The mobile operator promises to offer best customer experience on any network. The device will be distributed via 20 direct and indirect dealers in UK

Vodafone is quite aggressively promoting and pushing the sales of Apple I-phone in to the business fraternity of UK as indicated by the  company’s enterprise director, Peter Kelly.

‘There is a lot of demand for the iPhone in the enterprise marketplace, not only from SMEs, but public sector and corporate clients too,’ Kelly told Mobile.

He added: ‘But to be deployed in that market on any scale it will have to be seen as a strong business device; applications will be key here.’

Kelly justified his point by saying that businesses require utile and convenient applications to run effectively and flawlessly. The Apple I-Phone is one such device that has many inbuilt critical applications to simplify the arduous business operations.

‘Applications are the way into the enterprise market for the iPhone as they will help provide lower costs and drive productivity. The device does lend itself to a different way of working. The iPhone is a smartphone plus,’ he said.

The mobile operator is quite assertive of the fact that the mobile device when used on its  3G network will tender the mobile users with the best and impeccable customer service experience of any network.

For the most effective operation of a mobile device (when used for business operations), a strong and reliable coverage is crucial. Kelly said ‘To make sure we can guarantee that service in as many places as possible we have our Vodafone Access Gateway product [a femtocell signal booster]. So long as you’ve got a Vodafone mobile with data access, you can get five bar coverage with a femtocell.’

Originally, the Access Gateway offering was conceived as a home consumer product, but Kelly said a significant number of SoHo and SME customers were also buying it.

‘There will be ongoing development of the Access Gateway to extend its capacity to make it more applicable to SMEs. We will be rolling this out in significant volumes in 2010,’ said Kelly.

Vodafone will start rolling out the Apple I-Phone from 14 January. The provider has also selected a number of direct and indirect dealers who would sell the sell the handset. These are categorized in to ‘Premier partners’ and ‘Gold partners’.

The Premier partners includes names :CBS Comms Center, Cellular Solutions & Services, CCS Mobile, Excalibur Communications GB, Garnell Corporate Comms, Grapevine Premier Telecom Ltd, The General Telephone Co, The Word Direct Totel.

While the Gold partners include the following dealers: Active Telecom, Fone Solutions,  JHL Communications, Olive, Premier Mobile, Pure Mobile, Red squid, Sprint Communications, Totility, Wish Communications .

British Telecom responds, on being agitated by the claims of its ‘stealth price hike’  for SME customers the rival Unicom group.

A spokesperson of the BT said: “A competitor has put together some figures to deliberately exaggerate the effect of some small price increases for BT business customers. These figures are not a clear reflection of the experience of our business customers,” said a spokesperson.

“The competitor has selected ‘a typical’ profile. The profile they have identified also appears to have some very strange calling patterns and therefore throws into question the validity of the whole bill impact.”

However, Unicom, the fixed line provider asserted that the price hike done by British telecom over the past 18 months lead to a significant rise in the customers’ phone bills.

Chris Earle, Unicom operations director said: “Over the past 18 months BT has drip-fed price changes to their customers and the accumulative affect of those has been a 53 per cent increase. We have won a significant amount of business from BT customers on the standard tariffs.

“They have changed bits all over the place. Most of the customers on BT Business are not aware of them, because the prices are not distributed to them in anyway other than on its own website. It’s impossible for a normal customer to understand.”

British Telecom reportedly increased the prices of its services on Dec 1 with off-peak landline-to-mobile charges increasing from 12.9p per minute to 14p per minute. Other increases were also made like the call set-up fee increase 12.5 per cent from 7p to 8p and local peak call charges increasing from 5.5p to 6.5p. The customers who are signed to a fixed-rate monthly deal, typically 12 months or more, are also impacted by the price increase.

British Telecom made an announcement earlier indicating  it plans to reduce capital expenditure by £1 billion with plans to cut 15,000 staff, around 10 per cent of its total workforce. The telecom service provider also revealed the plans of increased standard customers’ line rental by £1 to £12.50, unless they opted for online billing, affecting around 14.5 million customers.

The BT spokesperson said: “It is always our intention to provide a value for money, and a comprehensive and quality service to our customers. We recently launched a BT Business One Plan package, which combines unlimited calls with a range of options including broadband and mobile, to allow businesses to control their monthly communications spend.

“The BT Business One Plan Inclusive packages offer unlimited calling minutes to UK landlines, UK mobiles, international destinations and 0845 and 0870 numbers for a fixed fee of £15 per month.”

The retailer is training staff to help them handle smartest of mobile users and also plans to refurbish its 450 stores by the first quarter of 2010

Phones4u, the largest independent mobile phone retailer in UK has recently announced to make ‘much more’ investment in training and NVQ qualifications of its store staff. The retailer mulled over the investment after it got positive feedback from store staff about the current training scheme.

Tim whiting, the chief executive of Phones4u asserted that as the mobile phones are getting more and more complex day by day, it is important for the staff to know the features well so that they can face the queries of even the smartest of the customers well. The training will offer store staff the requisite skills to handle today’s mobile users.

Phones4u started imparting NVQ Qualifications and training in September last year for some of the staff. The retailer is know contemplating to spend more money now and aims at providing the qualification to all retail staff.

Whiting said: “Next year will be an exciting year for us. On top of the big investment in store refurbishments, we will be investing much more in training and the NVQ qualifications – putting much more into the scheme than before.

“Handsets are becoming increasingly less like traditional mobile phones and more like mobile computers so it’s important our staff can explain to customers what a much more complex mobile can do.”
Whiting also acceded to the fact that Phones4u is employing renovation of its stores. The retailer is hoping to see its 450 stores refurbished by the first quarter of the year. Till date around 80 of its stores are already revamped.

On responding to the possibility of incorporating products other than mobile phones in the refurbished stores like that of the concept stores opened by other mobile retailers that offer a wider range of products, Whiting said that ‘the refurbishment will not provide a method of introducing non-mobile products into stores’.

“Our focus will remain on offering mobile solutions. Although we will be providing additional services such as an extension to the prepay credit cards next year, we always concentrate on mobile as our number one priority.”