Macquarie Telecom scores top marks for telephony at University of Adelaide

Innovative web based reporting and fleet management tool will reduce mobile phone costs by 30 per cent

Sydney, Australia – 3 August 2006 – The University of Adelaide has signed a three-year, $3.5 million deal with Macquarie Telecom to manage its extensive mobile fleet. Macquarie Telecom will also provide the University with fixed line telecommunication services.

The University currently has 800 mobile phones in its fleet.

As part of the deal Macquarie Telecom will offer a ‘Family and Friends’ mobile plan to all staff and students at the University. This allows individuals to access the corporate rate negotiated by the University. Macquarie Telecom will also deliver a value-added web-based reporting and fleet management tool called FleetView. It is anticipated that both components will help the University reduce its telecommunications spend.

According to Dave Savage, Manager of Networking and Telecommunications at University of Adelaide, although the Internet has improved communication and research collaboration across the University of Adelaide’s four campuses, spending on telecommunications has risen rapidly in recent years. This was largely due to increased mobile phone use.

“Our bills for landlines and mobile phones combined to around $70,000 per month,” said Savage.

“We went to tender looking to consolidate how those costs were managed across different departments. We wanted a flexible service that provided the redundancy of a multi-carrier network at a single rate across all networks.”

“Previously we had a single provider for landlines and mobiles, but we also received numerous bills from Telstra for incoming line rental, conference calls and other services.”

Savage predicts the deal will reduce the cost of mobile phone calls by at least 30 per cent over the year, with further savings expected in future years as cost controls are refined. Additional savings will be gained in administration through the consolidation of invoices.

Macquarie Telecom won the tender with a solution that offered cheaper calls and provided a comprehensive, easy to use billing tool for controlling mobile phone costs.

Macquarie Telecom’s Family and Friends Pre-Paid Mobile Plan for the University includes a fixed call rate for the first five minutes for calls to anyone on the Macquarie Telecom networks, no flag fall and free voicemail deposits and retrievals.

Macquarie Telecom’s FleetView provides complete control over mobile fleet costs

The key to potential reductions in the University’s telecommunications expenditure is Macquarie Telecom’s FleetView, a Web-based reporting and fleet management tool providing the following benefits:

• Each faculty will have complete control over levels of expenditure, such as setting the amount of business and/or personal usage, as well as total call spend limits
• Cost analysis from individual user level up to department and entire fleet level
• Comprehensive mobile phone inventory, including ability to suspend ‘lost’ phones and reactivate them when they’re found
• Each faculty will have the ability to define business hours (time in which the organisation will cover call costs) for individual users, as well as which numbers can and can’t be called during these hours
• Individual users’ personal mobile phone usage is paid on the users’ credit card, details of which are not visible to the University
• These features are available on-line and in real time

Savage said FleetView will provide his team with a flexible way to manage the University’s fleet of 700 mobile phones. His team can now rapidly respond to user requirements, such as suspending handsets lost each week and managing billing with each faculty’s finance officer.

“In the past costs were too prohibitive, but now we can control mobile phone costs and we can get the handsets at a good price. Macquarie Telecom is great to work with, always very flexible and responsive to our needs – it’s a really good team of people.”

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For more information:
Mandy Galmes
N2N Communications
02 9213 2302
agalmes@n2n.com.au

About Macquarie Telecom

Macquarie Telecom is a leading supplier of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solutions – including voice, data, mobile and hosting – specialising in the business and government markets. Its dedicated managed hosting and security facility, the Intellicentre, is certified to BS 7799 and DSD Gateway security standards.

Macquarie Telecom provides services to 3,000 business and government customers in Australia and Asia, supporting more than one million business users at work every day. Founded in July 1992, it is one of Australasia's first deregulated telecommunications companies. It expanded its operation into Asia in 2000, and holds carrier licenses in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong.