• VoIP
• Plain Old Telephone Systems (POTS)
• Mobile
• Hybrid

It’s important that remote workers have a business line that rings separately from their home phone. This post is going to look at these options for corporate telecommuters.

VoIP Corporate-grade VoIP solutions like Asterisk and Cisco Unified Communications enable corporations to extend their VoIP systems out to remote users. Depending on the VoIP backend, it can be as easy as remote users plugging their corporate-issue VoIP handsets into their home broadband routers to make them available on the corporate PBX, regardless of their physical office location.

Extending your corporate VoIP solution to remote workers has the following benefits:

• Corporate management over all employee VoIP phones.
• Corporate security over all employee VoIP phones.
• Standardized telephone billing.
• External customers and partners are provided with a consistent telephone experience, whether the employee they are calling is a part-time or full-time remote worker.

However, extending your corporate VoIP solution to remote workers has the following dependencies:

• Experience, trained and certified staff to manage the implementation, operations, and security of a VoIP telephony solution.
• Potential need for additional network hardware and security.
• Support staff in place to help remote users on IP telephone configuration issues.

VoIP phone systems are also gaining ground in the consumer and mobile computing market, which opens another set of options for equipping corporate telecommuters with VoIP communication:

• Roll out Skype or Gizmo5 to remote workers. While both these desktop VoIP clients are popular, they don’t have the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to be first-line communications tools.
• Roll out Vonage to remote workers. While it is low cost, you can expect quality issues.
• Sign up your remote workers for VoIP phone service from their local cable provider. However SLAs may vary and the local cable provider may or may not have a business-class offering that it is appropriate and budget-friendly.

Plain Old Telephone Systems (POTS) While corporate-grade VoIP systems are gaining in popularity for economic reasons, there are still many corporations relying on telephone systems using traditional landlines. Since these systems lack the robust features of VoIP telephones, corporations with remote workers have the following options:

• Relying on corporate voicemail boxes for offsite workers to receive calls from customers and partners. This could result in a lag on their response time and productivity.
• Releasing home phone numbers to external clients and partners. This may cause some confusion or send the wrong message. In addition, some employees may not want their personal landline and/or mobile phone numbers released to external customers and partners.

One of the keys to a successful telecommuting program is having the infrastructure to support the remote workers so they can be responsive to company business. Companies still using POTS may have to get creative to ensure their remote workers are always accessible via telephone.

Mobile The mobile phone is the first number to call for many web workers whether they be corporate or independent. When choosing whether to roll out mobile phones as the primary telephone contact for corporate remote workers, there are a few things to consider:

• Are mobile phones part of the corporate culture?
• Are remote workers expected to pay for the phones? Will there be a corporate standard for mobile devices of will the users choose and buy their own mobile devices?
• Your support staff will need to be skilled in mobile devices.
• There are additional network security considerations for smartphone access to the corporate VPN.

Hybrid Even corporate web workers may not stay in the same place the whole time, whether it is their home office, favorite coffee shop, coworking center, client site, hotel room or even favorite poolside. Therefore, corporate telecommuting programs may need to consider a hybrid telephony solution for their remote workers that includes both landline and mobile phones.

Corporations leaning towards a hybrid telephony solution for remote workers should keep an eye on Google Voice, which Charles covered recently. They could also consider Grasshopper, a business-grade VoIP solution, which Charles also covered.

Build the Better Remote Worker Telephony Solution Outside of the technological considerations for rolling out telephones to corporate remote workers, companies need to consider budgetary constraints and whether they want to burden their remote workers and accounting staff with the processing of expense reports. The considerations in this post show that rolling out corporate telecommuting isn’t the turnkey affair it is for independent web workers.

What considerations should employers take into account when rolling out a remote work telephony program?

IP Telephone Image by sxc.hu user dhaake

Blackberry Pearl Flip

Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Rachel Murray to the WebWorkerDaily team. Rachel has been building web sites for more than 10 years, and currently manages the online presence of a nonprofit in the Boston area.

I’ve only made the transition from a “regular” mobile phone to a smartphone recently. I had been able to hold off up until now, but then the trusty Razr that I had for three glorious years just gave up on me. After a heart-to-heart with the sales rep at T-Mobile, “we” agreed that perhaps I should try the BlackBerry Pearl Flip for the new contract price of $50 (as opposed to the Razr for $20). I didn’t want to be a slave to yet another device, but he showed it to me, and it actually looked like a regular phone.

The BlackBerry Pearl Flip is like a secret smartphone. I think that’s why I like it so much. Here are some other reasons the Pearl Flip makes a great transition smartphone:

1. If you’re used to flip phones, you’ll love the comfort of the flip.
2. The design makes it more comfortable to hold than the comparatively bulky iPhone.
3. It handles email brilliantly, and multiple email accounts are no problem.
4. Basic functions are a snap to use: texting, adding/editing contacts, taking photos are all pretty straightforward.
5. The keyboard and trackball are surprisingly intuitive for me as a new Blackberry user.
6. The apps are decent…not mind-blowing, but decent. The NYTimes app is excellent for news in a pinch, and Google Maps is great as well. The UI of BlackBerry AppWorld is not as satisfactory as Apple’s App Store, but it’s still good enough for me.

As a new BlackBerry user, I have to admit it’s not all sunshine and roses. There are still so many things to learn about it yet, but I’m fine with that. When I’m ready to make the step up as a power user, I’m sure the Flip will help me get there.

Have you tried the BlackBerry Pearl Flip?

Additionally, US cellular service providers over the last few months have been rolling out “unlimited plans” that offer an unlimited bucket of minutes for one flat monthly rate.  In most cases, $99 a month will give you unlimited chatters a way to talk all you want.  Sprint’s plan is very attractive because it includes unlimited voice, data, and SMS.

However, T-Mobile put a new spin on the unlimited plan by offering an unlimited family plan.  For example, if you have a $99 T-Mobile unlimited plan, you can add additional lines for just $49/month that will include unmetered national voice minutes, SMS, MMS, and instant messaging.

Small business owners may not know this, but this “Family” plan is not only usable by those who share genetic bonds.  This is applicable to small business because for about $250 (not including taxes), you can have unlimited wireless minutes to run your business with.  This type of value makes the offering very competitive and could be comparable to Internet telephony (VoIP) offerings.  However, the beauty of this T-Mobile unlimited family plan is that you have access to your minutes no matter where your cell phone happens to be.

For more information about the new plans, see T-Mobile’s website.

Would you consider running your small business on cell phones?  What tradoffs can you think of?

This is really of no surprise that 33% of respondents stated email was their most needed mobile utility. There are many reasons to have a data enabled mobile phone such as: keeping up to date with your schedule, supporting your social life, and being able to check traffic when driving to a meeting; but when it comes to getting business done, email is still where the rubber meets the road.

This also explains one possible reason that since the iPhone was released, it’s been the number 2 smartphone, behind Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. Road warriors use technology to enable us work from anywhere, and BlackBerry is simply made for email.

The number two most requested feature was social networks with 25% of the survey results. This tells us that many mobile phone users (and most web workers, we estimate) like to get their MySpace or Facebook fix in between all those business calls and emails. It must be pointed out, however, that more and more business relationships are being fostered by using online social networks. I expect that as this use rises, social networking will take over as the number one requested mobile feature.

As a last statistic, local information requests were third on the list at 20%. These requests consist of questions such as “what’s around me?” With services such as Google Maps My Location, which tracks your location in a GPS-like service, local information requests are of great value to on-the-go workers. Imagine a situation where you are going to meet a client to discuss a proposal at a coffee shop, but the intended coffee shop is closed. With a service such as My Location, you can quickly see other coffee shops in your vicinity and easily change your meeting location without having to take too much time away from your meeting.

These mobile services add countless features to your daily working life, especially for nomadic web workers. What is your favorite mobile service? We look forward to seeing the comments!

Image credit: Gaeton Lee