Starting a Business
Telephone Number Advice When Starting a Business
If you believe that one day your business might expand, relocate or sell then this article is a must read.
Conventionally when starting a new business BT are consulted and provide a phone number from a limited choice. Years down the line this may well be regretted. The reason for this is BT numbers are very expensive to divert if the business ever moves or is resold (See table)
As a very good example of this I quote from the experience of a client. For 10 years he ran a successful domestic appliance repair business. After 7 years he moved house to an area with a different STD code and was told he couldn't take the number with him. 10,000 people had his old number and nobody knew his new one, not even him. The cost of renting his old number and transferring it was prohibitive, or at least painful. He toyed with all sorts of solutions before contacting us. We were able to port his number away from BT and provide a divert at the rates set out in the table below.
Fortunately the telecoms industry has evolved considerably recently and there are other options available. The best of these is to purchase a number from a flexible Telecoms Company such as TNDW from the outset. You still require a fixed landline solution to divert the numbers to.
As can be seen from the table below the cost of a phone number setup is less than half BT's. Thereafter there is no quarterly call charge, just a cost per call of 1ppm (Pay as You Go). This compares with BT charging £112.00 per quarter and daytime divert charges as high as 9ppm, remember TNDW charge 1ppm (daytime/evening/weekend)*.
Cost of diverting phone number to landline TNDW vs BT
| TNDW | BT | |
| Set up (one off) | £24.95 | £50.00 |
| Quarterly Line Rental | £0.00 | £112.00 |
| Cost of Calls (landlines) | £.01 | £0.045 |
| TNDW Call Planner Pro/BT feature Line £0.00 From £14.80 per month | 0.00 | From £14.80 per month |
day local**
All prices plus VAT
*Calls to landline
**4.5ppm daytime local, 9ppm national...
A further benefit of purchasing the number from TNDW is there is a huge choice of numbers to choose from enabling the buying of a number which is Easy to Remember. Obviously this is beneficial from a marketing standpoint.
If the company wishes to portray a national image it may be advantageous to purchase an 03 or an 0800 number in addition to the geographic number (such as 01245 123456). 03 numbers are an alternative ethical improvement on 0845 numbers with call charges the same as calling a landline. They are also callable from mobile numbers at standard rates and should be phoneable from abroad (0845's often aren't).
Local companies wishing to boost business from other local towns will do well to purchase additional geographic numbers, e.g. for Chelmsford 01245 the outlying towns are Brentwood 01277, Basildon 01268 and Southend-on-Sea 01702. This is a very cost effective mechanism to obtain extra business from the local towns as it is well known householders like giving work to local companies and believe the services will also be better value. All TNDW customers also benefit from a package called Call Planner Pro enabling such features as a virtual switchboard (Click here to find out more...).
The advantages of buying numbers from TNDW compared with from BT are clear from both a cost perspective and feature viewpoint. With number(s) from TNDW your business will be perfectly placed to thrive immediately yet remain flexible enough for any future changes such as expansion, moving premises or sale.
