Businesses gain a number of benefits by supplying mobile phones to their employees. These mobile phones make it easier for team members to communicate via voice, chat or email at any time. They also empower workers to access robust data, utilize applications and contact customers right from their smartphone. To obtain the right features and avoid wasting money, business or small business owners should compare several cellphone plans to find the best for their business. Decision makers should remember to carefully assess their company’s needs with the following questions before making any decisions.
How Does Your Team Use Cellphones?
The most suitable plan varies depending on the type of business and the staff’s communication habits. Different people prefer to talk, use email or send text messages. A company may only need basic wireless service and flip phones if employees seldom leave the local area. On the other hand, a smartphone with 4G LTE data access can be incredibly useful for a salesperson on the go who needs to view customer data, business intelligence, presentations and itinerary information while traveling. Before a company selects a business mobility plan, decision makers should be acutely aware of the coverage in the areas their team members operate, as well as the price, minutes, data and messages offered by the plan.
Do Staff Members Travel Abroad?
Companies typically need to select travel-oriented plans if their employees venture overseas on a frequent basis. A regular plan may charge excessive fees or fail to deliver sufficient coverage. The right choice differs depending on the specific countries that workers visit. It costs comparatively little to obtain adequate service in Mexico or Canada. Most cellphone carriers charge higher rates when clients travel to less popular destinations.
Be sure to consider both coverage areas and international calling costs. If a carrier allows Americans to call Tokyo at an affordable rate, it doesn’t necessarily offer inexpensive signal coverage in Japan. Learn about any in-flight services that a cellphone provider makes available to airline passengers. For example, it might let travelers engage in unlimited texting on select flights.
What’s The Advantage of Using a Cell Phone Plan Instead of a Standard Phone Plan?
If you have several employees working outside of the office on a regular basis, desk-bound phones obviously aren’t going to work for them. Some may be only calling and texting while others will be checking email, using GPS navigation, and accessing the internet for work, but a cell phone is a must for employees in the field.
Is a business cell phone plan better than a personal cell phone plan for work?
If you’re a one-person operation accountable to only yourself, you could get by with a personal cell plan. Keeping track of multiple employees’ hours, data, and providers, however, would be an extra headache you don’t need. For streamlining and collaboration purposes, a business cell phone plan would be the easier route.
How Much Data Does a Small Business Need?
Most of the plans we’ve reviewed here offer unlimited data—domestically, at least—so hitting the data ceiling won’t likely be an issue. But if you want to forecast how much data your business uses every month, providers make data plan estimators available on their websites. Or you could use a third-party calculator app.
What’s BYOD?
BYOD stands for “bring your own device.” Another common term is BYOP for “bring your own phone.” These can mean that employees are using their personal phones, tablets, or laptops on their own carrier cell phone plans for work or that they’ve put those devices on the company’s plan.
What’s a Mobile Hotspot?
In the annoying absence of Wi-Fi, you can use a cell phone signal to connect a wireless device to the internet by switching on the mobile hotspot option and simply treating it like a Wi-Fi router. For multiple device connections, a dedicated hotspot can provide a faster, and more stable, connection for your business.
What is the Best Business Cell Phone Plan?
There’s no clear cut winner when it comes to choosing the best business cell phone plan. Instead, it depends on the specific needs of you and your business. The “Big 4” major carriers which include T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint, all offer business cell phone plans:
- AT&T
AT&T is one of the larger wireless providers and has multiple types of business cell phone plans.
- Verizon Wireless
Verizon Wireless offers individual plans, family sharing plans for small businesses, and larger enterprise business cell phone plans.
- Sprint
Sprint sells a few different type of business cell phone plans including a new plan for small businesses (less than 10 employees) called the Sprint Business Share Plus Plans.
- T-Mobile
T-Mobile, which calls itself the “uncarrier”, boasts plans for business users that are very flexible and offer unlimited data. Learn more about T-Mobile Business.
Types of Business Cell Phone Plans
If your company depends on cell phone usage for most or all of its communication needs, then it’s a big benefit to have a business wireless plan that suits your business needs. You can look up different carriers and cell phone plan types with our comparison service and see how much you could save compared to your company’s current business wireless plan. There are three types of business wireless plans:
- Shared data plansfor small businesses
- Unlimited data plans for business
- Medium to large sized business plans
What Business Wireless Smartphone Plan Is Best For Your Company?
When choosing the right plan for your business, you should consider how many employees will be on the plan and what types of services you want to include. Most carriers factor these three things into your plan:
- Talk – Minutes
- Text – Text Messaging
- Data – Data Usage in MB or GB
The Takeaway
Typically, these plans will include unlimited talk and text for every line on the plan, and either a set amount of data per line per month, or a shared data pool that is used by all of the users of that plan each month. Just enter the number of lines, minutes, messages, and data you need in the tool above to see which business cell phone plans will work best for you and your business.
Assess your company’s current cell phone usage, and projected future needs, before diving into any plan. What looks like a great deal could turn out to be more than you actually need—or you may have initially underestimated your business’s cell phone requirements. Also, if your company has both cell phone and regular office phone needs, check into bundling: the larger telecom providers offer both types of phone coverage, and bundling services is an easy way to save money in the long run.
Posted on May 22, 2023