Your Business Landline is now in the palm of your hands.

Get Business Landline calls on your iPhone.

Dublin: Monday 26th of September 2011. Three, Ireland’s largest high speed mobile network and mobile broadband market leader, has together with Blueface launched a new and innovative business offering designed to deliver big business service at small business prices. Three and Blueface are today announcing the introduction of Ireland’s first telephone App delivering a mobile landline service for Three business customers on their iPhone.

This new telecom App is primarily targeted at the SME market, delivering significant cost savings versus existing services with all the flexibility of a mobile network. With Fixed Line penetration currently at 71%, Three and Blueface see a significant opportunity for growth through delivery of a high quality service with a very competitive cost structure.

It is widely acknowledged that Irish businesses currently pay some of the highest landline costs in Europe with Comreg estimates putting it as much as 40% higher than the UK (€25 compared to €15 in the UK). Blueface is a landline app that is free to download with no monthly charges or landline rental, allowing users to make significant savings. It enables you to create a brand new landline number or carry over your existing landline number. With this service, if your customers try to contact you on either your mobile or landline, you can be instantly reached.

Eoin MacManus, Commercial Director at Three commented on the launch: “This agreement with Blueface gives Three a significant advantage over our competitors in the SME market. This simple, easy to use service will mean businesses can now have all the benefits of a fixed line number with the flexibility of mobile communications at exceptional value. We are delighted to bring this innovative product to the market and look forward to working with current and potential business customers to offer them some of the best value business communications solutions in Ireland.”

Alan Foy CEO, Blueface revealed his delight at the deal: “Blueface are delighted to be partnering with an innovative operator like Three to launch this unique landline service to small businesses. The Three landline App not only provides business customers with an innovative way of accessing a fixed landline but also enables customers to save costs by removing fixed cost monthly line rental and by using Blueface’s low-cost international call rates. Blueface are continually innovating to provide our SME customers with big business communications services at a small business price, and we look forward to providing even more developments in the near future.”

This new offer from Three combines innovative new technology with an attractive pricing structure. The App is free to download and there is a once off activation fee of €10 (ex VAT). Charges to make or receive calls are 15c (ex VAT) peak, off peak and weekends. The service is available on a Business Solo Plan with Three costing €75 per month. This includes
unlimited Mobile & Landline ROI and UK calls, unlimited texts for ROI together with unlimited Data. International calls cost 12c EU, 10c US and Canada and 20c Rest of the World. Roaming charges include: EU calls are 25c to make, 11c to receive; making and receiving calls from US are 75c; making and receiving calls from Rest of the World cost 99c and world Data Charges are 99c per MB.

Blueface developed the award winning app in connection with Vennetics, an innovator in telecommunication and IT application solutions, using GSM OneAPI specifications. This partnership between Blueface and Vennetics resulted in the companies winning the North / South Collaboration Award at the Irish Times Innovation Awards 2011. The App is not only the first Telecom App in Ireland but also a world first in terms of the newly adapted One API specifications as agreed by the GSMA.

Three has launched a number of ground–breaking initiatives including Ireland’s first ‘All you can eat’ data offering on both Postpay and Prepay, allowing customers to surf for free, with no excess charges. Three is proud sponsor of the Irish National football team and the Football Association of Ireland. Three’s “Dare to Dream” affinity scheme offers Football Association of Ireland-affiliated clubs across the country the chance to earn cash when their members switch to Three which helps with its support and development of grass roots football

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

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!

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?

You 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

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

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.