Those who are in a customer facing role in the telecoms sector know the headline features of the services they are selling. But do they have sufficient grasp of the wider picture to guide potential customers and help those reporting faults?

Instilling customers with the confidence they are receiving impartial and accurate information is an important step to brand loyalty.

PTT’s new online course “Introduction to telecoms services” is aimed at customer service agents and retail sales representatives working in the telecoms sector. This course introduces the facilities and capabilities of modern telephony, broadband, and mobile services.

The course uses interactivity to fully involve the learner and does not assume any prior knowledge of telecoms.

There are two versions of this course, one designed for access on a PC or laptop, the other designed for access on a tablet. So staff can study at the office, at home or on the train, whenever they have a few spare minutes.

Telecoms service providers and businesses are increasingly relying on a single type of network to provide all services including telephony and video conferencing.

The PTT online course which provides a comprehensive introduction to “Voice over IP” (VoIP) has recently been updated to reflect the latest developments in the technology. Apart from introducing VoIP principles and protocols, the course MAB: “Voice over IP” reviews the use of VoIP for fixed line and mobile telephony services.

GSM based TETRA has, for many years, provided emergency services around the world with reliable mobile communications with all of the special facilities needed by, for example, the police.

However, TETRA can only provide low speed data transfer making such facilities as live video streaming all but impossible. For this reason, the provision of critical communications using LTE mobile systems are being planned by several countries including the UK and the USA.

PTT’s updated course MBG: “LTE mobile systems” now includes descriptions of the extra facilities added by the 3GPP to LTE standards to enable critical communications.