 What is a GSM Gateway, Fixed Cellular Terminal (FCT), Mobile Gateway or SIM Server?Ans: It is an intelligent box, which contains a number of mobile SIM cards. It sits neatly in-between your telephone system and your telephone lines. It diverts calls made from fixed lines to mobiles through internal SIM cards, making them mobile to mobile calls.
Who is it for?
Ans: Any company that spends over £2k per year calling mobile phones. It is also used extensively by companies who divert their office phones to their mobiles.
How will it benefit my business?
Ans: The biggest benefit of this product is cost saving. The average cost of a call from a fixed line to a mobile is 9.5p per minute however with a GSM Gatewayl this cost can be cut to an average of 5.5p per minute. A saving of almost 50%.
It is also popular as a means to give your business back-up should your landlines fail or become faulty. This way you can always make and receive calls so it becomes part of your risk management because it ensures business continuity.
Approximately 25% of all mobile calls are made from your offices. Within your office, the terminal can be configured to work with your company's mobile handsets. Then when someone makes a mobile call in your office, it uses the far cheaper landline network instead.
Who do I contract with and for what?
Ans: We arrange all contracts for you. You will have one contract with the mobile network for the usage and one contract with us for the supply, maintenance and management of the FCT equipment.
What's involved in choosing a GSM Gateway?
Ans: We need to know how many minutes per month you call mobiles from your office? And the type of Landlines that you have (ISDN or analogue) from BT or equivalent.
What disruption will there be?
Ans: Of course we need to come to site and instal the device. There will be no disruption to your telephone service and your staff won't even notice we've been. We project manage the installation as part of our service.
Is the call quality inferior?
Ans: No. It has its own aerial which is optimised for signal strength. In some offices we will install an external aerial if our engineers are not satisfied that a good enough signal level is available.
What happens if there is a fault?
Ans: If for any reason the GSM Gateway develops a fault, it returns to its pass through state. e.g. all calls will continue to be made over your existing landlines. We then remotely interrogate the gateway to identify the problem. If we cannot fix the fault remotely, we'll dispatch the appropriate engineer and hardware. The engineer will liaise with you for a convenient time to repair.
Is it intelligent enough to share the load so that all my inclusive minutes are used?
Ans: Yes. It's able to share calls across the SIM's so that full utilisation of inclusive minutes is achieved.
What happens when a SIM exceeds its inclusive minutes?
Ans: Our default configuration is set to switch off each SIM as it reaches its limit. The worst that can happen if there is excessive or unpredicted outgoing call volume is that you revert back to your current landline costs, therefore no worse than to prior to a gateway installation. We monitor the gateway as part of our ongoing service and proactively suggest changes as your usage changes.
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