What mobile phone does your employer provide?

[bitchstewie]

shep1001 said:

Windows phone. We were going down the Apple route at one point for the new phone/tablet/laptop we got issued on the latest wave of IT kit replacements but it was decided the security was not sufficient on the Apple devices to meet company standards

That's quite interesting as arguably iOS is the most secure of the three main platforms (now Blackberry has pretty much all but gone).

[brickwall]

iPhone 6. They will cover reasonable personal usage, even if that means in some cases high costs (i.e. it's reasonable to call home when you're abroad, and as we've sent you there)

[bitchstewie]

brickwall said:

iPhone 6. They will cover reasonable personal usage, even if that means in some cases high costs (i.e. it's reasonable to call home when you're abroad, and as we've sent you there)

Do you ever get queried on your bill at line item level or you just mean so long as the chunk of personal cost isn't over a threshold?

[MrOrange]

bhstewie said:

How do your staff switch off?

• Afternoon naps
• break during the day
• switch off notifications
• officially "go dark"
• switch off devices/phones

Lots of ways to go dark. In fairness our business is planned and proactive, reactive stuff is "pooled" and whoever who wants it picks it up. Also, we use apps to manage comms rather than plain old telephone calls to communicate to avoid disruption so maybe we're not a good working example for the OP

[bitchstewie]

MrOrange said:

• Afternoon naps
• break during the day
• switch off notifications
• officially "go dark"
• switch off devices/phones

Lots of ways to go dark. In fairness our business is planned and proactive, reactive stuff is "pooled" and whoever who wants it picks it up. Also, we use apps to manage comms rather than plain old telephone calls to communicate to avoid disruption so maybe we're not a good working example for the OP

Thanks, makes sense, I was thinking more how companies that do this deal with customers phoning staff on their day off or when they're on holiday where it's a single number shared between work and personal.

[okgo]

Whatever I like, they pay the bill, whatever it costs.

Perfect for me as I like to chop and change when something comes out etc. As for switching off? Personally I'm answering emails whatever, here or on hol, so no bother to me.

[BMR]

We got issued our Microsoft Lumias this week, we had a phone branded ZTE before that, very basic but did the job. Benefit of the Lumia is checking emails on the go, less clunky than the tablet we use, and being able to send pictures etc if looking for advice (technical job).

[shep1001]

bhstewie said:

That's quite interesting as arguably iOS is the most secure of the three main platforms (now Blackberry has pretty much all but gone).

We were a Blackberry company but ze Germans decided Windows & Dell it was.

[brickwall]

bhstewie said:

brickwall said:

iPhone 6. They will cover reasonable personal usage, even if that means in some cases high costs (i.e. it's reasonable to call home when you're abroad, and as we've sent you there)

Do you ever get queried on your bill at line item level or you just mean so long as the chunk of personal cost isn't over a threshold?

Never seen a line item level bill.

There's nominally a threshold, but
a) It's extremely high (over £100 per month I think)
b) Even when exceeding it, I've never been queried

I'm sure there's an automated system for further investigation if certain triggers are hit. But broadly if you can explain your usage was reasonable, you're fine.

[wibble cb]

None, yet I have received numerous calls on my personal mobile, from colleagues at work...whom I had not given my number to, I seemingly didn't have a choice.

[Trabi601]

wibble cb said:

None, yet I have received numerous calls on my personal mobile, from colleagues at work...whom I had not given my number to, I seemingly didn't have a choice.

Sounds like you have an iPhone and have registered your company phone using your personal account details.

I didn't do that specifically because iOS can do some funny stuff with sending VOIP calls to several devices at once.

[shep1001]

brickwall said:

Never seen a line item level bill.

There's nominally a threshold, but
a) It's extremely high (over £100 per month I think)
b) Even when exceeding it, I've never been queried

I'm sure there's an automated system for further investigation if certain triggers are hit. But broadly if you can explain your usage was reasonable, you're fine.

Our company uses Vodaphone, as std a stats report is issued each month. It details the top 15 expensive bills by country looking at things like most called phone, longest call, most expensive call, most called number etc. Quite an interesting read.

[littlebasher]

I still have a trusty Blackberry, a Leap this time

Not a bad phone, just a pity that almost all functionality is disabled under a group policy.

Still, it's free - billing clocks up £100ish a month, someone pays for it just not me.

[wiggy001]

bhstewie said:

Thanks, makes sense, I was thinking more how companies that do this deal with customers phoning staff on their day off or when they're on holiday where it's a single number shared between work and personal.

I work in a smallish consultancy (40ish staff). If someone calls me then it is my choice whether I answer it or not (true of personal calls too). My phone is set to Do Not Disturb in the evenings, so I wouldn't know if anyone outside my favourites was calling after 7pm anyway. On my days off, I can decide whether to answer a work call based on what is going on at the time work wise (close to go-live I probably would answer if I could, otherwise I wouldn't for example).

We don't have an official policy on this by the way, and I think we should for consistency.

[Kermit power]

bhstewie said:

Truckosaurus said:

We have the choice of an iPhone SE or some sort of Motorola Android phone for free, or can get a discounted price on a number of other phones if you want to upgrade with your own money.

Presume they give you a plan where personal calls are included?

Can't see why anyone would contribute their own money to a "work" phone otherwise?

Depends on how the scheme works, I suppose.

Prior to my current employer, I'd never owned a mobile, as I'd had a work one since the mid nineties, and had taken the number with me whenever I moved on. The benefit to this was never having any phone cost, but the downside was never having much choice of handset.

I now get £100 towards the cost of a handset which I then own (so free if it's under £100) and free data, but I pay for personal calls, but that only works out at about £3.50 a month.

[JakeT]

No phone for me, and because I don't have a work phone I do nothing work related outside of office hours. I do know that any people I work with that have company phones have iPhone 5S models and also have their own personal phones.

However like some in this thread I know my dad has only had one personal phone. He's had a company phone since the early 90s. For him it's always been personal or business, use what you want and the bill gets paid at the end of the month. One employer used to send a copy of the bill to him also, and a couple of months while he was away for two months he had a bill totalling over £4,000. The company rolled over and paid it anyway.

[renmure]

Self employed so nothing to add for me.

Mrs R just got a new iPhone 7 to replace a 6s. No limitations or restrictions on personal use. She joined the company about 12 years ago and everyone had Blackberry phones and even then there were no restrictions on use but apparently the company moved to Apple round about the time the iPhone 6 came out.

[schmunk]

Blackberry Classic at present. Will be a choice of either iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy 7 when we switch early next year.

[TheAngryDog]

Work issued me an iPhone 5S. Not allowed to really use the data on it for any purpose (including work), we are expected to use our own phones data allowance if needed, no personal calls.

[Bullett]

Work issued 5s which i use as a personal phone as well. I'm not a big user of voice or data personally and I've never seen a bill or been pulled up for unreasonable usage.
I know there must be a threshold to trigger a review but it's got to be high as I've only heard of a couple of cases and one of those was a guy who'd been sent to Dubai on a project for a month.