corporate smartphone contracts
what kind of safeguards/controls/caps do you put in place with corporate contracts when you issue smartphones to your employees (mainly how to avoid huge bills if they misuse their device). Trying to think of every possible way an employee could rack up a large unwanted bill on the company account and make sure when we go to tender on a new supplier that the contract is in place to prevent these from happening.
Not all can be in the contract. Some are just settings you have to make sure you've set up.
Contract: Make sure unlimited data is in place. If if there's a cap, it should be working at a lower speed after the cap amount. That way you will NEVER get data overcharges.
Settings: Disable ability for SMS subscription services, disable SMS to paid numbers, disable call to paid numbers (or categories). That's all you can do (that's besides having unlimited call time, and and unlimited SMS)
If you have this in place, you probably can't get any overcharge on any employee no matter what they do with their phones.
Contract: Make sure unlimited data is in place. If if there's a cap, it should be working at a lower speed after the cap amount. That way you will NEVER get data overcharges.
Settings: Disable ability for SMS subscription services, disable SMS to paid numbers, disable call to paid numbers (or categories). That's all you can do (that's besides having unlimited call time, and and unlimited SMS)
If you have this in place, you probably can't get any overcharge on any employee no matter what they do with their phones.
thanks Kimputer, can I just ask for some clarity of these points:
>If if there's a cap, it should be working at a lower speed after the cap amount. That way you will NEVER get data overcharges.
Excuse my ignorance but say for example they have a 2 GB cap, what does working at lower speeds mean after say you surpass a 2 GB cap, and how does that prevent overcharges?
Also re the settings, what do you do to enforce those settings you mention across all phones, is this the utilisation of MDM software?
>If if there's a cap, it should be working at a lower speed after the cap amount. That way you will NEVER get data overcharges.
Excuse my ignorance but say for example they have a 2 GB cap, what does working at lower speeds mean after say you surpass a 2 GB cap, and how does that prevent overcharges?
Also re the settings, what do you do to enforce those settings you mention across all phones, is this the utilisation of MDM software?
Forward thinking telecoms providers, will drop your data back to 64kpbs speeds after the 2GB contracted cap.
You will ALWAYS be online, but you can still choose your own GB data bundle without the risk of data overcharge (obviously, going abroad will need a closer look at the smaller letters in the contract).
The settings are usually done through an fleet admin account provided the telecoms provider (you login a control panel environment at the provider).
And out of interest even with contract controls and settings in place, can you still think of any other loophole where a user could run up a huge bill? I want to make sure some form of monitoring of the monthly bills and alerting is setup for when a bill starts to creep up at a given time, but the alerting may not be required if the contact& settings cover all bases.
Would also be interested:
disable call to paid numbers (or categories) -
having never been in control of one of the fleet admin account provided the telecoms provider, would be interested why kind of categories it allows you to block.
disable call to paid numbers (or categories) -
having never been in control of one of the fleet admin account provided the telecoms provider, would be interested why kind of categories it allows you to block.
sorry to keep adding to this but having never seen what controls you can put in place its quite interesting to me:
re
disable SMS to paid numbers, disable call to paid numbers
what is typically covered as a non paid number re SMS/Calls? Or on the other side, what does constitute a paid number for SMS/Calls.
re
disable SMS to paid numbers, disable call to paid numbers
what is typically covered as a non paid number re SMS/Calls? Or on the other side, what does constitute a paid number for SMS/Calls.
Those paid categories are a known set of numbers, usually starting with a specific number for instance 2xxx are for these, 3xxx are for those (country specific though)
there are companies called TEMs telecom expense managers that will watch the bills and provide daily reporting and alerting on anomalies so you never get surprised at the end of the month. the good ones have great visibility and can also make changes to plans based on rules. for example, adding international data to a device that starts using international data automatically.
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