News & Research

Spoon challenges charity was started in 1983 to enhance the quality and prospect of life for children and young people in the United Kingdom and Ireland who are disadvantaged physically, mentally or socially. As a result more than £13m has been invested in over 150 projects and benefiting 500,000 disadvantaged children, young people and their families. Spoon, as the charity is known, has become one of the UK's and Ireland's fastest growing charities.

Comtact were more than happy to sponsor Bob Andrews Head of Inter Group at RBS Insurance to complete the Four Peaks Challenge which involves climbing a staggering 14,000ft up and down 4 of the hightest peaks in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland.

We would like to congratulate Bob and his team (Your Round!) for coming 3rd overall with a running time on the hills (Ben Nevis, Helvelyn, Snowdon and Carantouhill) of 11 hours and 11 minutes, and funds pledged of £22,709.

In Techworld's 2008 awards Comtact were nominated for the category of Mobility Project of the Year award.

The nomination was for providing an enhanced mobility solution for UK field based engineering staff.

The competition was fierce and Comtact were short listed as finalists but were narrowly beaten by T Mobile.

This has only proven how far Comtact have come as an organisation to be second to such a huge corporate company and house hold name.

Now in their 10th year, the Business Enterprise Awards are organised by IAB Qualifications for Business and backed by leading organisations such as Lloyds TSB, HM Revenue & Customs.

The prestigious award ceremony gives national recognition, across a variety of sectors, to the outstanding achievements of men and women within small regional businesses. It has proved incredibly popular within the business world and this year attracted a record number of nominations.

The video conferencing market has been set to 'move up the hockey stick' and become a mainstream widely adopted application for several years. Here we talk to three channel players that believe it could happen in 2008.

It takes a simple one button press and quick demonstration to make seasoned IP Telephony professionals such as Tom Perry, Marketing Manager at Freedom Communications and Dominic List, Managing Director of London based reseller Comtact sit up and start making notes on where they can sell video conferencing applications to new and existing clients.

Read the Comms Business May 08 Edition

Now in their 10th year, the IAB Business Enterprise Awards are a regular event on the calendar of the small business community, and the professional advisers and educators who serve it.

Dominic List has been short - listed for Business Entrepreneur of the Year.

Comtact have successfully been short - listed for this year Techworlds Mobility of the Year and Infrastructure Project of the Year.

The Techworld Awards recognise and reward the very highest standards of individual and collective achievement. With over 200 entries each year, they are considered a benchmark throughout the computer industry. The unique blend of awards for products and networking teams and individuals recognise both sides of the industry - the product vendors and the network managers and teams who implement the solutions.

Dominic List, Managing Director of London based reseller Comtact says that in the sub 24 extension PBX market, his company is finding that whilst the old guard (in technology terms) such as Avaya and Mitel are still very strong, which may be down to the resellers experience driving these brands, rather than the respective strengths of the products.

However there does seem to be a continued erosion from the soft switches such as Aastra and to a larger extent Asterix. We are also finding in the sub 10 users that companies are still trying out hosted solutions, to a varying degree of success.

Currently this market still seems quite buoyant and we have no reason to doubt that even in what is promising to be a cooler 2008 that this will continue.

Presence and Outlook integration are still key features in this market, as are the ability for remote VoIP enabled teleworkers. However, so far we have seen no incidences of Microsoft enabled PBX's direct from the manufacturer, although we have seen third party call centre products developed on Microsoft platforms continuing to take market share in this section of the market.

Comtact Ltd continues to go from strength to strength, the way we have achieved this is by keeping things simple. It is our no nonsense approach to communications both in the IT and telecoms disciplines, combined with excellent leadership and dedication, that has enabled us to firmly establish ourselves as a leading UK communication company.

Comtact combines the "corporate" business practices with the personal touch to our clients. It is a combination that has proven to be very effective to date. Comtact is a well run, professional and rapidly expanding company.

We are pleased to announce that during the accounting period 2006-2007, Comtact has doubled it's turnover and returned a healthy profit and are on target to achieve even great success in 2008

Dominic List, Managing Director of London based reseller Comtact, "In relation to FMC demand, most organisations have shown solid interest, primarily due to the benefit that it would reduce mobile call spend which accounts for a large part of their telecoms and IT spend.

Prospective clients are looking with interest as to which is the most suitable solution to go - either Wi-Fi or GSM technology, both of which have their respective merits and pitfalls. Currently, there has been little uptake due to the faults associated with such a bleeding edge technology, however we believe it will become a prime item of interest in 2008."

Click here to read the full Comms. Business press release

Comtact, one of the UK's leading providers of telecoms and IT services has again for 2007 been nominated as a finalist of the Channel Network Awards.

As further recognition of company's groundbreaking Hosted Solutions project for one of the UK's most prestigious companies, Comtact has been shortlisted in no less than 3 categories – Enterprise Converged, Innovative New Application and Mobility solution of the year. The awards ceremony, to be held on the 11th October recognises the achievements and success of some of the UK's most successful ICT organisations and with Comtact’s project having already collected an award at the Techworld Awards held earlier this year, the company stands every chance of adding to it's most recent success.

Channel Network Awards Website

Recent research by consumer group Which? Has found that broadband package providers are failing to deliver the connection speeds which they offer to customers.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has already investigated several cases of misleading advertising whereby customers were not informed that speed availability was dependent upon the distance people lived away from the exchange.

It is expected that with BT’s forthcoming 21st Century Network programme which will begin implementation in early 2008, will more than resolve this issue, also providing treble the maximum speed of 8Mbps currently available today.

Click here to read more about this article.

Comtact, one of the UK's leading providers of Telecoms and IT services, proudly announces that it has won the Infrastructure of the Year award at the Techworld Awards held on Wednesday 27th June 2007.

The event, which is held in recognition of market leading products and services, saw a substantial number of the UK’s leading brands vying for awards, including T-Mobile, BT, Siemens and Blackberry. Click here to read the official Techworld announcement.

Click here to read the full Comtact press release

Comtact, one of the UK’s leading providers of hosted telecoms and IT services has again for 2007 been nominated as a finalist of the Comms Business awards as a Reseller of the Year.

The ever growing market presence of Comtact has also seen the group nominated once more by Comms. Business, this time in recognition for a groundbreaking Hosted Solutions project for one of the UK’s most prestigious companies.

Click here to read the full Comms. Business press release

Comtact, one of the UK’s leading providers of hosted telecoms and IT services has again for 2007 been nominated as a finalist of the Techworld Awards.

The groundbreaking hosted solutions project that Comtact developed for one of the UK’s most prestigious companies has enabled Comtact to be shortlisted for awards in two categories, Wireless/mobility Project of the Year and Infrastructure Project of the Year.

Click here to read the full Techworld press release

Comtact, one of the UK’s leading providers of hosted telecoms and IT services, has recently been under a surprise “test” of the business continuity benefits of it’s hosted solutions last week when a BT exchange was damaged in a fire near to it’s Midlands office in Stafford Park, Telford.

Read the full Press Release (pdf)

Comtact Ltd, a leading provider of hosted Telecoms and IT solutions proudly announces today that the company is now a member of the Federation of Communication Services (FCS), the trade association which represents businesses that provide communications solutions to customers by radio, mobile or fixed telephony.

Having become an FCS member, Comtact believe this shows recognition of the company’s delivery of a quality customer service, a commitment to fair practice and providing customers with a range of quality products and services.

Comtact Ltd, a leading provider of hosted Telecoms and IT solutions was proud to sponsor Corby Gymnastics Club, who were taking part in the County Gymnastics Championships.

Continuing their medal winning form at local level, the Comtact sponsored club saw success at the event with their junior and senior teams both winning gold medals as well as medal winning form on an individual basis with Tasha McCulloch. Comtact sponsorship is crucial to the club over the next 5 years as they have ambitions for producing some London Olympic hopefuls.

Over the last month, research by Comtact has found that more and more UK companies are starting to consider the potential impact of having an 0870 phone number.

After Ofcom recently confirmed their decision to end call rebates on 0870 prefix numbers, Comtact has found a surge in the number of enquiries from businesses that had recently visited their website nomore0870.co.uk, a site dedicated to helping organisations find the right alternative.

In light of this regulatory change as well as the negative consumer publicity that has surrounded the use of 0870, some of the UK's largest companies including an international consumer products company and the UK's fastest growing insurance firm have decided to migrate away from 0870 to 0871 & 0844 respectively.

UK businesses are collectively wasting £1.7bn a day due to problems with IT and using products incorrectly.

Samsung's UseIT Survey found that employees waste an average of 79 minutes a day trying to solve IT problems, costing businesses a huge amount in lost productivity.

The research shows that 51 percent of SME's do not have IT departments. "They do not have IT support so most of the time whoever is running the business ends up running IT as well".

Time Wasting:

• 81% spend up to an hour searching for documents.
• 87% try to fix printer jams without consulting IT.
• 86% spend up to 10 minutes waiting for their PC to start up.

Comtact delivers IT and Telecoms services to companies over the Internet, so businesses don't need to buy any technology or software which is expensive and complex to manage, they just rent it all from us on a per month basis. I think all companies will be working like this in the next 5-10 years.

2007: 75% of calls will be made over IP.

2010: 100% of calls will be made over IP

The finalists for this year's Channel Network Awards have just been announced.

Read the full Press Release

COMTACT, The leading provider of Hosted IT and Telecoms solutions today announced success in the Shell Step Awards 2006 with their Edinburgh University student Simon Knockton winning Best Presentation for his Product Development and PR project.

Read the full Press Release (pdf)

Comtact Ltd, a leading provider of hosted Telecoms and IT solutions was proud to sponsor Tom Flude in the 2006 Student rally for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

The rally involved 150 teams with 500 students driving across Europe. En route, stops were made in 9 countries including Cologne, Prague, Budapest, Zagreb and Zadar in the space of just 6 days!

Comtact provided hosted communication solutions for the team comprising of Hosted IT & telecoms all delivered wirelessly whilst on the move, allowing the team to keep in contact with both work and family during the rally.

The Comtact sponsored team managed to finish the rally in record time, whilst helping to raise thousands of pounds for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

Researched carried out by Shell STEP placement student, Simon Knockton, found that UK SMEs were unprepared for disasters and unaware of the benefits that new technologies could have. A study carried out with 200 senior decision makers at UK SMEs found that a large proportion still used on-site data backup and were unaware that new hosted technologies could help. The research has inspired Comtact to raise the profile of the technology to help SMEs to develop secure IT and telecoms infrastructure based on true business continuity.

Read the full Press Release (pdf)

COMTACT, a provider of hosted IT and Telecoms solutions, has announced details of research that reveals the current operational state of SMEs and their provision for business continuity.

Read the full Press Release

Small and medium-sized companies in the UK are failing to make best use of their IT and telecoms resources for remote and mobile working, voice over IP and business continuity, according to a new report.

Read the full Press Release

For the first time ever, the judges could not decide on a winner of an award and gave the prize jointly to T Mobile for its implementation of WiFi on Southern trains and to Royal Bank of Scotland for its Group Enterprise Platform project.

Read the full Press Release

After the last six months of fruitful hard work, MD Dominic List thought it was about time that the Comtact team were treated to even more than their usual commission payments.

The Le Mans 24 Hour Race is unquestionably the ultimate test of racing drivers, race cars and spectators – the latter having to endure eight hour "Gumball" style drives to the event, baking heat, squalid toilet facilities and copious amounts of French beer. A hard life but someone has to do it.

"There are a lot of car enthusiasts in the company", admitted List, "but I wanted to make sure that all our employees were interested. I'm pleased to say they jumped at the chance."

However, Linda Smith of Comtact thought there might be an ulterior motive; "I think Dominic's plan is that the more Ferrari's we see; the harder we'll work to own one!"

But with the Ferrari race cars achieving only a 3rd in their respective class and a diesel powered Audi coming 1st overall, List joked: "Well the guys would be very happy with a Diesel Audi for a company car then."

Given the speed at which Comtact is setting the pace for rollout of Hosted VoIP, dreams of owning supercars may not be too far away.

TeleWare, the leading provider of both hosted and on-premise intelligent communication solutions for businesses and Service Providers, today announced a specialist service offering for Charities through a key UK partner Comtact.

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What would happen if your business were involved in a major incident?

Read the full Report

Comtact Ltd, a leading provider of hosted Telecoms and IT solutions proudly announces the awarding of official accreditation by their hosted Telecoms partner Teleware.

After a long and prosperous partnership, Teleware have awarded Comtact in recognition of their successful commercial and technical capabilities, with both organisations looking to continue their leadership in the deployment of hosted solutions.