Further to my recent post about call recording, I’ve been looking about for places where you may have to record calls.
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) looks after the general rules and regulations for running any sort of money services companies such as money lenders, banks, mortgage companies, insurance brokers and so on, and they have produced a code of conduct in which they make recommendations about call recording. You can download consultation paper here, and the section we are most interested in is chapter 19: “Telephone Recording – recording of voice conversations and electronic communications”.
A relevant extract is 19.4:
19.4 We propose firms be required to record telephone lines used for voice conversations that involve the receipt of client orders and the negotiating, agreeing and arranging of transactions across the equity, bond and financial commodity and derivatives markets, and to retain electronic communications relevant to these activities. The term electronic communications has wide application and includes fax, e-mail, chat and instant messaging – but, obviously, is not limited to those.
So if you’re in the financial business then make-sure your current or next telephone system has the capability to take call recordings. Drogon Systems would recommend that you take call recordings in any business where you take orders, or deal with clients over the telephone.
Something that’s asked frequently is the legality of call-recording….
Well, the good news (?) is that in the UK it’s perfectly legal to record your own telephone calls, and you don’t even need to tell the other end that you’re making a recording. As long as one party of the call is aware that the call is being recorded (and that can be you!), then there isn’t an issue.
If you want to publish the recording, then you may have issues, however a written (or typed!) transcription is normally perfectly usable - E.g. in a court of law, and in that instance you can always back it up with a copy of the recording if you are challenged.
So feel free to record your calls! There are numerous devices available for traditional analogue phones, and most VoIP systems have the facility to record if required too.
But beware - now when you call someone, you should always be under the assumption that the call is being recorded. Every financial institution does it, as do all the utility companies. “Calls may be recorded for training purposes” they’ll tell you - and while this may well be true (it generally is when talking to “sales” people as their supervisors will want to check up on them and give them praise or a bolocking, depending on their success rate!), it’s really done for their protection, so they can sue the pants off you if you get abusive to them or claim you lied to them.
for a change, I thought I’d write about an installation I did recently in a local independent school…
They wanted a small system to replace an ancient Panasonic PBX. Their existing set-up comprised of what might be considered fairly “normal” for a lot of small businesses - 3 standard analogue lines, a Panasonic PBX and a dozen desk phones.
Features they they were looking for were primarily a voice mailbox facility for most members of staff, (up to 70 staff members), even if they don’t have a phone on their desks. Additionally, they are looking at remote phones - they have a rather odd 2-site set-up (administration building separate from the main school with independent broadband connections) and wanted to link both sites over the Internet to save phone bills, and look at placing outgoing calls via the Internet in the future to save of call fees.
From my point of view, it was all fairly straightforward - I was able to do the installation during half-term break, so the school was quiet, then come the following Monday morning when we’d gone live, I was on-site to guide them through the new system. (They had a new receptionist too!) Everything went well on the morning, I was able to make some “tweaks” to the system for them and talk to them about what was important for them - pupils being late or absent was one area where things get very busy in the morning with parents calling in, so we’re looking at a time-based automated system to manage that. Tracking down absentees - automatically phoning their homes is another thing we’re looking into.
An immediate advantage was the ability to install the desk phones anywhere where they had existing Cat-5 Ethernet cabling. Moving an existing phone had always proved troublesome as it was done using standard telephone cabling back to the existing PBX - structured cabling hasn’t quite made it into the administration building of the school yet - but they did have a rather good Ethernet network already in-place and working. The phones we chose had 2 Ethernet ports and acted as an Ethernet switch, so could go in-line with the desktop PCs, and working to a budget, we chose a nice console type phone for the receptionist and more basic phones for everyone else. An inexpensive ATA was used to make an existing analogue DECT phone work.
Job done!
Or are we? Not quite - Looking to the future, we’re lookiing to migrate them over to a pure VoIP solution in the fullness of time - I’ve been monitoring their broadband usage for a few weeks now to make sure it’s going to be suitable, but the plan is to migrate them to a good business quality ISP with a router which can manage QoS/Traffic shaping, then we can migrate outgoing calls over the Internet connection (Incoming still via their BT lines), then once we’re confident it’s all working, port their number into the VoIP platform and we can then cancel the BT lines.
One thing I noticed almost right away was that their existing 3 analogue lines do very occasionally become all busy - especially in the mornings, so already we’re putting excess outgoing calls over the Internet, but migrating their ISP will give them a much more resilient connection to place all their calls over.
Will they save money? Interstingly, I’ve never sold VoIP on money saving, but rather on features and benefits, but in this case; Yes. Even if the call costs over the Internet were the same as they pay BT, what they’ll save is the cost of 3 BT phone lines, so £35 a month (approx). Not a lot, but in the long-run it’ll mount up. Of-course call-costs over the Internet are generally quite competitive with BT, so there will be savings to be made there - especially calling the teaching buildings of the school using their Internet connections rather than the PSTN.
When it’s going through the “Spook Call” service, of-course…
So this is a company, setup with the intention of letting you place a telephone call, but fake your caller ID number to the far-end. Not only that, but they’re offering a voice disguise function too.
Is this good? I don’t think so. It completely de-values caller ID, meaning that when someone calls you and you see their number (which might even go into your system and produce a name or even be integrated with your address book, or CRM system and produce more details), you can now no-longer rely on that number being who it says it is, and in todays world where we’re all fighting against identity theft, spam, and other nuisance phone calls, this is just too much.
A lot of people PAY BT, etc. for the privilege of receiving incoming caller-id too - are these people going to carry on paying for something that’s now a joke?
Fortunately “something’s being done” or at least it’s being brought to the attention of the press, MPs and so on.
For more reading, have a look at The Registers take on it, but for now, trusting incoming caller ID is going to be somewhat tricky now 
Update: Friday 13th June
It looks like the Spook Call company have turned themselves off. Hurrah! (or words to that effect 
Why, to India, of-course….
And what happens when they get there?
Well - have a look below …
Imagine going into a pub and asking for “Up to a pint of beer”. If the landlord gave you a thimble-full, would you have course to complain?
But for the past few years, we’ve been sold on the “Up to 8megabits” broadband connection.
Now, from a technical point of view, this is correct - the speed that we can get is dependant on the technology which depends on the copper wires connecting out premises to the local BT exchange, and the longer these wires are, the slower the speed. 8Mb is the maximum speed you can get with an ADSL+ product, but how many people actually get the full 8Mb?
Not that many - of-course it really depends on where you are… A recent survey suggests that if you live in a city then you’ll get faster speeds, than living in a rural location - What can I say to that? How about (to use an americanism), “Well, Duh”… It’s patently obvious and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out why - Cities have a higher population density, therefore more telephone exchanges, therefore the chances of you being closer to an exchange is higher.
Back to the point. Ofcom is now asking ISPs to be more up-front with their advertising and numbers. They’re also asking them to be honest (what, an ISP lie to you? Never!) when they use terms such as “unlimited”, and so on. (And what do you think “unlimited” means?) It’s very hard these days to get a truly unlimited Internet connection - well, actually, it’s not that hard, but no-one is willing to pay for it!
So if you’re getting or changing your broadband connection, READ THE SMALL PRINT! and use the various checkers to give you an estimate of the maximum speed your line will support. A very good one is the Sam Knows site. Get your phone number and postcode handy, then jump in, so some research, ask friends and neighbours, pester your local ICT geek, and go for it!
In my last posting, I talked about BT owning all the kit in the exchange. Well, this isn’t strictly true - sometimes when you look for an Internet company, you’ll appear to have a choice of several companies, with BT being just one of them… What to remember is that via BT, it’s the BT Wholesale network, and through that, you have a choice of over 100 resellers of the BT wholesale network products, and BT Internet is just one of those resellers.
But what about the others? These are companies who’ve put their own equipment into the BT exchanges. They rent space off BT, they pay BT to connect the copper wires from the exchange to your premises to their kit instead of BTs kit, then provide your Internet connectivity directly through their network, from the exchange back to their own headquarters, rather than through the BT wholesale network.
LLU means Local Loop Unbundling. The “Local Loop” is the fancy name for the copper wires that go from the exchange to your premises. These providers “unbundle” the copper and take them off BT and into their own network. The local loop is sometimes called the “last mile”.
There are two levels of LLU - the first is simply piggybacking their Internet service on-top of the BT telephone service, and the second level is taking over the Telephone service as well. What’s best for you? Well, who knows, but lets’ put it this way… Here in Drogon Towers, we have a standard BT line which we pay BT for every month. We buy our Internet through Entanet (which we’re a reseller of, so we’re obviously prepared to put our money where our mouth is!) Incoming calls come via BT, but outgoing calls go out over the Internet line via our own VoIP service. This costs us the bare minimum BT charge (We pay a little extra for the privilege of having incoming caller ID), the ADSL broadband costs us £25 + VAT and then there’s the call charges on top of that. OK for a small business? We think so!
Interestingly this is something I’m asked a lot. You do a quick search on-line and find that you have a BT broadband enabled exchange, so think that your only choice for a broadband provider is BT. Worse, you’ve called BT and they’ve said that that’s the case - it’s BT or no-one.
Well, that’s not true, and it hasn’t been for a long time!
Here’s how it works: BT Wholesale own the copper wires and the equipment in the exchange, but they then resell this through a group of over 100 resellers. BT arrange the broadband signals via the copper to your home or office, through their network and then plumb it into the resellers own network, and from there it’s off to the global Internet. BT Internet is just one of those 100+ resellers and they’re treated in exactly the same by by BT wholesale as all the others.
So now you have a choice of over 100 ISPs to choose from… Confused? Yup, you bet you will be - especially if you’ve not had the time to do research and so on. Here at Drogon Towers, we resell products from just one of these 100+ BT wholesale resellers - a company that specialises in dealing with resellers, rather than direct to the public, and in-general it’s a good arrangement. They have a technically excellent network themselves and really seem to care about it too.
But where do you go if you still haven’t a clue? Obviously if you’re a customer of Drogon Systems, you’re paying us to make that decision for you, but what if you aren’t?
Think Broadband and Sam Knows are two excellent sites to get information from, but take your time, read the reviews and make your own mind up, but take note of this: Cheap, Reliable, Fast; Pick 2 of these three, because that’s what your choices are. We’d rather have a reliable and fast connection, but those don’t come cheap, but if you’re a small/medium business and your business relies on email and Internet connectivity, then why should you pick cheap?
So there has been moves afoot recently to make sure that all VoIP operators give their customers the ability to dial 999, and very recently, the wholesaler I use to interconnect with the PSTN has started trials of their service
But it’s not free
So what are we paying for?
Well, someone has to sit there and wait for the call… Someone has to then verify the number, name and address of the caller to the emergency services, and that someone costs money…
How much are we talking about? Well, not a lot in the grand scheme of things, and a VoIP “line rental” is still cheaper than a BT line rental (of which, I imagine part of it goes to support the emergency service anyway, so you’ve been paying for it all along, you just never knew!)
I do think it’s a lot of fuss over nothing though. It’s rare that someone doesn’t have a mobile phone handy, and you can also bet that the one time you do want to call 999 is when your building has lost power… You did put a UPS on your PBX, Internet connection, Ethernet switches and phones, didn’t you?
Of course you did … Just checking
Anyway, Drogon Systems will soon be offering a 999 service to all our customers. It will be an opt-in service (as not all need it - especially if you’re using existing PSTN lines of some sort) and there will be an small additional monthly fee to cover it. More details soon!
Many moons ago we used to have a 2-tier charging system for calling “landlines”. Local and National. Then NGNs were invented - Non Geographic Numbers. These started off as 0345, then quickly became 0845 and 0870 (and now we have others too - 0844, 0871, etc.) This was well and good, when we had the 2-tier charging system - however very soon, we moved to a single charging system for all UK landlines, but the 0870 “national” rate, and 0845 “local” (now “lo-cost”) rates still carried on.
What’s worse is that these numbers are revenue generating, meaning that someone, somewhere if making money out of your call, and it’s not just BT …
What’s even worse is that most of the time you can’t use your inclusive or discount minutes on whatever telephone (landline or mobile) plan you use.
So you end up paying the full whack, and the recipient of the call gets money for the pleasure of talking to you. The amount they get varies, but it can be over 5p a minute, which may not sound much, but imagine 100’s or 1000’s of people calling this number every month …
These calls are now firmly in the class of premium rate calls, and as far as I’m concerned, the operators of these numbers are ripping you off on the pretence of “national” rate, or some other feeble excuse.
So what can we do about it? Well some (but not all!) 0870 numbers have a geographic equivalent… How do we find that? Well this website has a very good list: Say No to 0870
What else? Well, Ofcom decided last year to finally recognise that these numbers are revenue generating and ought to be treated like premium rate numbers. In February this year, everything was supposed to change.
It didn’t.
Fortunately the consultation is still going on.
Basically the plan is to treat them as proper revenue generating numbers (announcements needs to be made in advance on while on-line telling you how much it’s costing you, etc.) and fines can be imposed to those who don’t follow the rules. The department responsible for premium rate numbers is called PhonePayPlus (previously known as ICSTIS)
Ofcom has aimed to publish a decision in the summer of this year PhonePayPlus will start to regulate these numbers by the end of the year.
If you want to read the consultation notes, then for 0870 numbers, it’s:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/0870calls/
