Kim Sheree, marketing manager for Wireless International Systems (WIS), told ZDNet Australia that the council's involvement in the trial has forced it to "massage" its mobile call volume estimates in order to retain call rates it has negotiated with its carrier.
WIS's technology, entitled Short Email Messaging Service, (SEMS) acts as a gateway between an enterprises' email network and its carrier's GSM or CDMA network.
According to WIS, in some cases, the technology could cut the number of voice calls that an organisation makes by half.
The council is conducting a limited implementation of the trial, involving 500 workers, in its dispatching and scheduling division. The trial has already demonstrated that the council could save AU$4,380 for an average of 2,000 calls per month to its after-hours centre alone.
According to WIS estimates, this equates to a saving of AU$2.19 per dispatch transaction. The council saves AU$1 for each call to an outsourced call centre and approximately AU$0.84 cents per mobile call to base to confirm a job. Using (SEMS) technology, each transaction costs 50 cents -- 25 cents per SMS each way.
However that saving has forced the council to audit its call volumes very closely. It needs to ensure that it can retain voice call rates set in its carrier contract. The call rate is dependent on the volume of calls the council is expected to make over the period of the contract. If the volume falls outside a range negotiated with the carrier, the carrier can renegotiate the rate upwards.
-The issue is how to work within those contracts because [the SEMS implementation] will impact on the contract so we have to take into account [call volume] growth at the council and whole lot of other aspects when we're doing it," said Sheree.
Speaking guardedly about the "other aspects" of how contracts are audited, Sheree said agreements with the least flexibility built into them are the most vulnerable. Contracts are often based on projected call volume and those with more flexible margins, she said, offer more scope for "massaging".
WIS also claims the new technology will allow large enterprises that outsource their call centre functions to bring them back in-house at a fraction of the cost.
The company has already formed a partnership with mobile paging network owner and call centre operator Link Communications. According to WIS, Link Communications' investment in the company was an acknowledgement that SEMS-style applications would replace conventional paging services rapidly.
Sheree said that other organisations -- including a large Queensland regional health service with a fleet of over 15,000 mobiles -- had taken an interest in, or were currently trialling, the SEMS technology.
"I would be hoping several of them would be well underway with this system by early 2003," said Sheree.
The interest that large public organisations shown toward the technology appears to have taken WIS by surprise.
"We only saw SEMS as a corporate enterprise tool because they want security, they want in-house, and they want it to look like email," said Sheree.
SMPP technology allows WIS to offer 168-bit encryption and the system duplicates e-mails sent to mobiles to the receiver's e-mail account, so they have a log of the communication on file.
