Network Services

IP Integration is able to purchase and rent lines from BT at wholesale rates and resell these services at a lower cost than BT Retail, thus reducing the fixed rental costs associated with these telephone lines. In addition, we are able to control the routing and billing of calls made on these lines via our carrier partners (Gamma, Colt, Opal) utilising the most cost effective provider for any given destination. This is achieved through a combination of notification to carriers and programming of your telephone system and thus enables us to reduce call costs.

We upload all the billing information from BT and our carrier partners into aBILLity, our billing engine.

The billing engine automatically compares actual charges with agreed rates to ensure costs are correct, and then amalgamates costing information from all providers into a single bill for each customer.

The bill can be sub divided by site location, department and even named extension users. Graphical analysis presents information in a clear and easy to interpret fashion to assist with understanding and comparison

In addition to call charge information, we audit all lines as they are added into the platform, providing billing descriptions and usage information. As well as making the information clear and easy to understand, we have found that this process enables our clients to identify superfluous connections and remove them from their account, thus increasing the savings made by switching to IPI.

In addition to providing detailed, unified monthly billing, our platform provides a secure on-line portal which allows our customers to run detailed reports and access analysis and administration tools. We upload billing information on a daily basis, so our customers do not need to wait until the monthly bill arrives in order to obtain specific call data. Tools are provided for analysis of historic data and reports can be run on extensions, departments, call length and call cost.

Another benefit of the daily upload of billing information is the ability to provide useful alerting options, which can be set up to provide e-mail notification when customer defined criteria such as call length or cost are breached. This facility enables our customers to quickly identify and stop fraudulent or undesirable expenditure.

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Service Providers

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Implementation

It couldn’t be easier to transfer line rentals and call charges to IP Integration.

On receiving written confirmation of your intention to switch your lines and calls to IP Integration, we will send over details of the telephone numbers and services that we would be provisioning, together with monthly charges for your approval, and a Direct Debit Mandate for signature and return.

The line and number details are then entered into our billing engine, which also provides a secure connection direct into BT’s Equivalence Management Platform.

This system was specifically mandated by Oftel to ensure that all BT Wholesale customers (including BT Retail) have identical access to and service provision from Openreach, the delivery arm of BT Wholesale. It enables us to access all details of current status of the entered numbers, what additional services are present and what additional capacity is available on site and where it is located.

The system also provides access to BT’s available numbering database for new number provision, as well as access to engineering schedules, so that we can book survey and installation times directly with the relevant teams.

The current lead time to switch to IP Integration for call charges is 10 working days. In order to make sure that no call slips through to another carrier at higher charges, we would also propose to programme your telephone system with our Least Cost Routing code.

The current lead time to switch to IP Integration for line rental charges is 10-20 working days. During the process of the line rental being given to IP Integration, you will receive a letter from BT confirming that line rental charges is being given to another supplier.

All transfers are non service affecting, all lines remain connected and operational at all times.

One thing it is impossible for us to obtain (for obvious reasons) is current commercial arrangements inplace with regard to the line rentals. Certain BT and call charge provider tariffs require minimum durations or minimum spends. We have assumed that you are not currently tied into an existing supplier contract for line rental and call charges. By switching supplier mid-contract, you may be liable for early termination penalties.

Once the call billing and network charges are in place with IP Integration, you will receive a welcome letter containing contact details and access codes for the on-line portal.

Our billing run is generated on the last day of each month. Line rentals are charged monthly in advance, with call charges billed monthly in arrears.

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Ongoing Support

IP Integration provide a comprehensive support service offering to complement its entire product portfolio. The Service Centre is based at its head office in Reading, Berkshire. We are focused on ensuring the customer is always put first by guaranteeing their expectations are met each and every time. We provide an intelligent Service Management System that allows customers to log a service requirement into the Service Centre by a variety of means including:

• Telephone
• Email
• Internet

This system also ensures that service calls are responded to, managed and escalated if required at the appropriate times ensuring the customer is always kept informed of any actions taken on logged service calls until resolved. Support calls for incoming issues would be logged on the Openreach WLR3 Portal.

We would incorporate the service calls placed for outgoing and incoming call issues that have been reported during the quarter within the report and will discuss in the Service Review Meeting.

In addition to the above, IP Integration would have the ability to:

• Check any anomalies prior to issuing the monthly bill
• Identify and label all services and cease anything no longer in use (once agreed with customer)
• Set an alert on customer required parameters (e.g. If a single call charge goes over £10.00, or call length is longer than 30 minutes)

Standard Care response is given to customers as a free of charge service. Standard Care response is available Monday – Friday 8am to 5pm. Additional charges will apply for Prompt Care (Monday to Saturday, 8am to 5pm) and Total Care (24/7 x 365).

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