Comms4Business News

In addition, 26 per cent were forced to work at the kitchen or dining room, 37 per cent in their spare room and 10 per cent ‘hot desked’ around the house. The survey, of 1,000 UK home workers, revealed that basing your business at home can lead to distraction and a cluttered working environment.

However, 70 per cent still felt that working from home still provided them with the flexibility to work the hours that best suited them, as well as 56 per cent claiming that the relaxed environment helped aid productivity. The dangers of basing your business at home can also come from the amount of electronic equipment that can build up within small areas.

7 per cent of people have 10 or more cables – or an average of 12 metres of wiring strangling their home office. Giovanni Giusti, managing director at Lexmark UK, said: “The perception of the home office is that it offers more freedom and flexibility and is a modern and comfortable way to work.

“Our research shows the reality is that people are suffering the worst conditions: working in dark, cramped and uncomfortable spaces, forced to give up room to various pieces of office technology and strangled by miles of cables and wiring.” Belgium and Luxembourg are the most technologically advanced in Europe, 18 per cent of those polled having wireless access at home, compared to only 8 per cent in the UK.

The company is changing it daytime tariff so that calls made between 6am and 8am will be charged at the more expensive daytime rates. Whilst BT insist that the changes will have a 'minor impact' on the vast majority of their customers, independent tariff comparision company, uSwitch, estimate that three million BT customers will end up paying more for their early morning calls.

Jon Miller from uSwitch.com said, 'Despite BT's attempts to mask the increase in calling charges by highlighting earlier price reductions, this is effectively a stealth price rise. The fact remains that consumers will still be charged a minimum of £31.50 a quarter for line rental before they've even made a call. There are cheaper suppliers in the market, switching is easy and you can make significant savings by shopping around."

A BT spokesman claimed that three quarters of its customers don't make phone calls that early in the morning. He accepted it did amount to a price rise for 15% of customers, but denied it was done stealthily.

Overall, 82 percent of the respondents say that data volumes have risen substantially compared to two years ago and 86 percent report a similar rise in storage requirements.

Greater use of e-mail emerges as the main culprit in this, with 71 percent currently taking active steps to control the use of e-mail. Popular options include limiting the size or number of attachments (54 percent), introducing archiving guidelines (40 percent), limiting employees’ personal use (34 percent) and changing procedures for sending mailings to contact lists (30 percent).

Making the IT infrastructure easier to maintain and control is now a higher priority than reducing infrastructure running costs or cutting the costs of new IT investment. A third of companies have already sought to rationalise the number of servers in use, with 41 percent indicating they will do so in future.

One indication of how seriously companies take these challenges is that a third (34 percent) now have a board level representative for business continuity and IT infrastructure issues. And many are also looking for external help to get their infrastructure in shape. More than half (59 percent) already outsource some or all of their requirements in this area, with a similar proportion planning to do so in the future.

Networked storage options are gaining in popularity. While 46 percent of the sample currently use directly attached storage (DAS), only half (22 percent) expect to do so in future. In comparison, 52 percent use network attached storage (NAS) and 42 percent are already using storage area networking (SAN).

And new corporate governance and data privacy legislation is also having an impact on this area. A quarter of the sample have already introduced new software to meet requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, while 22 percent intend to do so in the future.

For this survey PMP Research polled a range of UK-based organisations from a cross-section of industry sectors. More than half the sample had a turnover greater than £150 million.

The Telephone Protection Service (TPS) was established to allow individuals to “opt out” from appearing on telemarketing lists and in May a change in the law will enable businesses to be able to register to combat unsolicited calls.

A company has been targeting consumers called The Telephone Protection Agency and charging them for its service which claims to be able to remove them from marketing lists. Business can in fact already register with the official Telephone Preference Service and what’s more – it’s FREE.

Further information on the TPS and registration details can be found on its website or by calling 0845 070 0707.

The move, announced yesterday, could lead to regulators taking action to reduce prices, such as imposing controls on wholesale roaming rates.

The European Regulators Group said that all 25 national telecoms authorities in the EU were sending a questionnaire to mobile operators to ask for key data to help them judge whether additional regulation was necessary to ensure competition in the market. The group hopes to draw conclusions from the evidence it receives by May 2005.

EU IT commissioner Viviane Reding said this week that roaming charges were "outrageously high" and that "urgent action" was needed to tackle them.

The move by the European Regulators Group follows an investigation by the EU into roaming rates charged by UK mobile operators O2 and Vodafone. The European Commission told the two that their charges were too high and detrimental to users. The commission is waiting to receive a response from O2 and Vodafone before deciding what action to take.

At present, fixed line to mobile calls constitute one third of all business telephone costs. These costs will drop by 25-30 per cent under BT, meaning an 8-10 per cent overall saving.

These measures will also allow BT Business plan customers to opt for a 30p cap on calls to mobiles lasting up to an hour.

Craig Rowland, managing director of BT Business, said: “This is the end of expensive business calls. The combination of the 10p cap for inland calls, the 20p cap for most international calls and now the 30p cap for calls to mobile phones, will give customers the peace of mind that they can talk for as long as they want without running up a large bill.

With these caps put in place business customers will not pay on average for the 64 per cent of the time spent on the phone to mobiles.

These reduced rates were introduced on September 1 for all customers and the 30p cap will be introduced on the same date for business plan customers spending over £500 per year with BT. BT Business Plan customers spending less than £500 per year will be able to opt into the 30p cap from October 1.

The news may be seen as a response to falling pre-tax profits for the tele-communications giant.

Although not always malicious in nature, spyware still causes significant damage to legitimate software, network performance, and employee productivity. Moreover, it crosses the boundary between security and system management by deluging help desks with a siege of employee complaints about pop-up advertisements, applications failures, and poor PC performance.

At worst, spyware's ability to track keystrokes, scan hard drives, and change system and registry settings is a tremendous personal and enterprise security threat. These activities can lead to identity theft, data corruption, and even theft of company trade secrets.

"Today, more malicious spyware can easily infiltrate corporate firewalls," said Brian Burke, research manager, Security Products at IDC. "These programs make their way into the corporate intranet under the guise of less-threatening network traffic and, once in, they can wreak havoc."

Key findings from IDC's study of the spyware market include the following:

• Spyware is often bundled with legitimate programs, allowing it to easily pass through firewalls uncontested • A recent IDC survey of over 600 organisations listed spyware as the fourth-greatest threat to a company's enterprise network security • IDC estimates that 67 per cent of all computers (mostly consumer) have some form of spyware • Rising spyware threats and increasing demand for protection have forced established security vendors to build, buy, or partner with standalone anti-spyware vendors

In the comprehensive study, Worldwide Spyware 2004-2008 Forecast and Analysis: Security and System Management Sharing Nightmares (IDC #32229), IDC defines the spyware security threat and its repercussions as well as forecasts the potential market. It examines the key players in the market and provides insight and analysis on products and solutions poised to have an impact.

Bulldog, the UK broadband and phone company, has launched an offer to trial its 4 Megabit per second (Mbps) @ctive broadband services - the UK’s fastest residential broadband connection - for two months free of charge, plus free connection.

The offer has been available in London from 2nd November and will give both residential and business customers two months free access to super-fast 4Mbps broadband - in addition to free activation of the service on existing BT phone lines. After the two months free trial customers will move to a rolling one-month contract.

“This is a chance for people to get a taste of super-fast internet”, said Richard Greco, CEO of Bulldog Broadband. “Internet users in the UK have been held back by slow internet speeds for too long – it’s time that people realised that even a 512kbps connection isn’t real broadband. Life’s better at 4Mbps – we want to show people how much better.”