Ergonomics issues has witnessed much spotlight off late, the press has labeled the modern workplace as being “dangerous”. The office employees of today-; be it time spent in huge offices or operating from household offices-; are getting to know the hard facts of health disorders originating via work.

One office employee can have to work nearly 25 – 40 hrs. during a week seated on the computer operating position. Then to get back home, travel via a bus or train either standing or sitting for some duration of time in congestion. Once you have reached home complete relaxation is what one would seek but exercising is not thought of for giving the muscles some stretching.

Amongst the highly common health issues arising from such work environment is back pain, which can be comfortably prevented. In the UK, BackCare charity guesses back pain & linked illness to toll firms ten billion dollars each year via non-attendance.

Fresh ergonomic hazards are filled up in new age workplace plus there aren’t enough safeguard measures taken. Similar to IT being a dangerous source, is also has the cure. Headsets for phone like those made by Plantronics, is what is best applicable for safety which can be entailed to any workplace scenario to get better ergonomics.

Back in the 60′s it was primarily used by just the telephone operators, but it is useful in almost work scenarios today and there’s a good reason for that. As per a Medical Study carried out by Santa Clara Valley, headsets help subside shoulder, upper back, and neck tension by about forty-one percent. One more research done through H.B. Maynard & Co., Incorporation found that if headsets that are hands-free are used in phone in the office then it bettered efficiency by nearly forty-three percent. Such headsets can diminish possibilities of work originating physical hazards, more so upper body & neck injuries, he result being lesser employees’ compensation expenses.

“Dissimilar to safety for manual workers, the subject of work originating injury with regards to office work force is yet to be considered as a serious matter”, these are the views of Elizabeth Simpson SRP, MCSP EIHMS (the European Institute of Health and Medical Sciences). “Reason being such injuries originating from bad telephone habits is not visible immediately plus takes time to show complete effects. Research results show that using headsets for telephone helps lessen neck ache, headaches and back ache in people who work on the PC & phone together for less than 2 hours in a day.”

Phone handsets could bring about high work originating hazards for the neck. Placing the receiver between the neck and shoulder regularly at length could lead to distress and damage structural tissue. Well when using a headset the posture is stable and there is no frequent bending of the back to attend or place a call. So for those who are constantly connected to the phone & computer the headset is a great piece of equipment.

Disorders of the upper body which medical terms is termed as “musculoskeletal disorders,” stands for various troubles related to tedious stress damages of the nerves, muscles, tendons & holding structures. Their severity could range from infrequent to quite frequent.

Extreme disorders of the upper body have been a matter of research for a length of time now, mostly focusing on elbows, wrists, hands, arms & shoulders. There have been tons of pages written on particular hazards related to the for mentioned body parts, like wrists being affected by carpal tunnel syndrome, elbows being affected by epicondylitis, and hands being affected by DeQuervains ailment.

NIOSH in the year 1997 reviewed in excess of 230 studies work originating hazards higher side extremities. Of those eighty-nine had investigations factors leading to work related hazards concerning the shoulders & neck. The publication’s review committee gave the verdict that there being “enough matter to state – high intensity of motionless contraction, at length motionless weight or intense working stance . . . enlarged the danger for shoulder & neck upper body hazards.”

Yes, workplace ergonomics awareness is in the rise but yet it is still far away from creating a big different that it needed to address this problem. We do not know the actual numbers of suffers who might be already facing the effects of such disorders. There are a lot of new technologies that have come in this area to address and to try and eradicate this issue. Awareness can only be spread if the right knowledge is imparted to those employers who have such functioning offices. Source

1. Cheaper phone service: When you make international calls it can be absurdly expensive. That’s why it’s best to use a hosted phone system for the calls you do make. Consumer Reports show in a survey that most customers who transfer to a business toll free number save an average of $50 per month.

2. International Rates: A business phone system can save you drastic amounts of cash if you have international clientele. A flat rate between $15 and $30 usually includes calls to Canada. Calls to other countries are dirt cheap, often just cents per minute to remote places. On the other hand, Qwest charges 14 cents per minute to call Canada, and a $4 charge to call China.

3. Features: A hosted phone system usually comes with tons of free features. Caller ID, call waiting, 3 way calling, voicemail, call forwarding, the list goes on and on. You can create an “out of town” number also, which will allow friends, family and clients who don’t yet have a hosted phone system to call you locally, saving them money in the process. Another convenient new feature is accessing your voicemail via e-mail.

4. Reliability: You can use VoIP anywhere, anytime. When your customers call you, they can choose who they want to talk to from a touch tone phone. If you don’t have a business phone system, your customers may call when you’re out of the office and be discouraged, but VoIP makes you all the more easier to reach. The lines are open all the time, because the internet never closes. And yet you can still choose the privacy settings you want and need.

5. Mobility: VoIP can go anywhere you go, or at least anywhere with an Internet connection. Traveling is made easy, as long as you have a VoIP phone adapter. When you choose the “Travel Globally” feature, you don’t have to worry about being out of the office and missing important business calls.

If these five reasons didn’t convince you that it’s time to switch to VoIP, I don’t know what will. There are so many improvements in technology occurring that if you don’t switch to them, or find out about them soon, you won’t be in the loop, and you will have more trouble switching when you finally do. So now that you know about VoIP’s business phone system, what are you waiting for? Source

View full post on http://www.garrysholl.com.au/2010/12/15/mike-quigleys-presentation-to-commsday-melbourne-summit/ A recording of the presentation by Mike Quigley to Commsday Melbourne Summit held on 13 October 2010. View full post on NBN Co Limited

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Govt open to Telstra Bill changes

The government has indicated for the first time that it is “open to amendments” on the Telstra separation Bill due for debate this Thursday.

“The government will always have an open mind to amendments that it believes will improve the Bill,” Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s Office wrote in a statement on Friday evening.

The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Competition and Consumer Safeguards) Bill 2009 has offered Telstra a choice to voluntarily opt for structural separation or face an imposed functional separation coupled with tough sanctions, including a ban on acquiring spectrum for 4G wireless services.

The government is “determined to debate and pass the Bill early this year,” Conroy’s office wrote.

The government hoped to reintroduce the Bill to the Senate this Wednesday; however, it has been pushed back to Thursday due to various health Bills, leaving little chance for it to be passed until Senate resumes on 9 March.

Independents as late as last week were yet to hear from Conroy regarding their concerns over the Bill, with Greens’ Senator Scott Ludlam questioning what exactly would be in it. Ludlam, Independent Senator Nick Xenophon and Family First Senator Steve Fielding have all indicated they want to see amendments made to the Bill.

The week’s break to 9 March could be seen as giving NBN Co and Telstra a short window to complete negotiations regarding the company’s structural separation, though the company’s CEO David Thodey said two weeks ago that decision would be “months away”. Thodey has also said that any deal with NBN Co must be approved by shareholders.

David Forman, executive director of the Competitive Carriers’ Coalition (CCC), said Thodey’s requirement to get shareholder approval will not stop the Bill proceeding.

“Public policy is not hostage to David Thodey’s opinions on what is agreeable to shareholders. That’s David Thodey’s problem,” Forman told ZDNet.com.au.

The CCC, which represents several carriers’ interests, had argued its case to crossbenchers, Forman said.

“We have had very constructive conversations with crossbench senators on all aspects of the Bill. I’m not sure whether that will translate into amendments, but I have very good reason to believe that these are taken seriously and confident that they will be discussing those changes with the government,” said Forman.

Broadly speaking, CCC has argued for an open process to determine whether Telstra’s proposed form of structural separation to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is adequate — if it proposes one prior to the government passing the Bill. It also wants to ensure that Telstra cannot use contract law to overcome pricing determinations made by the ACCC.

A former head of OzEmail and the Microsoft Network in Ausralia, Milne is now the telecommunications giant’s group managing director of voice, broadband and media.

It is a new title intended to deal with an old problem: how to stop the telco’s millions of fixed-line and broadband customers wandering off to other carriers.

Milne describes his unit as a “grown-up version” of what BigPond (Telstra’s internet service provider) was a year ago.

“We very much believe that as media changes and grows, the telco business becomes more about what you do on the pipes than the pipes themselves.”

Combining content (media) with infrastructure (fixed and mobile phones, as well as fixed and mobile broadband) as a way to retain customers and charge them more is not new. Big telecommunications companies the world over have been grappling with the challenges and opportunities of convergence for years.

“Gradually, what telcos have done is reinvent themselves — even though they’ve been incredibly slow do so at times — through the power of their balance sheet and the power of their people and the necessity of trying to hang on to the huge business they’ve had,” says the Telstra executive.

“Large telcos need to embrace this stuff, and media is one of the next things they’re looking to reinvent themselves around.”

So does Milne subscribe to theory that incumbent telcos — whose old job was to build faster and more useful communication infrastructure — can’t succeed in the new media business?

“That’s what farriers and blacksmiths used to say before the Model T Ford,” he says. “But when the Model T Ford came along, it was the end of the line for farriers and blacksmiths.”

Never mind that to some analysts Telstra is the farrier in that metaphor, not the Model T, given that its shortcomings were laid bare at its interim results briefing this month when chief executive David Thodey downgraded profit guidance for the third time in six months, and admitted the decay in the fixed-line telephony business had spread to other parts of the empire, including broadband.

“It is critically important for us to really address this,” Thodey said at the results briefing, before singling out Milne, who joined Telstra in 2002, as someone who “can really make a difference”.

It won’t be easy. Telstra’s revenue from its fixed-line services fell 6.9 per cent to $3 billion in the six months to December — a slump that was not offset by growth in the mobile and broadband divisions.

Meanwhile, increased competition in the fixed broadband market meant 30,000 customers went somewhere else for the half.

Telstra’s directories business, Sensis, which is overseen by Bruce Akhurst, was also affected by the advertising downturn, with revenue down 7.3 per cent to $959 million, while pay-television operator Foxtel is facing slower subscriber growth. (Foxtel is 50 per cent owned by Telstra and 25 per cent owned by News Limited, publisher of The Australian. James Packer’s Consolidated Media Holdings has the other 25 per cent).

These are operational challenges that will be around long after Telstra’s tortuous negotiations with the government over the proposed national broadband network are completed. And while every media business faces competitive threats — as markets fragment, consumers flex their muscles and new entrants such as internet television evolve — Thodey has now linked content with the success of the pipes, whether fixed-line or broadband.

Milne says Telstra has been at the vanguard of new media in Australia since Ted Pretty arrived from Optus in 1997. Pretty, who oversaw Telstra’s ill-fated dot.com forays, including Sausage Software, ran a number of more successful businesses, including Sensis, before resigning in 2005 after Sol Trujillo replaced Ziggy Switkowski at the top.

“I’m reasonably happy but I hope not complacent,” says Milne. “I’m happy because one way or another through a succession of regimes at Telstra, and CEOs including Ziggy and Sol and David — all of those CEOs and the boards behind them have supported an appropriate level of investment in what’s broadly called new media.”

Telstra is betting it will be able to recover some of that fixed-line and broadband revenue through two bits of new technology that combine the various parts of the business.

The first is T-Hub, a device that attempts to reinvent the home phone (and get some of those fixed-line customers back) by grouping a wireless telephone, a 17.5cm touchscreen and access to the internet.

It would most likely sit in the kitchen and offers services such as BigPond’s address book and calendar, BigPond and Sensis content and internet services such as YouTube and Facebook. It can also act as a news centre through internet radio or even be a digital photo frame.

Telstra has been consumer testing the product, and Milne says the feedback has been “extremely encouraging”.

The second device is a digital set-top box called the T-Box. This will allow people to pause, rewind and record TV, and gain access to BigPond internet TV channels’ downloads and content.

The T-Box is one of several set-top boxes expected to compete with established players such as TiVo and Foxtel IQ this year as internet protocol television continues to establish itself.

Milne says there are big opportunities in IPTV, but he — like almost every other media executive in the world — warns that quality content will be crucial to attracting and retaining consumers.

For example, Bigpond now has the online rights to sports such as AFL, NRL and V8 Supercars. Milne says services based around this kind of content will become more important and he expects Telstra to co-operate with free-to-air networks as the rights for the football codes are negotiated over the next 12 months.

Milne argues that internet TV will not have a detrimental effect on a Foxtel subscriber base already battling the new digital channels offered by free-to-air television networks.

“IPTV is in my view not going to be pay-TV delivered via the internet,” says Milne.

“It’s going to be a different media experience to what we currently understand as Pay-TV, in other words Foxtel.”

Milne says it is more helpful to think of internet models such as YouTube that don’t “feel anything like Foxtel”.

“Foxtel is a pay version of free-to-air TV — it’s an extremely good one,” he says. “Foxtel is a wonderful service loved by lots of Australians, including me, that gives you access to a huge range of services you don’t get from free-to-air, but I think internet TV won’t be that. It will be something different.”

So what will it be?

Milne says the answer probably hasn’t been invented yet, and that new ideas are borne of new technology. “Nobody thought of Twitter when the mobile phone was invented, but here it is.”

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