Data

Mar 16 2018

March Madness: Heads up for 5 Quick Ways to Curb Data Madness!

According to Fortune Magazine, we know that the average worker will spend Six Work Hours (yes, 6!) Watching March Madness

We all love to cheer on our favorite college basketball teams in March. Check out the facts below to see the stats on March Madness corporate data usage.

Fun Facts on Corporate Device Usage During March Madness: According to AppDeveloper Magazine:

Compared to the month prior, that the number of employee devices connecting to the websites increased 211%, while the number of devices utilizing the apps increased 126% for the sports apps of NCAA March Madness Live, ESPN, CBS Sports and Yahoo Sports. Lost productivity? perhaps………
IMPORTANT NOTE: All this increased activity was on corporate devices
Teachable moment? Watch for potential overages and monitor high data usage, especially this month

Indeed, one of our Clients mentioned that every year their network was brought to its knees during March Madness due to all the employee streaming.

Here’s a few thoughts on how to manage the expense:

Set up billing alerts for high data usage in your carrier portal. Check out our blog to provide you with some details here
Let users know to connect to Wifi Networks whenever possible, especially if streaming
Let users know you will be monitoring their bills and checking data usage. While this doesn’t mean you need to be accused of police brutality, it does mean users should be aware of their usage and what it could be costing the company.
Send Text Alerts to users to alert users of high usage and what they can do instead of using their wireless data network. See additional information on that here
Educate the users: let them know if they are streaming 2 hours of a game that is approximately 1 to 1.5 GBs of usage. If their single data plan is 2GB for the entire month, they will need to reduce usage for the rest of the month in order not to exceed their own allowance. Data usage guidelines can be found here

Also, if you have questions about saving your company money through the auditing, optimizing, or managing of wireless services, please click here to contact The Bill Police.

Still Protecting Your Wireless Rights…..especially for all those college athletes this week…….

Jan 26 2018

Best Tips to Limit Data Usage for iPhone and Android

We have talked to so many businesses lately that want to find new ways to manage Data Usage on their devices.

We get it: you are so over your users racking up charges and losing productivity while using scads of data each month.

We’ll here are some quick tips to Manage that Data Usage:

For All Devices:

The Obvious Choice: Use Wifi whenever possible. Bill Police evens send alerts to High Data Users reminding them. You might want to send something like this too:

For iPhone:

Some apps from the App Store use the Apple Push Notifications to alert you of new data. Apps that use push notifications (such as instant messaging or social media apps) will use cellular data. To turn off push notifications, go to Settings > Notifications.

To view the cellular data usage for your apps, tap Settings > Cellular. You can turn cellular data on or off for each app. This change will really help you not be manhandled by your data usage and YOU decide what gets priority in what situation.

Disable background app refresh

Turning off background app refresh by going to:

Settings > General > and turn off refresh or selecting individual apps to turn off. This will help reduce data usage and give some icing on the phone cake to also save your battery life!

For Android:

Determine Background Data

Some apps that use data even when your device is not in use. All apps don’t need to be using data all the time:

Go to Settings >> Data Usage >> Mobile Data Usage and you can see the statistics for which app is consuming how much of data and adjust as necessary.

Update Apps Over Wi-Fi only

Disabling Automatic Updates in the play store allows you to choose updates occurring only when on a Wifi network.

Go to Play Store and tap on Menu>>Settings>>Auto-update apps. Make sure that you select “Auto-update apps over Wi-Fi only.” This will help to reduce usage by only having updates occur while you are NOT connected to cellular data and sucking up usage.

These small easy adjustments can save your company hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars! If you have questions about saving your company money through the auditing, optimizing, or managing of your wireless services, please click here to contact The Bill Police.

And we are……Still Protecting Your Wireless Rights; especially for Ashley today …..:)

Apr 28 2017

How Much Data are Your Users Using? Heres a Few Quick Tips

What are your users doing when they are eating up gobs of data?

We are here to tell you that data consumption — for different types of files — is not created equal. Below is a helpful table, thanks Verizon, to help show you what you get from your data usage:

So what is that user who is saying they are using their 35 GB for “business use” must mean they are sending about 3 and a half million emails each month — or looking at about 100,000 web views.

Perhaps not a big deal if you dont worry about cost or productivity but the user who is using this 35 GB per month with an overage rate of $10 or $15 per GB, these users can be costing you about $500 a month on average.

To help you gauge what you’re using in a day, here are some additional averages:

100 kb = text only email

500 kb = visiting one webpage

61,440 kb = listening to 60 minutes of music

358,400 kb = watching 60 minutes of video

3,072 kb = downloading/uploading one hi-resolution photo

5,120 kb = using navigation for 60 minutes

For texting, messages are measured as events rather than in kb and are charged per address (recipient) sent or received.

One message sent to one person = one event

One message sent to 10 persons = 10 events

The text messages show up as a tally on the wireless bill as the number sent and received. Wireless plans vary, with some putting a ceiling on the number of texts per month to unlimited options.

By understanding how much data and messaging you use in an average month, it positions you well for selecting the right plan to meet your needs to help you save time and money.

If you have questions about saving your company money through the auditing, optimizing, or managing of your wireless services, please click here to contact The Bill Police.

Still Protecting Your Wireless Rights…

Feb 04 2017

I am from ATT and I’m Here to Help…cough (with Stream Saver)

ATT Stream Saver — a network feature that allows Corporately billed subscribers to watch videos but use less data — was launched on January 11th.

Sounds fantastic but how is this possible? Marketed as a data/cost saving feature, the short answer is: throttling. Throttling by any other name is still…..throttling.

Using ATT’s own words, “With Stream Saver turned on, data speeds for content that is recognized as video is reduced to a max of 1.5 Mbps, which generally allows standard definition quality, similar to DVD (about 480p).* This is the case for all applicable plans including those with unlimited data.

Here is a link to ATT’s direct information on the feature:

And, because ATT is so customer service focused, they are doing this for you — you don’t even need to lift a finger. ATT states, “We will begin rolling out Stream Saver to new and existing Mobile Share Advantage℠ and Mobile Share Advantage℠ for Business plans beginning January 11, 2017. We plan to add the feature to other select postpaid rate plans that include data by the end of the first half of 2017. Stream Saver will be automatically added and turned on for free for your CRU lines on applicable plans as the feature is rolled out. No additional action is required.”

But beware, this data will still count toward monthly usage. So while this qualifies as throttling, it isn’t “zero-rating,” — like from Sprint and TMobile — which eliminates that streaming data from counting as data usage at all.

If you need to turn off this throttling, however, you yourself (or BP if you are fortunate to be a BP Client) will need to turn this feature off for users at your discretion.

And for our Government account friends, please note that AT&T will not automatically add Stream Saver to government accounts. Stream Saver can be added to Government accounts through Premier.

So, if your data seems to be degrading in quality, take a look at your plan to manage your Stream Saver Feature OR

Have BP do it for you and all your Corporate Devices. Because, we are ….

…..still protecting your wireless rights!

Feb 02 2017

Does Verizon’s Unlimited Data Plan Work for Your Company?

Yep, most of you have heard Verizon has unleashed an Unlimited Data Plan. Many of you are asking us about it, so here is BP’s take:

Why now?

Because Verizon was losing subscribers to TMobile and Sprint who added 3.3 million and almost 1 million subscribers respectively last year. This is compared to Verizon’s then CFO predictions of “revenue fairly consistent with that of 2016” (aka = no growth) for 2017 without the unlimited plan. Verizon revenue dropped 3% in the first half of 2016 and, interestingly, Verizon stock has fallen almost 2% since the Unlimited Plan announcement.

Also, according to USA Today, Verizon has increased their network making it better able to handle more capacity; Verizon has stated that the cost of delivering a GB of data has dropped 40%-50% as it has made network improvements.

Is it a Good Fit for Your Organization?

This plan does have some merits for the right users. Here’s the skinny:

Why it probably isn’t the best fit for large groups of users:

If the account has significantly more than 10 users, the plan bills an Account level charge for each group of 10. This can become cost prohibitive depending on the device types and the data usage of the group (usually more data usage, the better the fit on this plan)
These plans are non-discount eligible so no corporate discount will be honored. You pay what Joe off the street pays.
Smartphone plans will be billed $20 higher if the subscriber is in contract. So, for each Smartphone that states a $20 per Add-on Rate per subscriber, add another $20 — for a total of $40 — for each Smartphone under contract. Check out your number of devices in contract because clearly this doubles each extra subscriber monthly cost. When comparing pricing, most prices stated use the “out of contract” amount for monthly cost.
Each account will only be credited $10 if the account is paid with a bank card or check. That means using the Corporate Credit Card will cost you extra. Again, when comparing prices, this credit is often automatically included in the rates.
Tablets are double the cost of what Corporate business rates are being billed today. So, if there are a lot of tablets on the account, not a good fit.
While Smartphones are “prioritized” after 22GB of use, Tablets are “throttled” after 10GB of usage and the speed will drop to 3G speeds after 10GB of usage. Conservatively assume that 22 GB per Smartphone and 10GB per tablet will be the best high speed data usage you will realize.
Do you need all that data? Often users will tell us (while thumping their chests): “I have unlimited data” and to this we say: do you need to pay a premium for the unlimited plan if you are not using it? A typical data user uses around 2GB of data per month. Why spend 30% more for data you may never use? Verizon still offers other, less expensive plans on its website, which range from $35 a month for 2GB of LTE data to $70 a month for 8GB of LTE data.

Why it probably is a better fit for a smaller groups of users:

This does provide a 22 GB plan before being prioritized or throttled and voice and texting are unlimited
The plan is less expensive than the old unlimited plan for 5 users by almost $200 if you are out of contract on all devices
Verizon is offering free devices to those who switch from another carriers
Smaller organizations may not be as impacted by Corporate Discounts
If there are 10 or fewer devices and depending on data usage, this may be a good fit (again, the more usage, the better the plan fit).
Is a better deal than the highest plan used to be available through Verizon before depending on the subscriber usage

A note: Most stated rates do not include device subsidies. Remember that if you are on a device payment plan that will increase the price of the monthly plan. Also, if the device is still in contract, that fee will be added to any of the plans as a $20 increase per device.

Ending Thoughts

Overall, Verizon is tagging this as “Not just Unlimited: VERIZON unlimited”. Verizon contends that because they have a better network, their unlimited is superior in quality to other carrier’s unlimited plans.

A recent study from OpenSignal says that in general, Verizon is the top for signal consistency, T-Mobile and AT&T are in second or third, and Sprint typically is last. So it appears Verizon has a point; however, Verizon will also demand higher pricing than the competition: For 5 devices, Verizon will charge $310 per month, TMobile charge $180, and Sprint will charge $90.

Hope this provided you some tips on whether or not the Verizon Unlimited Plan is a good fit, because we are ……

…….Still Protecting Your Wireless Rights……………………