It certainly is.





On 06/04/2009 15:29, "Sam Barnett" <[address removed]> wrote:

Valuable email.

 

Thanks

 

Sam

______________________________________________________________________________

 

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 www.struq.com <http://www.struq.com/> 19 Greek Street, Soho, London, W1D 4DT

 DD: +44 (0)20 8816 7531, M: +44 (0)77 3644 3510, F: +44 (0)20 7691 7216, E: [address removed]







This communication including any attachments is for use by the intended recipient and contains information that may be privileged, confidential or copyrighted under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby formally notified that any use, copying or distribution of this e-mail, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Unless explicitly and conspicuously designated as "E-contract Intended", this e-mail does not constitute a contract offer, a contract amendment, or an acceptance of a contract offer. This e-mail does not constitute a consent to the use of sender’s contact information for direct marketing purposes or for transfers of data to third parties.



 

 



From: [address removed] [mailto:[address removed]] On Behalf Of Stony Grunow

Sent: 06 April 2009 15:22

To: [address removed]

Subject: Re: [entrepreneur-1056] Skype for Business



Sorry to jump on this thread so late . . .



If you are growing and need access to affordable lines, Skype is an option, but I find it too flaky and requires either certain handsets or being tied to a computer.



I use my mobile to call everywhere for close to nothing. I use O 2 (though this should work for any provider), and pay something like £5-7 extra a month for unlimited free calls to landlines (anything 02… or 01…), and then I use the 1899 service.



Take note! Calling 1899 directly will incur massive charges from your mobile, but 1899 has a landline number. So, my call to the 1899 service from my mobile is not billed by O2, and calls further are billed at 1899 rates, with is 1 pence a minute to the US, EU, etc. Given the convenience of being able to call anytime anywhere from my existing hardware, it’s hard to beat.



One other thing – most mobiles will accept either the letter p or a comma into the number – this tells the phone to pause 2 seconds while dialing. So, if I was dialing a US number frequently, I would add the 1899 number directly my phone’s address book. So, calling a number in the US would be registered as



[1899 landline number] , [US Number with double 0 and country code]



where one or two commas is necessary. It looks exactly like this in my iPhone:



02081804804,0017325551234



It may not fix your incoming call issue, but for a low-cost, immediate solution . . .



hope that helps



stony

www.citrusconsultants.com <http://www.citrusconsultants.com>





On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Barry Bridges <[address removed]> wrote:



Hello,



Does anyone have any experience of using Skype for Business as their primary phone system within their start-up?



My business is really taking off and I’m now bringing on board my first members of staff. As part of this we’re kindly being housed by a friend’s company, but no phones are being provided and I’m looking for an effective and cheap system to use for our internal and mobile phone network that we can take with us and scale in the future.



My plan is to provide staff with mobiles but use Skype for Business as the primary switchboard service: i.e. SkypeIn will be the main business telephone number, then use something like Pretty May Call Centre for Skype (http://www.prettymay.net/callcenter/index.htm) or On State to handle and divert calls internally. If I can provide staff with skypephones then this will cut out a further portion of call costs and allow skype to be the main calling system throughout, avoiding higher rates.



Has anyone used Skype in this way and how have they found it? As a reasonably frugal start-up I’d rather not have to invest in quite expensive phone systems or contract packages (especially BT!) so thought this might be a good way to keep costs low. Any thoughts – or am I creating more work than it’s worth?



Thanks,



Barry.