How is your mobile health?

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Apr 10, 2006

T-Mobile UK has challenged small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to review the state of their mobile health.

T-Mobile UK has challenged small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to review the state of their mobile health.

The operator is encouraging SMEs to take a fresh look at their business' mobile bills to see if current price plans are really giving them best value for business with the launch of a new online health check calculator.

SME research conducted by T-Mobile and YouGov, found that whereas SMEs that believe mobile costs are an important factor towards their business bottom-line spend around GBP 763 per month on these bills, almost a third have not reviewed these costs for 2 or more years.

69% of these SME managers also believe it would be easier to predict monthly bills and control business costs more effectively if all mobile voice, data and text services were included in one simple plan.

To address these issues, T-Mobile has launched a Business 1-Plan calculator, enabling businesses to see how much the plan can save their business, based on their current voice, text and data use.

They can then compare this to their current monthly bill to review potential cost savings.

Business 1-Plan is the UK's first truly tailored mobile tariff for business, allowing businesses to get more value from their mobile usage by building a truly tailored allowance of voice, data and SMS that can be shared across up to 250 users.

The calculator can be found on the T-Mobile website.

Other findings from the research include: the complexity of business price plans is a major issue, with 33% of these companies admitting to finding mobile bills difficult to understand; 60% feel that the "one size fits all" approach of their mobile price plans makes it difficult to select the right plan for their specific business needs; 35% commented that traditional price plans lack the flexibility to address their individual business needs at all; and 75% of respondents that believe mobile costs are an important factor towards the business bottom-line stated that making international calls is expensive.

"This research clearly shows a significant proportion of UK SMEs feel their current mobile price plans do not adequately address their individual business needs", says Simon Ainslie, T-Mobile UK's Director of Business Sales.

"UK business is crying out for mobile plans tailored to individual business needs where they can pick their own allocations of voice, data or text".

"T-Mobile today lays down the gauntlet to UK business to take a mobile health check, and make a difference to their business bottom line", continues Ainslie.

"SMEs should really evaluate their monthly spend on mobile business communications".

"In a highly competitive business landscape, SMEs need to keep costs to a minimum in all areas of the business".

"We encourage these organisations to regularly review their price plans to ensure that they specifically meet their business needs and that they are consistently utilising the best value package available to them".

The research was commissioned by T-Mobile UK and undertaken by YouGov.

It was based on a study of 935 small and medium-sized UK businesses (those with up to 249 employees) The core questions were asked of a subgroup of 631 SME owners or managers with responsibility for telecommunications.

The research was carried out online between 9th and 16th March 2006.