Posted By Hayden Mead
I know what my feelings are about this, but i'd like to hear the opinions of other professionals.

Is it acceptable for a company to allow homeworkers that use the telephone upto 75% of the working day to use their company mobile phone rather than supply a landline?

Posted By Nick House
Hi Hayden,

Leaving the potential health issues aside, I would have thought that having a line installed at a homeworkers address (as we do), would prove cheaper (have you seen the cost of mobile phone calls?

As someone who also deals with the telecomms solutions for our company, I have already been along this road. If there are concerns of abuse, itemised bills can be provided (as with mobile phones), and if the person also needs internet/ email access whilst being on the phone, why not try BT highway (either home or business).

The only drawback is that each installation comes with a minimum 12 month line rental contract. So, if an employee were to leave the company within that 12 month period, although you can have the line disconnected (so that no calls can be made), the company will still have to stump up the line rental until the 12 month period is complete. A way around this would be to state that the employee would have to pass a 3 month appraisal (or whatever your company has in place) before they could have a fixed line installed.

Hope this adds strength to your argument.

Regards,

Nick.

Posted By Peter Roberts
Hayden

I agree with the previous respondent who points out that it is not a sensible approach anyway from a cost effective viewpoint, unless your company has some reduced rate link with an mp operator.

There is lots of useful information on the web site of the International Expert Group on Mobile Phones.

http://www.iegmp.org.uk/IEGMPtxt.htm

My personal view is that the risks from mobile phones are insignificant, irrespective of the period of time used, but I think more research should be done to confirm this as far as possible. It is however, virtually impossible to "prove a no-effect conclusion". Much of the so called "research" that has been emotively published to date has been very poor and generally misquoted in the press. The problem you will have with doing a risk assessment is getting any objective data given the lack of conclusive research. However, I personally do not think an extreme precautionary approach is justified, because what good research that has been done to date shows there is little or no risk. Also I believe that if the claims being made by some people were true the ill health effects would be enormous and immediately obvious to us, given the widespread use made of mobile phones.

PS I do not work for a mobile phone company!