Ideas while on the phone with Jann – he’s so busy that I’m sure he’s not going to get around to blogging, so I’ll do it for him.
My idea: The phone company sucks. As bad as they are with residential telephone customers, they’re even worse with businesses, charging extortionist fees to connect business lines. Imagine if you will, a business that did away with their telephone lines altogether, and went wireless! I can imagine an office full of people with Nextel phones instead of the desk phone. What is preventing this from happening? Mobile phones don’t offer such crucial business features as hunt groups and call transfer. I think that the first mobile company that offers these features will be a force to be reckoned with in the new wireless era. In the specific case of my office, which travels with all staff to a different city each year for a conference, the office would never “close” – if you called us, our mobile phones would ring wherever we are. Heck, that would mean that the concept of the “office” would be redefined – I could be at home working, but the person calling would never know.
Jann’s idea: Sometimes you don’t want to be using a small mobile phone, or you might need a headset. The solution? A phone “dock” that lets you connect your mobile to the wired network in your office. You could make calls in the office on a regular desk set, but it would be powered by your mobile, perhaps with a large central antenna on the building to boost the signal. When you leave your desk, just take the mobile with you! This would work well at home, too – just dock your mobile when you get home, and then you could have extensions around the house, blissfully divorced from the monopoly phone company and their machinations.
What a boon this would be – you could have just one phone number instead of a work and mobile number or a home and mobile number. And companies like Verizon would be forced to rethink their evil ways.
