What is your phone worth to you?

Phone users in Brighton have good reason to keep their mobiles under lock and key according to disturbing figures from phone insurer Protectyourbubble.com. Apparently the people of Brighton are 4.4 times more likely to have their mobiles stolen than the national average. This puts Brighton at the top of the phone theft tree which totals a staggering 300,000 mobile thefts per year.
Perhaps the people of Brighton could take some phone protection tips from the residents of Kilmuir, near Inverness. Alerted to the fact that a BT lorry was arriving to take away their red phone box the residents formed a ring of steel with their cars to prevent removal.
Although the phone box had not been used to make a call in three years, the people of Kilmuir still wanted to retain it as a vital part of their community life. Often in life it is not until we lose something that we start to appreciate its real worth. In fact telephones have become so much a part of our daily living that we take them for granted. So it is only when a phone box is removed or a mobile is stolen or a phone line goes down that we realise how much we rely on our telephone links.
The same is true when we use our phones for business purposes. Lose a telephone link and all of a sudden the business routine changes. Calls from clients go unnoticed with a loss of orders, calls to suppliers remain unplaced and stock levels fall. In fact, day to day business grinds to a halt as we lose the ability to reach out a hand and make that call.
It is not surprising therefore that business continuity planning includes a strong element of telephone continuity. Covering situations in which phone lines are lost as well as situations where access to premises becomes impossible, telephone continuity is a vital cog in the process of keeping an organisation on its feet when disaster strikes.
Using a VoIP system can help greatly in this planning. VoIP systems rely on the internet and through the use of virtual switchboards can swiftly come into force when a disaster strikes. Phones can be diverted to mobile or landline or alternate sites, message systems can come into play and with auto caller recognition the switchboard can divert callers to the most appropriate point of contact.
Many of us rely on our phones simply to keep afloat in an ever more crowded world. Planning and taking steps to keep lines of communication open can make all the difference between success and failure.