WE have pretty much reached a saturation point in the world of mobility.
Everyone now has a mobile phone, so the big phone companies are having to think a bit differently as they try to attract new customers.
In fact, some mobility carriers are now spending far more effort trying to retain existing customers which should be good for most of us. Rogers has just upped the ante considerably in the mobility space by offering a new service to its customers, called Rogers One Number (www.rogersonenumber.ca), which is designed to give us a single number that people can reach us on, regardless of which device we are using.
It is really a simple concept. If you are a Rogers Mobility subscriber, you enroll in the service from your computer. You then install the Rogers One Number app, available on Mac and PC. A menu bar icon appears, and you log into your account on your computer.
Now a bit of magic happens, as you receive a phone call (on your mobility account), the call rings simultaneously on both your phone and computer.
You can answer it on your computer and complete the call. If you do this, you do not use any minutes on your plan. The quality, excellent! I use a USB headset and the fidelity of the call is better than I experience on my cell phone.
It gets better. You can make calls from your computer anywhere in Canada and yes, the calls are free - no minutes count on your plan, no long distance charges.
And it gets better still. You can transfer your call on the fly from phone to computer, computer to phone. You also install an app on your smart-phone that facilitates the call switching, and also syncs your contacts between your phone and computer.
And it gets even better. You can download a syncing app to your mobile phone. Now all your contacts sync, so your phone book is on both your computer (in the app) and your phone.u
And it gets better! (I am just copying and pasting that sentence.) You can log onto the Rogers One account through a web browser so you can use it even when you are not on "your" computer.
As you can probably tell, I am a big fan. The idea of a "unified" number has been a goal of mobility carriers for some time. This is the first really universal and easy instance I have seen, and it is rolled out in a very nice and accessible form.
It is a breath of fresh air to have a new feature offered by any company to existing customers that does not cost us more money, a service that makes a lot of sense and actually saves us some money. That sort of service has unfortunately become the exception, not the rule. If you have a Rogers account, install this app now. Do not wait, do it immediately! It is a big game changer on the mobility front.
Steve Dotto is host of Dotto Tech, 6 p.m. Wednesdays on AM650. E-mail your questions and comments to questions@ dottotech.com. Visit him online at www.dottotech.com or at www.facebook.com/dottotech.
