basically software that allows you to make/receive calls from your laptop as long as you are connected to the internet and your network. As the call in this scenario via the soft phone is made over a data packet, you can use hotel facilities or wifi in the location that you are in to make and receive calls. These systems also have many other benefits such as presence, where internal users can see where you are and through least cost routing you can create rules for how you are contacted by your internal teams as an example when you are travelling. This is a detailed discussion that will be delved into in future papers given the scope of unified communications. It is however an excellent approach to take if you have a team that frequently travels.
If you do not have a capable communication system that allows for soft clients, then there are free applications such as Skype that can be used when travelling to make calls. Skype needs to be loaded onto your laptop as it is not recommended for security reasons to utilise internet café or hotel business PC’s as you are unsure of how the system is cleaned after you and what remnants remain.

A final note to ponder - According to BackChat Mobile CEO Danny Nathanson, roaming is now the third highest cost for overseas travellers after airfares and accommodation. This is a very alarming statistic considering how much time companies focus on getting cheaper airfares and accommodation, and forgetting the third most expensive part of the trip – roaming.
We trust that you use these tips to reduce costs and that you avoid bill shock upon return.

Regards,
The TeleChoice Team.

For the most part, digital music stores are a soulless experience.

TeleChoice wants to change this.

Reviews are written in Australia, from an Australian perspective. Extraordinary effort has gone into developing functionality, like ‘Deep Search’ music discover, which is designed to replicate the knowledge of the guy behind the counter. TeleChoice Music is the only digital music store in the Southern hemisphere where you can search the entire catalogue by multiple genres and sub genres. This means that you don’t have to troll through thousands of albums to find the hidden gems; just intuitively search the styles you like, as all the music has been catalogued in multiple categories to make it easier to find.

TeleChoice is also the only digital music store in the Southern hemisphere were you can search the catalogue by decade. Love 90’s music? Simple click on Decade/90’s and your back in the 90’s.

Don’t want us to retain your credit card details? No problem.
TeleChoice music uses Plaimoney. Clicking on the ‘Purchase Plaimoney’ on the landing page or shopping cart. Buy $20, $30, $50 or $100 worth of Plaimoney, add it to your cart and start purchasing. No chance of over spending and ideal for kids or gifts.

Register now. It costs nothing and you can preview any of 28000 albums or 100,000’s of individual tracks.

TeleChoice music is just about music. No apps. No Videos. No charts. No hype. Just music the way artists wanted you to hear it.

Listen to the music you love, find the music you’ve lost.

Ready to start?

Go to www.telechoicemusic.com.au and experience it for yourself!!
 

The Sydney Swans are pleased to announce another addition to our growing stable of Club sponsors, with Australian telecommunications brand TeleChoice signing on as the official matchday ball partner for four years.

At the launch of the partnership today, Sydney Swans Chief Executive Andrew Ireland welcomed TeleChoice to the Club and cited the similarities between both organisations as paramount to establishing the relationship.

“TeleChoice and the Sydney Swans have great synergy, as we are both committed to supporting our local communities," Ireland said.

"We look forward to working with TeleChoice and providing unique offerings to our members, supporters, and team over the next four years."

TeleChoice Chief Executive Ehab Abdou said his organisation is proud to be aligned to an iconic AFL Club with a rich history and a culture of success and pride.

“In sponsoring the Sydney Swans, TeleChoice lives up to our slogan of the ‘People’s Choice’, by supporting a sporting team that is of high interest to its supporters across the nation," Abdou said.

“We have exciting plans for the sponsorship, with initiatives and unique deals for supporters and members alike that will help them and the Sydney Swans build closer relationships with TeleChoice."

TeleChoice are the number one Optus premium dealer in Australia, and offer a wide range of mobile phone and broadband products and services.

TeleChoice Chief Executive Officer, Ehab Abdou, says his organisation is proud to maintain a relationship with West Coast Eagles Football Club; and the announcement further reinforces the success of the partnership. “TeleChoice is looking forward to building on our relationship with the Club and the AFL community. “We again, have exciting plans for the sponsorship with initiatives and unique deals for supporters and members alike,” said Mr Abdou.

This partnership is just one way the TeleChoice brand identifies with the sporting passions of Australians and connects with local communities - demonstrating a long-standing commitment to Australia. West Coast Eagles Chief Executive Officer, Trevor Nisbett, says the ongoing association with TeleChoice is a tremendous achievement for the Club. “TeleChoice and the West Coast Eagles have great synergy, as we are both committed to supporting our local communities,” said Mr Nisbett.

TeleChoice has over 150 stores nationwide, creating a unique and close-knit network of franchisees and partners.

Android™ delivers a complete set of software for mobile devices: an operating system, middleware and key mobile applications.

Open

Android was built from the ground-up to enable developers to create compelling mobile applications that take full advantage of all a handset has to offer. It was built to be truly open. For example, an application can call upon any of the phone's core functionality such as making calls, sending text messages, or using the camera, allowing developers to create richer and more cohesive experiences for users. Android is built on the open Linux Kernel. Furthermore, it utilizes a custom virtual machine that was designed to optimize memory and hardware resources in a mobile environment. Android is open source; it can be liberally extended to incorporate new cutting edge technologies as they emerge. The platform will continue to evolve as the developer community works together to build innovative mobile applications.

All applications are created equal

Android does not differentiate between the phone's core applications and third-party applications. They can all be built to have equal access to a phone's capabilities providing users with a broad spectrum of applications and services. With devices built on the Android Platform, users are able to fully tailor the phone to their interests. They can swap out the phone's homescreen, the style of the dialer, or any of the applications. They can even instruct their phones to use their favorite photo viewing application to handle the viewing of all photos.

Breaking down application boundaries

Android breaks down the barriers to building new and innovative applications. For example, a developer can combine information from the web with data on an individual's mobile phone -- such as the user's contacts, calendar, or geographic location -- to provide a more relevant user experience. With Android, a developer can build an application that enables users to view the location of their friends and be alerted when they are in the vicinity giving them a chance to connect.

Fast & easy application development

Android provides access to a wide range of useful libraries and tools that can be used to build rich applications. For example, Android enables developers to obtain the location of the device, and allows devices to communicate with one another enabling rich peer-to-peer social applications. In addition, Android includes a full set of tools that have been built from the ground up alongside the platform providing developers with high productivity and deep insight into their applications.

Android Timeline

From November 5th, 2007 to October 21st, 2008.

Android is a trademark of Google Inc. Use of this trademark is subject to Google Permissions.
 

Mobile navigation for everyone
Ovi Maps takes you where you want to be and shows you what you want see, with navigable maps for over 70 countries worldwide. All this with only one click. And it's all free*.

• Free* Drive navigation
• Free* Walk navigation
• Free* maps and map updates
• Free* Events guides
• Free* Lonely Planet guides
• Free* Michelin guides
   

Compatible devices: Nokia N97, Nokia X6, Nokia E52, Nokia E55, Nokia E72, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 6710 Navigator, Nokia 6730 classic, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic.