Business News


10
Mar 10

Shane Ross says “Blueface are launching the ideal product for a downturn”

Published in Feburary ‘10, The article featured in the Sunday Independent. Written by Shane Ross it focuses on the FREE CALLS FOR LIFE offer, and how it saves the general consumer a huge amount on their telephone bill.

Hannah Flattery posing for Blueface

Hannah Flattery posing for Blueface

So,what can small businesses, haemorrhaging with cashflow problems, do? One way they can cut costs is by cancelling their subscription to the SFA. Another is by ensuring that they owe no money to AIB. A third is by reducing landline phone charges.

Last week, I found a new way of slashing my home telephone bill, courtesy of a small business with big ideas. Any scheme that kicks Eircom in the solar plexus is good news for those of us who have been victims of the dinosaur for decades.

So, it was wonderful to stumble on a small business start-up that promises to put another nail in the Eircom coffin. Two entrepreneurs entered my life. They will not be joining the SFA or borrowing from AIB. So far they have taken the private equity route.

As a crusty sceptic, I gave Alan Foy and Brendan Gaffney of Blueface a sideways glance when they insisted that I could have “free landline calls for life” if i handed over €199.

I have to confess as a punter who lost Stg£200 in the Eighties on the three-card trick to a man with an orange box just outside Harrods, I am a bit wary of racing certainties.

But knowing the pair well, I handed over the money and tested the product. The two telecom wizards installed a phone and promised me that I now have free landline calls for life.

Blueface has landed a recession buster. The phone provided will eliminate my line rental charge, provided I have a decent broadband connection. I reckon that the end of rental fee alone will reduce my telephone bill by hundreds of euro every year. Not to mention the free calls.

The phone is a cordless handset, easily attached to my old number. I will still pay for mobile calls through pre-payment and any calls outside the country, but even the mobile charges are cheaper than Eircom’s.

I win on the rental, there is none. I win on the mobile charges, they are cheaper. Two fingers to Eircom.

Any punter who wants free landline calls for life should head to blueface.ie. It is Skype without the computer. Blueface is exactly the type of resourceful small business that Ireland needs.  Consumers will love it becuase it will dramatically cut the household budget. So far the offer is only open to residential customers. But Blueface already has visionary plans for small business. The company is lead by a group of young entrepreneurs determined to shake-up the telecoms market. They are launching the ideal product for a downturn, watch this space.

The free landline offer may not be open forever. But it is for life!


11
Feb 10

Alan Foy Blueface CEO discusses the new offer on TV3

Blueface CEO, Alan Foy, was invited to Ireland AM on TV3 to discuss our latest special offer: Free Irish Calls for Life.


6
Jan 10

Blueface kick-starts the Telecoms shake up in 2010

New CEO, Alan Foy
New CEO, Alan Foy is very confident about the year ahead

Blueface, Ireland’s leading internet telecoms company, is set to make some powerful changes in 2010.  Today, the innovative, fast growing technology company announced its first change; the appointment of a new Chief Executive, Mr. Alan Foy.

6th January, 2010 – Dublin, Ireland, Blueface formally announces the appointment of Alan Foy to the role of Chief Executive of Blueface Ltd.   Mr. Foy is charged with creating and building the next phase of growth for Blueface, a young, innovative and dynamic company with an ambitious new strategic direction.   Mr. Foy will lead the management team to create and deliver unique communications products and services to business, residential and wholesale customers in the UK and Ireland.

“There’s lots of very exciting news in Blueface”, Mr. Foy explains, “We have special cutting edge projects in incubation which clearly demonstrate Blueface’s commitment to innovation and to delivering low-cost, 21st century telecoms for all our customers”.  “We also have star players joining the management team both here in Ireland and in the UK to help deliver on Blueface’s ambitious plans and who fit with our company’s entrepreneurial and unique culture”.

Mr. Foy comments that, “Blueface is a home-grown Irish technology company delivering cost savings and great communications functionality to Irish and UK SME’s and residential customers in these challenging economic times”. “We empower our customers to take control of their communications services and to manage the costs involved in ways that most telecoms companies wouldn’t dare to offer.  The customer value proposition of Blueface stacks up now more than ever”.


9
Dec 09

Blueface Business Plans: Details of each call plan.

Details of the Plans are listed below:

All prices are per month, and ex VAT.

  • Business Basic – €49 –  2 channel, 2 DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 75 UK/Irl mobile minutes
  • Business Plus – €69 – 4 Channel, 8  DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 250 Irl/UK mobile minutes
  • Business Advantage – €99 – 8 Channel, 16 DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 350 Irl/UK mobile minutes
  • Business Global – €139 – 16 Channel, 32 DID’s – Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 500 Irl/UK mobile minutes
  • Business Corporate – €219 32 Channel 64 DID’s Unlimited Ireland/UK calls*, 700 Irl/UK mobile minutes

9
Dec 09

Changing the ‘face’ of business telephony in Ireland

During the final week of November we launched the newest area of our website, a dedicated Business section targeting Irish companies who are looking to upgrade their phone system to a more manageable, more efficient and most importantly better value service.

We spent a number of months developing a series of plans that we felt covered a range of business types from small office style businesses to SME’s and all the way up to multi-site retail outlets and call centres.

The Business plans are priced with the end-user in mind, the Business Basic package is a 2 channel package, included in this plan is unlimited Ireland & UK Landline calls* as well as 75 mobile minutes for only €49 a month. Next up is Business Plus for €69, Business Advantage for €99, Business Global €139, right up to Business Corporate which is a 32 channel package with unlimited Ireland & UK calls* and a massive 700 mobile minutes for only €219 a month.

We have only had our business call plans officially active for a few weeks now, but the interest has been remarkable. The demand for a reliable phone service which offers companies a greater level of freedom and significant cost savings is exceptional. We have spent no money on Marketing our products so far this quarter and yet, organically through coverage in the Sunday Business Post, Online via our partner sites and our excellent SEO performance has seen a huge increase in business enquiries. We stand by our belief that first and foremost we are a Communications company, if we’re not making it easier for businesses to stay in touch with their customers and suppliers then we’re not helping.

We can provide a number of features that enable Businesses to save money – ‘voicemail to email’ which saves time and money from having to access voicemail on their phones, ‘fax to email’ essentially ‘paperless’ faxing which again saves money and is better for the environment and more importantly, with exporting in mind, ‘International Geographic Numbers’. If your company would like to have a local number in London, New York or a number of international cities, we can provide you with a locally listed number for new potential customers to call, giving SME’s an early step up in International Business.


26
Nov 09

Blueface Proudly Sponsor the Digital Media Award

Digital Media Awards

Blueface Sponsor the Best in Blogging Category

Blueface.ie is delighted to announce their sponsorship of the Digital Media Awards ‘Best in Blogging’ category. The growth of blogging in recent years is consistent with the phenomenal increase in social networking and online communications.

This Award will recognise the very best in Irish Blogging, nominated by the public and decided by an expert panel of judges. Judges will be looking at the standard of content, quality of writing, regularity of updates, whether it is influential and the overall design and usability of the blog/site.

“We at Blueface are committed to providing superior levels of communications to our customers, much in the same way a dedicated blogger provides content for their site. We expect to see a diverse selection of nominations for this category and I expect that the judge’s job will not be made easy by the high standard of web blogging in Ireland. I encourage the public to nominate their favourite blog sites early, as competition for this award will be rivalrous.”
Feargal Brady


20
Nov 09

Wednesday December 9th final day of 2009 for number porting

NUMBER-PORTINGDear customers,

We would like to highlight Wednesday, Dec 9th as the final day for number porting prior to the Christmas holiday period. All customers wishing to port their numbers before the end of the calendar year are asked to submit their requests as soon as possible.

We will, as always, do our best to process these requests prior to the 9th of Dec but cannot guarantee this due to the increased volume over the coming weeks. Numbers that are unable to be ported prior to Christmas will be queued and processed as soon as normal service resumes in January 2010.

We hope this does not cause an inconvenience and we will endeavour to complete all requests as quickly as possible.

Regards,

Blueface


19
Nov 09

Blueface, Futurecurve and Enterprise Ireland workshop

Enterprise Ireland, Futurecurve and the development of our Value proposition

9.00am on another soggy Wednesday morning Ken Cahill and I wait in the reception of Enterprise Ireland. We were there for an update meeting and workshop with Helen Blake, Cindy Barnes from Futurecurve and Grainne Ryan our Enterprise Ireland DA

The team have been helping us develop Blueface’s Value Proposition. It is imperative that we understand our customers’ needs and identify the augmented benefits that come from using Blueface, before we engage in any significant marketing campaigns. The purpose of the workshop is to generate a greater focus on our Target market from an internal perspective; we have been working with Helen and Cindy to uncover the elements that lead to Blueface’s success. We attended a group workshop in October which provided us with a series of tools to help us identify the benefits our customers are most attracted to, the main features which seem to generate the greatest level of satisfaction are the low cost of calls, flexibility and scalability of the service as well as the consolidation of office technology into one phone or one device, these are all recognized as expected benefits from our business customers’ perspective.

The augmented benefits that come from this are improved time management, an increase in cash flow as telephony costs drop, ability to work anywhere and the most exciting benefit being the ability of any company to have ‘virtual international offices’ in the UK, US etc. This provides smaller emerging businesses with an opportunity to test the export market without the need for heavy international investment.

At the core of our business is the promotion of communication. Obviously it’s in our interest to promote ourselves in line with this, the success of Blueface depends heavily on businesses in Ireland and the UK empowering themselves by taking control of their own communications model, for far too long the SME and residential markets have fed into the telecommunication ‘cash cow’ for the sole reason of increasing resale value. The incumbent provider continues to stifle the Irish market by charging ‘money for old rope’. The IP communications platform is a far more exciting proposition, bringing all the standard features of a telephony system into the 21st Century.

Alan


9
Nov 09

Welcome to the Blueface blog!

Hello All

Welcome to our brand new blog. This blog has been created to keep all of our customers and potential customers up to date with what is going on at Blueface and in the world of VoIP.

Blueface has been the leading VoIP provider in Ireland since 2004 and continues to grow at an extreme rate. Initially the service was aimed at residential customers throughout Ireland. Today, our biggest growth is in the business market as an increasing amount of companies realise the benefits of VoIP.  Shortly our business division will be officially launched with a range of new business plans designed to specifically cater to the needs of companies today.

Our website at www.blueface.ie has recently been redesigned to an even more unique and dynamic site to reflect Blueface as a company. The aim is to make the website as user friendly and inviting as possible whilst capturing the attention and imagination of current and potential customers alike.

We will aim to keep you up to date on all the progress with Blueface and VoIP in general as we expand to offer our brilliant service throughout Europe and, the world.

Kelly


9
Nov 09

Blueface’s New Look Website

This Month we officially launch of our new look website. As with all things Blueface, the website has been designed with the end user in mind. The design layout is simple and easy to navigate with priority given to the subjects that interest our customers the most.

We are committed to keeping our website updated with fresh content concerning the changes within Blueface as well as the new partnerships we are developing nationally and internationally. We see it as a vitally important tool in providing support information to our customers as well as detailing step by step information on how to set up the many features available to you as a Blueface customer.

Being Ireland’s only 21st Century Telecoms we want our customers to feel comfortable  communicating with us, after all that’s what we do, we help you communication better. We are committed to promoting blueface on all the available social media networks and we are already doing this through Twitter, LinkedIn, our Blueface blog and our soon to be launched Blueface tutorials.

Enjoy the site; feel free to let us know if there’s anything we can help you with through our forum, Twitter or, of course through the blog.

Regards,

Alan Haverty