Zombie phones are eating up billions in telecom costs

Destroy the zombies that are sucking dry your company’s electronic devices or mobile phone budgets.

At a company with hundreds or thousands or more mobile phones for staffers, some 5-10% of them may be zombies, the phones that are not being used but still being paid for. That estimate comes from Amtel, which provides cloud-based mobile management programs and cost savings to companies and municipalities

The company says it “kills zombies,” as former chief marketing officer Richard Bliss told Mobility Techzone. It’s hardly alone in the hunt; a number of companies conduct corporate or personal phone and phone bill audits and offer tools to business.

Those not-yet-dead phones can be significant drain, especially as workplaces embrace Bring Your Own Device policies. If you figure companies account for around one-tenth of the world’s $1.5 trillion in telecommunications spending, zombie phones could be costing up to $15 billion a year.