Welcome to 2012! Searching for resolutions for the new year for your business? We got 'em here for you. 1. Go paperless. Trees are amazing things, and in such a digital world, there's no reason to not already be paperless. However, earlier this year it was reported that companies are shifting back to printing more documents than even two years ago. Let's make 2012 the year to turn that back around and commit to going paperless with our businesses. There is no "paper" in "unified communications". 2. Give back to your community. If we're going to save trees, there is no reason we shouldn't save people as well! Charitable giving is not only a smart business move - your customers will feel better about buying from you if you're charitable - but it's the right thing to do. Don't be a Scrooge! Find a way to give a little big back to your community - it can make all the difference in the lives of others. 3. Engage your employees. An engaged workforce is a productive workforce. … [Read more...]
12 days of telecom
On the first day of telecom, my service provider gave to me, a SIP trunk with bursting capability. On the second day of telecom, my service provider gave to me - two toll-free numbers and a SIP trunk with bursting capability. On the third day of telecom, my service provider gave to me - three innovative solutions, two toll free numbers and a SIP trunk with bursting capability. On the fourth day of telecom, my service provider gave to me - four wireless headsets, three innovative solutions, two toll free numbers and a SIP trunk with bursting capability. On the fifth day of telecom, my service provider gave to me - five golden SimRings!! Four wireless headsets, three innovative solutions, two toll free numbers and a SIP trunk with bursting capability. On the sixth day of telecom, my service provider gave to me - six data centres, five golden SimRings!! Four wireless headsets, three innovative solutions, two toll free numbers and a SIP trunk with bursting … [Read more...]
Top 5 Christmas gifts for 2011
Five days remain until Christmas - are you done your Christmas shopping yet? No? ThinkTel is here to help! Here are the top five gifts you should be buying this Christmas. 1. iPad 2. Too obvious? Or too awesome? Some people believe that the tablet will completely overtake the laptop, and soon, and Apple's second generation iPad is the market leader. 10-hour battery, thin and light, 140,000 apps make it the perfect present. When asked if she likes her iPad 2, mother and substitute teacher Sarah Wallace said "yep". The iPad 2 s guaranteed to inspire at least a "yep" from everyone on your Christmas list. iPad 2 advantage: if you buy it for them, they will love it. Downside: starting at $499, it's on the pricey side. 2. Xbox 360 with Kinect. Holding your controller is so 2009. Xbox with Kinect packs some pretty amazing features - from voice commands to full-body gaming, this system is slick, so who wouldn't want it? Picture this: no more struggling with the remote for granny! … [Read more...]
Season’s Greetings from ThinkTel
Ahhh, the holidays are nearly upon us. Time for friends and family, food and fermented beverages. As the holiday season approaches, we here at ThinkTel are grateful for all your support this last year. It certainly has been an eventful year and we’ve seen lots of change and a lot of growth. We’ve migrated to a new billing system, merged three commercial sales divisions into one, launched Hosted Microsoft Lync, expanded our network by over 250 locations, and put forward a long list of new service features. Paul Vaillant, Product Manager for Microsoft Lync services, recently moved to Chilliwack. Account Manager Martin Evers relocated to Vancouver with his family and is enjoying the west coast lifestyle. Mike Wood, our Director of Systems Engineering, saw the birth of his first child; a son, Thomas. Many people were making moves this last year and a lot of them were customers signing up with us. We greatly appreciate the support and hope that we continue to earn your trust and … [Read more...]
Introducing…support.thinktel.ca
ThinkTel is excited to announce the launch of its new support portal: support.thinktel.ca. This portal was created as a centralized hub for all our customer’s support needs. From this portal, you can browse our KnowledgeBase, view our current network status and open a support ticket. This portal will help to streamline and simplify your customer support experience with ThinkTel. Customers experiencing technical issues with a ThinkTel service can easily submit a ticket for their specific issue. To submit a ticket, click on either the “Submit a Ticket” link from the main support page, or on the “contact us” tab at the top of every page in the support portal. From here, you will be prompted to select a description of your problem. You will then fill out a detailed report of the issue that you are experiencing. Please supply as much details as possible to assist in correcting your problem and attach any relevant call traces that are applicable to the issue. This form will … [Read more...]
Faxing in all its many forms!
Like Cerberus or Hydra, faxing is a problem that has many heads. You need to enable individual users to fax from their PC or to scan and fax paper documents. Even applications running on servers need to be able to fax and that's just sending faxes; users need to be able to receive faxes too! The traditional approach is to put big old fax machines everywhere and connect phone lines (called POTS lines - plain old telephone service lines) to them. I hope there's room next to the printer because users end up printing documents, faxing then shredding them. Doesn't sound like a model of productivity does it? Enter VoIP. While most people think of VoIP when they think about making cheap phone calls over the Internet, VoIP represents a way to let faxing use the power of the Internet. For example, rather then making a sales person wait by the fax machine for the signed contract, why not free them to spend more time face to face with customers and let their faxes be converted to emails and … [Read more...]
UBB, small business and ThinkTel
The recent ruling by the CRTC on Usage Based Billing had quite a bit of buzz in the media. One of the comments that I read as I was scanning the tweets, posts, and press releases was about how consumers need to aid in supporting competition by making a conscious choice to support it. So how does one get consumers to make a choice to support a competitive provider in a way that actually benefits competition? Generally, broadband Internet is a commodity service and as such consumers are often looking to pay less to an “indie ISP” versus the incumbent providers. This makes it difficult for indie’s as they have to grow a service with significantly lower margins than the incumbents with few differentiators. Keep in mind that when you buy a DSL or cable based Internet product from an indie that they have to pay the incumbents for that circuit at a wholesale rate which is also a very profitable service for the incumbents. In addition to this indie ISPs also entice new subscribers … [Read more...]
Hair, beards and assorted injury
A repost from Daniel’s November 24 morning email… Good morning good people, In the "I just can't make this stuff up" department, 7 members of an Ohio Amish community were arrested yesterday on a criminal complaint charging them with cutting off hair and beards of fellow Amish over a religious spat stemming from a division in their group back in 2005. Seems the men conspired to carry out a series of assaults against fellow bearded Amish chums with whom they were having a dispute, presumably religious in origin? The 7 restrained several other men, their number a bit unclear and cut off their beards and hair with scissors and battery-powered clippers. In additional to the hair clipping, other assorted injury was sustained to all concerned as well as others that attempted to stop the attack. Officials said the attacks were meant to humiliate the victims --no duh! The attackers have been charged with religiously inspired hate crimes and face a maximum penalty of … [Read more...]
Happy Movember – week 1 recap
Now it's officially really snowed in Edmonton, time for school pictures and fall family photos is over, and Movember is well underway. If you haven't been following us on Twitter for photos of some of the guys on the Kings of SIP Movember team...well, you're really missing out. So here's a week-1 update. Week 1. You might remember Chuck Pitre from YouTube fame. Chuck's week-1 'stache featured some grizzliness...and a goatee. Such a cop-out, but Chuck still managed to creep it up. He's single, ladies. Sales manager Jim Dawson is not single - sorry to disappoint. Jim's week one moustache...ok, no, I don't see it either. Uh, let's move on. Paul Vaillant's week-old moustache goes well with his glasses. Don't you think? CEO Dave Damer... Please support ThinkTel's Kings of SIP in the fight for male health. You can pledge the team or one of the members HERE - your support is greatly appreciated. … [Read more...]
Canada NPA Relief Planning
NPA Relief Planning - sounds kind of nasty, doesn't it? Is it nasty, or a necessary evil? Are those things mutually exclusive? Two major NPA changes have occurred in Alberta during my lifetime. Prior to 1999, all Alberta phone numbers shared a single area code (403), but due to number shortages, the decision was made to introduce a second area code (780) and split the province in two, leaving the 403 area code active in the southern part of the province, and making the 780 code active north of Red Deer. The new area code was introduced in January of 1999, and calls to numbers made to the old area code were forwarded until mid May of the same year. The second change was the addition of the 587 overlay code in 2009. With an overlay area code, the same area code is used in all parts of the province. This created confusion for two major reasons. First, 10-digit dialling became mandatory in 2008 in preparation for this change. If we thought it was hard for kids to remember their … [Read more...]
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