Unfortunately, many communities in the United States and around the world are struggling with poverty, a lack of access to resources, and various other issues. Often, people living in such communities struggle to access basic phone and Internet services. Fortunately, through the lifeline phone program Oklahoma, folks can often access free or steeply discounted mobile phone services.

Underserved communities can be found across the United States. Even wealthier rural areas long lacked equitable access to the internet and mobile services. Poor rural communities often still struggle to get online, which can make it harder to find jobs or take advantage of online educational opportunities. Urban and tribal communities too may be disadvantaged.

By providing access to phone and Internet services, it may be possible to alleviate poverty and to help people enjoy a more prosperous life. Someone who can access mobile data may be able to more easily find a job. Likewise, a student can find education resources and help with studying.

Lifeline programs initially focused on giving people basic access to emergency services and the like. This is still an important component of lifeline programs. However, some lifeline phone service programs in Oklahoma and elsewhere also provide access to general voice phone calls and mobile data.

Accessing emergency services is often a matter of life and death. In the long run, access to employment and educational opportunities are also important. Fortunately, with free or subsidized phone plans and even free or discounted smartphones, it’s possible to expand access.

Some programs exist for particular communities such as tribal areas. Eligibility may vary but if you’re receiving government assistance in the form of SNAP/foodstamps, Medicaid, tribal TANF, Federal Public Housing Assistance, or a similar program, you may be eligible.

If you’re struggling to afford mobile service, you should check out lifeline programs in your state and location. Assistance may be available.

Internet service is a necessity these days, whether you’re a business or an individual. Therefore, you’ll need to grab hold of an excellent affordable internet plan for your home or office. You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg, however. These are three ways you can save money on the new internet plan you need:

Look for Provider Promotions

The first way to save money is to search for a provider that offers promotions to new customers. You might be fortunate enough to grab hold of a contract deal that will give you a low monthly price for 12-24 months.

Only Purchase the Required Speed

Another way to save money on your internet service is to ensure that you only purchase the required speed. The faster your internet service is, the more costly it will be, as well. Therefore, you need to ensure that you choose a speed that works for you but isn’t too costly. Talk to an agent about the different speed options. The speed you choose will depend on how you intend to use your internet services. You’ll need faster service if you’re running a business and have to perform numerous business-related tasks. You won’t need such speed if you’re only going to be checking emails and browsing the internet from time to time.

Buy a Bundle

You can also cut the cost of your internet bill by purchasing a bundle. Internet bundles Lehigh Valley Options are available in plenitudes. These bundles often include television service and some kind of telephone service, as well. You’ll get all three services for one low price, which will reduce the overall cost of your internet service. It’s a great option if you need all of those services.

Now you know how to cut the cost of internet service and save money for yourself. You can now start searching for the best service for your home or office.

You invest in your business all the time. You invest in the right employees, the right equipment and supplies, and ensuring you have the right space. However, did you know that your technology and managing this technology is also an investment that you need to think about?

The fact is, there are more than a few benefits offered by managed IT services in Montreal. Keep reading to learn what these benefits are.

Increased User Productivity

If you own a business, you understand that technology is a must-have if you want to improve productivity and improve the way you are doing business. If your technology isn’t providing you with these benefits, then there is a problem you need to handle. If you are ever in a situation where you are unable to work, you are going to lose money.

According to recent data, unplanned downtime can cost you tens of thousands of dollars each year. When you implement managed IT services, you can reduce both network and server downtime by up to 85 percent.

Infrastructure Expenses

When you switch to a managed IT provider, you can reduce infrastructure costs in several ways. When the service provider takes over infrastructure management, you can downsize the total infrastructure that you have on-site by taking advantage of the service providers’ data centers. This means you can not only save on hardware costs, but also the energy that it uses and the space that is required to hold it.

Also, you are going to see savings that are related to consulting, training, and licensing. Each of these needs is going to be covered by a single payment each month.

A Minimal Initial Investment

When you use managed IT services, you can offset the initial investment related to technology costs. Instead of having to spend thousands of dollars on software and hardware upfront. Instead, you will pay for the service by making a very low and affordable investment each month. Since the service is considered an operational expense, rather than a capital expenditure, you don’t have so many resources hung up in working to manage your business technology.

Are Managed IT Services Right for You?

If you are thinking about managed IT services for your business, there are more than a few reasons to invest in this. Make sure you find the right service provider to get the desired results. This will pay off in the long run.

Social media influencers are people with lots of followers or subscribers on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. They often help businesses promote their brands by recommending them to their followers. For example, beauty influencers often mention products while giving tips about contouring, choosing the right foundation, or other topics. According to TapInfluence [PDF] and Nielsen, 7 in 10 people trust recommendations posted by peers and influencers on social media. Influencer marketing can help your company improve sales. It’s much more cost-effective than traditional ads like pop-ups or commercials, so even small businesses can take advantage of it.

However, you’ll need to communicate well to encourage better content from influencers. Here are some tips for communicating with your influencers.

Let Them Be Creative

Influencers value their authenticity, and they need to stay honest and have a sense of humor to attract followers who trust them. If an influencer says that they don’t agree with a statement you want them to make, let them say something else.

Overly restrictive content guidelines can make content feel like it’s an ad from your company, not great advice from an expert. They can also keep influencers from wanting to work with you in the future. Also, creative content from an influencer is a lot more interesting than a standard ad. You’ll get more new customers from a video of someone using a product, enjoying it, and having fun than you would from a similar video with an actor or actress just talking about the benefits.

Build Long-Term Relationships

You can get excellent returns from one-time social media posts or campaigns, but you’ll be missing out on even more customers and sales if you don’t maintain those relationships. You should communicate often with influencers before, during, and after social media campaigns. Ask questions and make reaching you when they have concerns easy. Answer their questions honestly and keep them updated about new developments in your business.

To maintain great relationships, you can ask the most successful influencers to become regular contributors to your website. You can also give them exclusive news about new products and early access. Share their content on your social media pages and invite them to speak at events or be part of a podcast or webinar series. If possible, build a personal relationship and become friends.

Stay Organized

Influencers can’t do their jobs well if communications from companies are inconsistent or disorganized. Give clear instructions and consistent deadlines, and make sure that each influencer works with a particular person, not just a department in your business. They should know exactly what you’re looking for. Avoid last-minute requests or changes and make payments or give other rewards promptly. Influencers won’t want to work with you if you change policies or requirements often or take a long time to compensate them.

Communication is essential for all relationships. You can increase the effectiveness of your social media influencers by building relationships and making sure that these people have all the information they need to promote your business successfully.

(BPT) – Times have changed. It’s no longer enough to protect your physical home, it’s also vital that you stay safe from cybercrimes. It has become increasingly easier for criminals to gain access to financial accounts, email, and even hack internet-connected devices in the home.

The good news is that there are a handful of steps you can take to help defend your home from cyberattacks and lock down access to your personal information.

1. Know Your Status

Before you can take steps to keep yourself safe from external threats, it’s important to understand your level of vulnerability. The website have i been pwned? is a useful tool that searches more than 190 data breaches to see if your personal information has ever been leaked.

If you’ve been the victim of a data breach, immediately change the password of the vulnerable account along with the passwords of any websites or accounts that use the same credentials. For instance, if the email and password you use for Facebook was breached, and that’s the same login combination you use for your bank, your bank account could be vulnerable to hackers.

2. Invest in a Protective Router

Much like the front door is the entryway into a home, the Wi-Fi router is the entry point into a home’s digital information. It’s also the first line of defense against external threats. Do your research and invest in a router that prioritizes network security. You should always password protect your Wi-Fi and be sure to change the default username and password that comes pre-configured on the router (often this is listed on the bottom of the box or router).

If you can’t remember the last time you manually updated your router, it may be running outdated software, leaving your home vulnerable. Because the update process can be laborious, consider swapping out your old router for a newer technology like eero. eero’s mesh Wi-Fi system takes home security to the next level by automatically installing regular software updates and security patches, so customers can avoid the hassle of manually updating their router. eero is equipped with the latest in Wi-Fi security, allowing you to kick unknown devices off the network via a smartphone app or share the Wi-Fi password with others via text message or email, so you don’t have to leave it posted on the fridge.

3. Secure Your Devices

You don’t need to live in a “smart home” to be vulnerable to external security threats. These days, more and more products connect to the internet, and while that can be useful, it also leaves your home vulnerable to hackers. The first thing you should do when you get an internet-connected device up and running is check for new firmware updates. Most products sitting on shelves of retailers don’t have the latest software loaded, so applying updates is a critical step to ensuring those devices remain safe. Also be sure you’re not ignoring prompts for software updates and patches in the future. It’s crucial to keep your connected devices up-to-date.

4. Choose Strong Passwords

You’ve heard it before — make sure you’re using strong passwords. They need to be at least 12 characters in length, and include numbers, symbols, and lowercase and uppercase letters. They shouldn’t include personal information or common words (e.g., “password”). You’ll want to create a unique password for every account, so if a hacker gets one of your passwords in a data breach, they can’t immediately log into your other accounts.

Strong passwords can be hard to remember, but you shouldn’t keep a written record of them. Instead, consider registering for a password manager like LastPass. Password managers are applications or browser extensions that store login credentials for the websites, then log in to those sites automatically for you, so you don’t have to remember every password for each account.

5. Lock Down Your Social Media Channels

Be careful about what you’re sharing on social media. Besides not posting sensitive information like your address, phone number, and when you’re headed out of town, be aware of other personally identifiable information that’s out there. When trying to reset passwords and usernames, hackers often go through the process of guessing your security questions. If you’re not careful, the information to help them answer those questions might be living on your social media page.

To keep yourself safe, ensure you’re properly securing your social media sites from the public and limit the amount of information you’re posting on those channels. Also, when you’re selecting your security questions, certain answers might be easy for intruders to locate online. Common security questions ask for your mother’s maiden name, your high school mascot, and the name of your family pet. Consider choosing more obscure questions to answer.

While following these steps won’t ensure you’re completely safe, they will help put you and your family ahead of the game when it comes to online and digital security.

It took a lot of effort and time to place your company’s powerful industrial engines in the field. It would take just as much time and effort, not to mention cost, to haul them back to your base location in order to power them up after they have stopped working. When you want to save your company a lot of money, and your workers the physical exertion, powering industrial engines in the field is possible with field gear like a Start Pac or other mobile power equipment.

In order to get the best deal on the exact piece of field gear you’re looking for, like turbine starting machines, you should take a look online. When you land on the equipment’s website, it is advisable that you first check out the specifications of the gear. As you will see, it can be charged and ready to go within a 10-second time frame, rather than having to sit on a charger for hours or even overnight before being used. You can charge it once you arrive on the location of your turbine engine and still have the power you need to get the turbine going again.

To get your turbine starting machine to your engine’s location, it can be carried by one or more workers by its mobile cart. The cart’s handle can also be pulled out so that the entire compartment can be pulled behind someone like a wagon. This mobility allows the charger to be taken into any kind of environment, even locations that may be rocky, steep, or less hospitable for carrying heavy gear.

If a piece of field gear like a turbine starting machine is available, you may be wondering what other types of field gear can be purchased online in order to ease the cost and manpower of your operation. When you check out the above website, you can find a full listing of charging gear on the right side of the site. Utilize the highlighted links in order to read more about each piece of equipment in detail. You can also sign up for a newsletter to stay up to date on everything they have to offer, and request brochures so that you have information on-hand to share with coworkers or supervisors. Finally, customer service is available to answer your questions, should you have any, with the phone number listed on the website.