Industry news — Comments Off
23
Dec 09

Number Porting in 1 Day

Number Porting has always been a really tedious long drawn out task for us and our customers. Back in 2005  the lead-time was several weeks and it was really expensive. Since then, Blueface have continuously worked to reduce the costs and lead-time of number porting for our customers. Now it takes 2 weeks to port numbers.

Number Porting in 1 Day

However, plans are afoot for number porting to be completed in just 1 day. Mobile phone customers have for years been able to port numbers on the same day without the rigmarole associated with porting Geographic numbers so we look forward to being able to provide a more effective & efficient service. This is very welcome news for everyone who wants to keep their phone number when they change service provider. The Comreg  Geographic Number Porting Steering Group (GNPSG) is working with various operators including Blueface to have this in place next year.

We look forward to similar pro-active initiatives managed by Comreg and Supported by industry operators like Blueface.

Support — Comments Off
22
Dec 09

Pay as you go phone credit and subscription call plan

As part of the Top support queries series of posts,  I wanted to clearly explain the distinction between the usage of our Pay as you go service and our call plans or subscriptions. It seems like it’s not clear to newcomers.

Why do I get low credit notification when I call a number?

time_is_moneyYou can use Blueface in a “Pay as you go” way which means you prepay for your calls by purchasing call credit on our shop. Then, each time you make a call, the calls are billed against your pay as you go balance. This is a prepaid service, so when you run out of credit then you can’t call out anymore (you can still be called though). Our rates are very cheap compared to other phone companies, so you’ll save a lot of money by using our services.

Depending on your calling habits and in order to save even more money, we have various types of call plans which allow you to make calls for a set amount of minutes per month or unlimited to a set number of destinations. The destinations are clearly mentioned in our pages explaining the different call plans that we have : Residential Call plans

When you have a subscription, you can still call destinations that are not included in the call plan, of course, but they will be billed again from your pay as you go credit. That’s why, even when you have a subscription, it’s best to have some pay as you go credit as well. It avoids not being allowed to make a call to a destination you are not used to calling, for example. Note that depending on your calling habits it may not be necessary to have credit in your pay as you go account.

Also check out our post about low balance notification.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Guillaume

Support — 1 comment
14
Dec 09

Call forwarding : never miss a call wherever you ended up

As part of the Top support queries, here is an article about a popular question regarding our call features.

How do I set forwards and diverts?

You need to login to www.blueface.ie and go to the ToolBox (4th tab of the customer menu).direction_banner

In there you can do a LOT of cool stuff with your phone(s).

You will see a list of the phone numbers you have with us. You can’t modify the way Blueface extensions are called. Fax numbers are listed but cannot be modified here either (you can update the fax’s email in the Account Management page!).

For Irish geographic numbers you can change the way the call is routed : ring multiple numbers at once, specify backup phone numbers or SIP accounts if the phone is offline or already on a call.

The textbox in this section can support SIP accounts, mobile numbers, POTS numbers and IAX2 accounts.  You can also forward calls to a SIP account that is not a Blueface one.

You can also save your details into a ‘Profile’ and have various profiles so that you can easily load one when you need to make a quick change on your account. The use of profiles is not very user friendly. A few customers have already mentioned this and we have planned to improve this tool.

We have a few ideas to add new features around this tool, so stay tuned.

We have written a guide for this tool : Call forwarding tool.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Guillaume

Business News — Comments Off
09
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
Business News / Industry news — Comments Off
09
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.

Business News — 1 comment
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

Business News — Comments Off
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

Business News — Comments Off
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

Support — Comments Off
16
Nov 09

Number porting : as simple as 1-2-3

As part of the Top support queries, I wanted to provide some more information about number porting in Ireland since it’s an important process for customers and it’s usually an action people are stressed about as it can appear quite confusing. It is definitely something you should consider if you want to stop paying line rental, as porting your number to Blueface will eliminate this. We would like to make things as easy as possible for you so here is some information on number porting to help you out.

Can I port a number from an ISDN or DSL line?

You can port your number from almost all telephone line types – PSTN (standard phone lines), ISDN , Virtual Lines, and you can even port your Fax number.

If you have DSL Broadband (this is Broadband that runs over your telephone line) then you will need to get this Broadband removed from the line before you submit a number port request to us here at Blueface. Unfortunately it is not possible to port your phone number if there is Broadband on the phone line – this is mainly because your phone line will cease working when your number has been ported over, so you wouldn’t have use of your Broadband then anyway.

Some people get around this by getting their Broadband provider to put their Broadband on a separate phone line – this can often take some time however. It will then leave your phone number on a line of its own so that we can then port it over. The other most common solution that customers use is to cancel their Broadband on their phone line and move to a Broadband provider that does not require a telephone line – such as wireless Broadband, for example. This will then cut your costs as you will no longer have any line rental to pay at all as your phone line will cease when your number has ported over so your phone number will be on your Blueface account and you will have your Broadband with your new provider. Most people go with this option so that they can cut their line rental costs, as this is often what makes up the bulk of customers monthly telephone bills.

You can also port your number to Blueface if it is an ISDN line. An ISDN line is basically a pair of two telephone numbers together on one phone line. ISDN lines are either High Speed or Basic Rate. We can port both types of ISDN lines, but the one thing to remember with ISDN lines is that we must port both numbers from the pair together at the one time. All phone numbers on the one phone line must be ported together.

Other number porting queries that pop up often are mentioned on our number porting page.

If you need more information or have a question about this feature, do not hesitate to start a conversation on our forum.

Alison

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