 Businesses currently rely on a combination of land-line and VoIP
offerings to control communications within their companies. They are
tethered to a wire that keeps them from their full potential. There
is a significant technological divide between the wired-phone
systems and cellular phones that make the latter an adopted stepson
in the business sense because of a lack of features. Attaining the
same features as those offered on the wire would allow businesses to
rise to a new level and unite behind a new feature-rich cellular
platform.Adding business-related features would merely be a
matter of programming for cellular providers. With a few lines of
code specific to business accounts, cellular business users could
experience a wide range of features unheard of on the cellular phone
platform that they currently enjoy on their in-house multi-line
phone systems. The features of business cellular should take
advantage of the features of the cellular phones.
Currently cellular phones exist in a singularly solo dimension.
There is nothing that relates them to each other except the billing.
A good beginning to establish business cellular would be to group
cellphones that are related to each other within a business or
organizational account. These relationships would be created and
controlled on the cell company's website and would be segmented by
customer account. Company IT people would assign the relationships
and functionality. With the relationship and naming of each phone
would come the ability to bring enhanced functionality and
relatedness.
Most cellphone companies limit account size to five phones.
Business cellular should allow account sizes to grow beyond the
five-phone limitation to provide for business functionality with
small, medium and large businesses. A business with 1,000 service
representatives should be able to operate within one cellular
business account to provide customer service within a related
network.
Here are five functional recommendations for business cellular.
The first function in any business-phone network is the ability
to have automated or centralized answering on behalf of the group.
Centralized answering allows the caller to hear the offerings and be
transferred to the right department or person to have their needs
met. Business cellular should immediately structure the ability of
each business cellular account to have centralized answering. Since
voice mail currently exists with all cellphone providers, it would
be a short step to change network programming from voice mail to
centralized or automated answering and switching.
Switching would allow the call to go to the cellphone user within
the company who is representing the department, function or service
that the caller desires. The call should be transferred cleanly
without the caller knowing that it is business cellular rather than
a traditional multi-land-line system. And if the person desired is
not available, the caller should be able to choose within a phone
tree whether to talk to someone else, be transferred back to the
operator or leave voice mail. Business cellular should integrate
with existing in-house multi-land-line and VoIP systems to allow for
the highest functionality despite the restrictions of geography.
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The second functionality business cellular should provide is the
ability to transfer a call. All the members of the business cellular
network should have an interrelatedness that allows them to put a
call on hold, contact another member seamlessly and transfer the
call on hold to that member. All this can be accomplished easily and
seamlessly within the programming of the business cellular network.
These coding principles already exist in a multitude of business
phone systems and servers such as Asterisk and could easily be
adopted and ported to business cellular.
The third ability should be to conference calls easily and
seamlessly. Conferences of more than three phones should be
accomplished easily with business cellular and make remote business
meetings and deals possible. The advent of the iPhone and FaceTime
has recently brought the dream of the video phone to life. Business
cellular should enhance and adopt the principles of FaceTime to
effectively provide video conferencing to the business cellular
market, using both Wi-Fi networks and cellphone networks employing
smartphone features.
The fourth ability should be easily accomplished as well.
Business cellular users should be able to transfer voice mail
messages to each other. Perhaps some cellphones currently provide
that ability, but it should be a standard business cellular feature.
The final feature on the list should be the ability to record
phone calls on business cellular and transfer the recordings to
either a central location or any other business cellular user in the
network. Recordings provide essential details within a phone
conversation, and a business cellular phone user should be able to
say, "Hey, hang on a minute. I want to get a recording of this
conversation if it's OK with you."
As business cellular begins to offer these features to the
business market and more development happens, more features will
likely be invented and offered. Businesses will transition from
being controlled by land-line-locked locale to being set free in
geography, reach and scope. It is certainly time for business
cellular to be invented, features integrated and migrated, and for
the freedom of wireless to attain the feature-richness of wired
phone networks. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular
could reap a windfall for being first to the table with some more
mature offerings.
We're waiting!
[By JIM YOUNGQUIST]
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