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You need to be ready for challenges before you start your IT consulting business. The following steps can help get you started.

Make A Database Of Contacts That Includes Everyone You Meet

When making an IT consulting prospect/contact database, use a preexisting package like ACT of Goldmine to simplify the process. You should contact each person and tell him about your IT consulting company. Make sure all contacts know you would appreciate any referrals they can send your way, or to keep you apprised of any computer problems about which they hear.

You should balance personal visits with professional visits. In-person visits to contacts have the most strength, followed by phone calls, then emails and postcards. Give each person you meet some IT consulting business cards with your mobile number on them and also some tech support stickers so they can place them on computers and give them out to others.

Decide When To Charge And How To Set Up Billing

You should think carefully about your hourly billing rate and make sure not to undercharge. Think about whether you want to charge for travel or the trip, or if you want a call fee or a flat fee on top of an hourly billing rate. You should also establish minimum onsite hours, of which 2-3 is typically the standard. You need to go to quite a few places per day in order to make a living, so efficiency is important.

Also think about methods for billing in regards to telephone support and remote support. With a new IT consulting business or any IT consulting business, you don’t want to give anything away for free. You should also think about how you will charge for an off-site project.

Getting The First Paying Client

The most important thing to focus on in IT consulting is to do an excellent job with your first client. You should go above and beyond the call of duty and deliver more than they expect. When you get paid, and while your customer is extremely happy with your work, get a testimonial that can help you gain future clients.

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World on IP community versus the TELECOMS’ monopoly or a dream of a visionary

Why VOIP will grow over the usual telephony

Without qualification, if one had to choose between usual telephone lines or IP telephony for carrying the voice, the first would be a better fit for the needs of voice communications. Also, IP telephony is generally subject to transmission delays.

Voice communications is highly sensitive to delays or irregularities in the transmission of voice signal components.

Even when transmitted in digital form, not only must the transmission delay be small (so as to be imperceptible to the listener), but also the time between the arrival of digital signal samples at the receiving end of a transmission must be at regular intervals. Any significant form of delay, whether delay of all samples or one sample relative to the other, can significantly degrade the quality of the voice signal recreated at the far end of the transmission.

Besides, Ip telephony during network congestion is subject to the loss of packets and with them part of the words of a conversation.

In the usual telephone lines, this doesn’t occure, because new calls are blocked from entering the network and there is no network congestion.

Why so much activity was spent in the last few years to overcome these problems?

Now, we are definetly able to offer a very good and reliable VOIP , with phones that can be used also on a Modem or ISDN connection. ( very attractive for the countries that are mostly penalized with high cost of telephone charges: India, Africa and rural zones in general.) A high compression and a new algorithm for it will allow the transmission of voice without any delay, the priority given to the voice packets will kill the congestion, all this resulting in a gorgeous quality of voice.

Although voice communications continues to dominate the market today, this will ultimately change as data communications grows at 100% per year, ( in Italy last year we had a 250% growth of DSL lines and they say next year will even be better) while voice only increases by 8 to 10% per year. Thus, the doubling of the existing lines ( creation of voice over IP world ) only makes sense in the case the data customers want to use the data line for voice communications as well. For example, a multi-location user that uses a commercial data network service to connect those customer locations might want to cut down expenses by using that same network for voice communications, as well. It has been estimated that companies can lower their communications costs by as much as 80% by placing their voice traffic through the unused space in their data networks .

How we plan to compete with the giant Telecoms of today

Entering the market against the Telecoms is downright dangerous and potentially fatal in today’s capital environment. The net revenue derived from investment should be small relatively to the size of the investment. A single large business may generate many thousands of dollars per month in revenues for an investor , while a big residential consumers investment would generate very little revenue compared to the infrastructures required.

That considered, it should not surprise us if firms try and serve large businesses rather than residential customers.

If competition is less likely when the revenue is small relative to the size of the investment, there are three ways to increase competition in a market:

a) increase revenue

b) reduce the investment required

c) do both.

What has all this to do with being a Utopistic dreamer or visionary as many defined me while I explained my project?

I have an exciting project, which, if succesfull, will allow all the people who own a DSL line to be able to call the world with a portable IP phone. I will try to explain it as much as possible ( you can also see my web pages at http://www.worldonip.com/community. )

It is very simple.

Instead of sharing the bandwidth to download illegal MP3 or movies, we share it to telephone for free.

You need to connect to your DSL line an Access Point, to place the antenna on a window. You do not even need to have the computer on 24 hours a day, just connecting the access point. You will create a Hot Spot that every other member of the community will be able to use. You will then need a (real) portable IP phone, you will connect to the Net either through your own Hot Spot or through the hot spot of any other member, wherever you will be ( all the continents will have people sharing hot spots. )

A call with our device consumes maximum 20 k, thanks to to high compression of the voice and the quality is absolutely gorgeous.

Our telephone will have a price around 200 - 250 US dollars. An access point costs not more than 100 US dollars. The value of the investment highly overcomes the amount.

Imagine, being able to call for free for the rest of your life!!! And imagine what kind of doors opens a connection like that!

Going back to the market competition.

In my particular case

a) Increase the revenue. Every member would have enormous revenues under the voice Free call wherever he wants.

b) Reduce the investment. Being a shared investment, every member will invest in the enterprise the cost of an Access point ( around $100 or even less). Considering that in the beginning we will have members who already have a DSL line with a flat rate, and already use it for other purposes, also the cost of running the system and relative bandwidth will amount to almost zero. The cost of the phone is irrilevant compared to the benefit of having FREE CALLS.

Not only does the Community reduce the investment required to provide a competitive service to almost ZERO, it also significantly reduces the risk involved in funding a telecom start-up venture. The Community allows an entrant to begin a new service at minimal sunk capital cost.

Further, once a critical mass of customers is signed up on the Community, it becomes far more cost effective for the entrant to build a new Hot Spot.

To the unskilled eye, it appears as if the competition envisioned by the authors of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 for residential and small business markets was not much more than a dream - an unrealized and unrealizable nirvana.

The project of the Community is making that dream a reality and offers the potential for building a really strong TELECOM able to compete against the World Telecoms’ monopoly.

Our model is easy to realize ( because the infrastructure already exists), brings enormous revenues to the members of the Community and the investment is really minimal.

Without considering the NON-Polluting system that will be created in competition to a Highly polluting system existing.

World on Ip community versus Telecoms’ monopoly. A real challenge?

Patrizia Demaria

About The Author

Patrizia is an italian pharmacyst, fond of Internet and Internet related subjects. She is also an e-books publisher with a website of more than 700 free classic literature e-books in English, French, Italian, German http://www.easymediabroadcast.com all personally published by her.

Her english is not always perfect, but the temperament and passion with which she espouse a cause overcome her (eventual) mistakes. Lately all her efforts are devolved to the creation of the World on IP community.

http://www.worldonip.com/community

patrizia@worldonip.com

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