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Cell Phones

Q. Good morning. We have about 300 cell phones on a corporate account with Verizon. We’re starting to consider moving toward reimbursing people for personally owned phones. Our plan is develop a matrix for an allowance for the hand set, say from $50 to $300, depending on title, then a flat monthly reimbursement amount, again, depending on title. How are you all doing this? Are you looking to change, too? What problems are you having with your current methods? Thanks.
Chris Zeppa
Walker Engineering, Inc.

A. We considered this and decided it wasn’t worth it because we would end up paying more and getting less. With our VZ business account we get discounts on usage, so if we gave everybody what we pay now they would be forced to make up the difference.
Todd Eldredge
Donley's

A. Verizon has a program in which you can extend some of the corporate discount to employees without taking on the responsibility of their accounts. The employees sign up online and it takes about 2 billing cycles for the discounts to become effective on their personal lines. By doing this you can get out of managing potentially hundreds of cell lines while still letting everyone participate in the discounts. They can go to www.verizonwireless.com/discounts. Also, if they sign up for Paperless Billing they qualify for additional discounts.
Chandler McCormack
OxBlue Corporation

A. I understand the attraction of BYOD, however the jury is still out on whether this is a best practice. There are things to consider such as risk of company info on personal device and having the legal ability to wipe a personal device. You would want to make sure you have a mobile device policy in place for personal devices connecting to the company network and data. You also need to make sure you approve the devices from an encryption and security standpoint. This is much easier to do if you can select or approve the devices.
Jeff Hays
Corbett, Duncan & Hubly PC

A. Just in case anyone isn't aware of these phone discounts for their company:
1.) Although there is no national AGC discount, many of the AGC chapters have a contractual agreement with NPP which can be pretty good for members (see http://www.agc-oregon.org/membership/programs-and-discounts/verizon-wireless/) So if anyone isn't getting the 22% discount on service and a 35% discount on hardware they may want to check into this to see if its available for them.

2.) Another option is to sign up for the Unified Purchasing Group (http://www.upg.org/). They aggregate about 20k companies and have a substantial discount as well. Its easy to sign up and get the discount. I don't recall there being a minimum or a commitment so this is a good option as well.

3.) We're working with Verizon (and other carriers) through negotiated enterprise agreements. So that's a third option but its only a fit when you have a very high volume and unique requirements. Ours comes from managing a high volume of client's construction cameras across the country which run on cellular networks.
Chandler McCormack
OxBlue Corporation