November 28, 2023
New research shows that 99% of IT managers are ready to retire landline phones in favor of mobile phones for all employees, based on their roles.
That’s the chief finding of Cavell Group research that shows an overwhelming number of companies are ready to go “Mobile Only” and make mobile phones the sole telephony endpoint for employees.
The survey results were unveiled today at the Cavell Enable event in London. Cavell Group undertook two extensive surveys commissioned by Tango Networks to explore the attitudes of IT managers and their end user employees toward Mobile Unified Communications.
The first survey polled telecommunications and communications decision makers in 400 US-based businesses with at least 50 employees. The second polled 400 frontline workers in the healthcare industry in the US.
The results of the surveys leave no question that the era of all-mobile business communications has arrived.
The Cavell study found that 99% of the surveyed employers are willing retire landlines by letting employees use personal mobile phones with company-controlled business lines embedded via eSIMs.
This indicates that not only are employers ready to cut the cord and end the desk phone era, but they are willing to do so by supporting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) as a key principle.
The mobile BYOD Imperative
A longstanding challenge for IT managers has been the introduction of personal BYOD mobile phones into business communications. Concerns around security, communication of confidential information on uncontrolled devices, and lack of compliance controls were chief challenges of the trend.
While many companies resisted the trend and prevented the use of BYOD, end-users have used them anyway. The Cavell research found that 56% of the surveyed employees are already actively using their personal phones for business
But the research also found that employers are now ready for BYOD, with 76% of the surveyed businesses permitting mobile BYOD today, and only 1% said they would not move to mobile BYOD using eSIMs to place and manage a business line in the phone.
The overriding need is to provide better collaboration and improved communications in a context where fixed telephony is not usable, such as with frontline workers who are providing in-home repair, healthcare, delivery or similar customer facing services.
The survey showed that 96% of IT managers view supporting these frontline workers with mobile solutions as important.
Remote & Hybrid Work Accelerate Change
In addition to the need to empower frontline workers with better communications, a key driver behind the new acceptance of BYOD is the move to remote working and hybrid working.
While many companies had permitted employees to work from home a portion of the time before the pandemic, this mode of working became the norm in almost all industries during the pandemic. Any job that could be performed from home or on the go had to be supported by IT departments, leading to rapid adoption of technologies enabling work to be conducted efficiently from any location.
Fast forward to today and even those companies that have mandated a return to the office are permitting many workers to work remotely part of the time, in a hybrid work model
In addition, the Cavell survey found that more than two-third, or 68%, of workers are using collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams in their communications. This implies the need to ensure these collaboration tools can be used seamlessly by remote workers on mobile phones.
The answer lies in the adoption of business eSIMs on personal phones, for which the Cavell data showed broad support among both employers and employees.
Cutting the Cord with eSIMs
The business eSIM from our Tango Extend solution enables a business-controlled line to be installed and managed in a mobile phone, including personal BYOD phones. This is the result of Tango Networks’ extensive experience in fixed mobile convergence technologies, which are now covered by over 100 patents.
The Cavell research revealed that 83% of surveyed frontline workers were willing to allow an employer to load an eSIM like Extend into their personal phones
The surveyed workers said they view the top benefit of a business eSIM solution was to keep their personal and business communications separate.
Tango Extend enables two identities to exist on a personal BYOD phone, with separate lines for business and personal communications. The business line uses the business-controlled Tango Extend eSIM to communicate using the business identity and phone number. Business calls using the Tango Extend eSIM can even be recorded for records retention and communications monitoring compliance.
Meanwhile, the personal line remains private and secure and communications use the worker’s personal identity and number.
In addition, the Tango Extend business eSIM allows a collaboration solution like Microsoft Teams to be used natively on mobile phones. Workers can communicate using their Teams identity and fixed line number without any apps, making and receiving calls using the native dialer on their phones for a simple, high quality and intuitive user experience.
We’ll dive deeper into more of the data uncovered by Cavell in its surveys and compare the findings to user experience data and BYOD adoption trends in other reports in coming weeks.
Ready to cut the cord and make the move to “Mobile Only” communications? Get in touch today to get started.
1- Source: Tango Survey Report, September 2023 by Cavell. Based on two studies: the first with telecoms/communications decision makers within 400 organizations based in the US, who have more than 50 employees; the second with 400 healthcare frontline workers based in the US