Business Long Distance Rates Search Tool

Are you sure that you are getting the best long distance phone rates for your business? REALLY sure? Here's a long distance rate finder for business lines that will give you a chart of competitive pricing in seconds. Go ahead, give it a try.

EV-DO Gives You Broadband Internet On The Go

WiFi Hotspots are great when you need online access away from the office. But what do you do when there is no nearby hotspot or you want to access your order entry or website at a client's place of business? EV-DO is a wireless broadband option that can give you download speeds up to 2.4 Mbps and is available in many major cities.

EV-DO or EVDO stands for Evolution Data Only or Evolution Data Optimized. Evolved from what? Actually, evolved from a more established standard called 1xRTT or single carrier Radio Transmission Technology. Both are in a family of wireless data services for cellular phone systems called CDMA 2000. CDMA stands for Code Division Multiple Access, a cellular technology that is popular in the United States.

The idea behind CDMA 2000 is that a cell phone service that is already digital can also deliver Internet data packets using the same transmitters and cell towers. That enables Internet services for cell phones but also stand-alone wireless Internet service for laptop computers. That's right. Your computer can get lower or higher speed broadband Internet service through a cell phone service without using the voice aspect of cellular.

1xRTT and 1xEV-DO are always-on Internet services. To access them on your computer, you'll need a plug-in adaptor like the Audiovox PC5220 Air Card or the Novatel V620 EV-DO PC Air Card. You plug it into a Type II PCMCIA slot on the side of your computer and flip up the little antenna (on the Audiovox).

The 1xRTT is also known as NationalAccess because it is widely available on both the Sprint and Verizon cellular networks. Maximum speed is 144 Kbps and with typical speeds of 70 to 80 Kbps. That's easily two to three times what you'll get with dial-up Internet access. It'll probably be just what you need for email and simple web usage and it's available just about anywhere your cell phone works.

1xEV-DO is the "evolution" or upgraded service for CDMA cellular networks. It uses all of a single 1.25 MHz cellular channel for data service. EV-DO runs at a maximum download speed of 2.4 Mbps and typically 400 to 800 Kbps. That's as good as you'll get from many DSL and Cable Internet services with the extra advantage of mobility. Verizon is the primary provider of EV-DO with service in 32 cities including:

Atlanta, GA
Austin, TX
Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cincinnati, OH
Columbus, OH
Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
Dayton, OH
Hartford, CT
Houston, TX
Jacksonville, FL
Kansas City, MO
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Madison, WI
Miami/Fort Lauderdale, FL
Milwaukee, WI
New Haven, CT
New Orleans, LA
New York, NY
Newark, NJ
Orlando, FL
Philadelphia, PA
Phoenix, AZ
Pittsburgh, PA
Providence, RI
San Diego, CA
St. Petersburg/West Palm Beach, FL
Tampa, FL
Washington, DC

EV-DO is perfect for road warriors who travel to these major US cities or for anyone living in those service areas who wants a wireless high speed Internet service.

You can also view all of the cellular phone and cellular data offers we have available by visiting Cell Phone Plans Finder and browsing through the services and available phones. Please note that these offers are subject to change at any time. If you want one of these special offers, order now.

Stratellites are Starting to Fly

The first Sanswire Stratellite lifted off the ground this month, symbolically launching the new age of airships. Only this time the airships are automated communications platforms, as I wrote in "Your Next ISP is a Blimp."

Like the great airships of the 1930s, the Stratellites are whales of the sky. The prototype "Sanswire One" is 188 feet long and shaped like a double-wide dirigible. It is a dirigible. The skeleton is a thin frame of high strength aluminum. The skin is a light colored Dupont Tedlar, a polyvinyl fluoride film that clings tightly to protect the innards of the craft. Inside are helium lift cells and the communications gear that makes the Stratellite a wireless repeater for broadband Internet, including VoIP, and perhaps cellular telephone and video transmission.

This first lifting test of the Stratellite is part of the engineering program that will lead to production models that will be 450 to 800 feet in length and carry several thousand pounds of microwave transceivers. They'll be powered by an array of thin flexible solar cells that cover the top of the ship and generate 10 KW of power. Unlike the passenger carrying dirigibles, Stratellites are autonomous robotic vehicles that climb to an altitude of 65,000 feet and hover over a fixed point above the weather and aircraft lanes. A GPS navigation system directs a cluster of electric ducted fan thrusters to keep each airship at its designated station.

So why a technology from the early days of flight when we're in the satellite era? Satellites turn out to be very expensive to build and launch and are basically throw-away items. LEO or low earth orbit constellations need dozens or hundreds of satellites because they are constantly moving in their orbits. Geosynchronous satellites are so far away from Earth that the latency due to the speed of light makes them generally unsuited to two-way voice communications. But park a reusable airship in the stratosphere just 13 miles up and you have a communications platform that can cover a 200 mile radius in all directions. It's estimated that 300 Stratellites, built and launched at a cost of about a tenth the cost of satellites, could easily provide blanket broadband coverage to the entire United States.

But broadband is only the initial justification for a Stratellite fleet. The same vehicles can be used as cellular towers in the sky to cover remote areas, dead zones and perhaps even cities that are just tired of so many steel towers popping up. They'll also be ideal for wide area paging and text messaging.

The next step is a flight test that is now going through the approval process with the FAA and Air Force so that Stratellite One can lift off from Palmdale, California and be tested at Edwards Air Force Base nearby. Hopefully that will happen sometime this summer. Following a successful flight test program, production will begin early in 2006 ramping up to 300 vehicles per year by 2007.

In addition to U.S. based telecom services, Stratellites have a built-in demand worldwide. GlobeTel, the parent company of Sanswire Networks LLC, is reported to have an agreement to provide Stratellites for broadband, VoIP and video to South America, starting with Lima, Peru. They'd also be perfect for the huge landmass of Asia and the extensive island archipelago of Indonesia.

If you have a current need for wired digital business lines from T1 through Optical Fiber, get an up to date price quote from T1 Rex.

How T1 Works in Rural Areas

T1 dedicated voice and data lines are available just about everywhere in the U.S. That may come as a surprise if you run a ranch or farm, or are just located in a more rural area and have tried to get DSL, cable or wireless Internet service. The oldest digital technology is also the most prolific.

The reason for this goes back to why T1 line service was invented in the first place. In the beginning it was never intended to be a stand-alone service sold to businesses. Back in the 1950s telephone companies needed an efficient and reliable way to carry lots of phone calls between their switching offices. Bell Labs came up with a standardized digital trunking system that could carry 24 phone calls on two pair of copper wires. What's more, these T1 lines could carry phone calls as far as needed with no loss in quality.

The quality issue is important. If you remember making long distance phone calls back in the 1950s and 60s, you also remember how noisy they were. Often you could even hear faint conversations in the background which was called crosstalk. Such was the nature of analog carrier telephony. Today, all long distance calls are digitized and it's not unusual for the party you are talking to on the other side of the ocean to sound like they are right next door.

The reason this is possible is that digital signals are made up of numbers consisting of zeros and ones. When an analog signal degrades over distance, the noise and crosstalk that are picked up are indistinguishable from the original signal. The longer it travels and the more amplifiers it gets boosted through, the more the conversation degrades. Digital signals degrade too. They pick up noise and crosstalk the same as analog signals. However, because we know that a digital bit is either a one or a zero, we can rebuild the noisy signal good as new.

The device that does this is called a regenerative repeater, sometimes shortened to just repeater or regenerator. The regenerative repeater is not just a simple amplifier. It actually rebuilds the signal back to original specifications. You can't tell by looking if the signal from the regenerator is the original or an exact duplicate. That's the beauty of digital.

These regenerative repeaters need to be placed every 6,000 feet or a little over a mile apart. By doing so, T1 lines can be carried far out into the countryside. You may get T1 service running perfectly at 1.5 Mbps upload and download even 20 miles or more from the nearest telephone office.

T1 lines can carry broadband Internet service or multi-line telephone service. In some areas, the same line can carry a mixture of the two. Or you can use the broadband Internet access for VoIP telephone service. Either way, if you have standard landline telephone service to your location, chances are that you can also get T1 digital service.

If you have a business that would benefit from high speed digital line service, let our technical team at T1 Rex give you a quick quote on T1 line services. Use our T1 instant online quote form for service.

PAN, LAN, MAN, WAN

The world of computer networking is filled with acronyms and these four happen to be in order. Can you guess how?

OK, that's pretty easy. It's by distance from near to far. The only one of these that hasn't been around for ages is PAN or Personal Area Network. PANs include Bluetooth, USB, UWB (Ultra Wide Band) and FireWire. A personal area network is intended for your personal use to interconnect electronic devices you are using. Bluetooth is emerging as the king of wireless personal area networks. If your cell phone and laptop computer both have Bluetooth enabled, you can get Internet access for your computer via Bluetooth from your cell phone that is connected to an EV-DO or GPRS data network.

Most everybody has a LAN or Local Area Network now. There once were many protocols for connecting computers, printers, and telecommunications networks within the corporate environment. Eventually everyone migrated to Ethernet with TCP/IP. That has gelled to the point where every new technology had better have IP connectivity, at least at the edges. The standardization around the Internet Protocol and Ethernet has promoted an economy of scale to the point where you can buy a 10/100 Mbps Network Interface Card at Wal-Mart for under ten bucks.

Every PC and many printers now come with Ethernet ports standard. Most portable devices support the Wireless version of Ethernet, Wi-Fi, which is also termed a Local Area Network. A LAN is intended for use within a room, building or area. WiFi's range of around 300 ft. puts it into this category.

Within an office or corporate campus, networking revolves around the LAN or LANs running on CAT5, CAT5e or CAT6 copper wiring with some spans of fiber optic cable and some wireless LANs. When you leave the LAN, you enter the world of MANs and WANs.

MAN is Metropolitan Area Network. It's intended for use within a city. A typical example is a SONET Synchronous Optical Network that is set up as a pair of fiber optic rings within the business district of a city. The reason for a pair is to provide redundancy in case one of the rings fail. The other takes over within 50 msec, perhaps so fast the outage isn't even noticed by many users. You get to the MAN with an access network connection. That may be an OC3 or OC12 fiber optic link or a T1 or T3 service.

Note that SONET is a different protocol than Ethernet. With some fancy bit handling, Ethernet can be formatted to be carried by SONET, T1, T3, or other digital networks. The Ethernet packets can be split up to fit the requirements of the carrier and reassembled at the other end.

Going cross-country you are using a long distance carrier called a WAN or Wide Area Network. A WAN can connect MANs together or simply connect a group of individual locations. The Internet is an enormous WAN. You can get WAN service from a variety of competitive carriers with speeds from T1 at 1.5 Mbps up to OC48 at 2.5 Gbps or even OC192 at nearly 10 Gbps.

Most WANs are TDM or Time Division Multiplexing based because that is the standard adopted by the telephone carriers that first implemented them. Since much data is now packet based using the IP standard, carriers are now offering native IP based networking connections in many areas. That means that your LAN data never changes protocol. It leaves your router as Ethernet, traverses an Ethernet WAN, and hooks to another LAN some distance away. To the IT manager it all looks like one big corporate LAN, even though a common carrier provides the link between sites.

GigaPackets is our service to help you get the best pricing on the T1 through Fiber Optic Network Connections you need. Our team of technical consultants will be happy to discuss your MAN and WAN networking requirements at any time.

T3 Internet

Dedicated Internet service gives you a private high speed line from your company to the Internet. This is important because many always-on Internet connections have a bandwidth that varies widely depending on how many other users are sharing the service. That's right. DSL, cable and wireless Internet services are priced based on statistical multiplexing. In other words, they are sold to many more users than would be able to get a broadband connection if they were all on at the same time. This is called oversubscription.

So, wait a second. You've got broadband but it really isn't broadband? Actually, you probably will get something of a broadband connection much of the time. But it's not guaranteed. The statistical part of the statistical multiplexing is based on the fact that, statistically speaking, everyone isn't uploading or downloading at the same time.

You'll likely take advantage of this phenomena in your own company. Look around. How many people are actively typing on their computers at the same time? How many are even at their desk? You don't need to allocate a Mbps full time for each employee. If you've got a dozen to maybe two dozen people who need internet access, a T1 line at 1.5 Mbps might be all you need. At any given time, a user might think they have the line all to themselves. That may well be true for the fraction of a second they are loading a new page.

The reason you want dedicated Internet access is that YOU want to be able to control your bandwidth usage. That dedicated line may also be used for a web site server and an email server. Overnight, when everybody is gone, the entire bandwidth can be used for offsite backup of computer files. In a pinch you can commandeer the line or a given amount of bandwidth for a particular need, such as downloading engineering drawings to a supplier. It's also essential to manage your bandwidth if you are using VoIP telephone in place of standard switched telephone service.

When T1 Internet access isn't adequate, T3 Internet will give you a massive jump in available bandwidth. T3 line speed is 45 Mbps. That's fast enough to be the backbone for many smaller Internet Service Providers. It's also adequate as the Internet service for companies with hundreds to maybe a thousand employees. For smaller operations, T3 Internet will give you the ability to run hosted VoIP service, perform faster backups and disaster recovery, host video conferences with full motion, rapidly transmit large engineering files or some combination of these.

T3 Internet may be referred to as DS3 Internet service. That's because DS3 is the digital signal level that runs on a T3 line. DS3 may also be delivered via fiber optic cable rather than coaxial copper cable.

If you are interested in T3 Internet service for your high bandwidth business applications, get a complementary T3 Internet Service Quote from Telexplainer.

Getting From Point to Point

Businesses with multiple locations need a way to network their far flung operations. Within a corporate campus or industrial park, you can often use copper pairs, fiber optic cable, wireless or free space optical transmission. But if your corporate office is in one city and you have dozens, hundreds or thousands of retail locations across the country or around the world, you need a long haul infrastructure.

A popular connection is the dedicated T1 point to point line service. It's called dedicated because it is 100% dedicated to your communications. No one else uses the line, which helps keep your information secure. It's also always available. You lease the line facilities with a monthly charge on a 1, 2 or 3 year contract and it's your private connection.

What can you use your T1 point to point service for? Just about anything that can be digitized and will fit within the bandwidth of the circuit. T1 is bi-directional with 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth in each direction. That makes it suitable for carrying traditional PBX based telephone calls, VoIP telephone, broadcast quality stereo audio, surveillance video, video conferencing, medical imaging and telemedicine, remote instruction, sales and accounting data, computer aided drawings and manufacturing instructions.

If you need additional bandwidth you can "bond" T1 lines together to get two times, four times, up to six times the bandwidth or 9 Mbps. Above that, it makes sense to move up to the next higher grade of service which is T3, also known as DS3 line service. That runs at 45 Mbps and is capable of carrying broadcast quality video with some compression.

If you need reliable connections between locations but not on a full time basis, frame relay service may be more cost effective. Each of your locations connects to the frame relay network, which sets up virtual connections from point to point. Other people also use the network, so you buy a committed information rate or CIR which guarantees your packets reliable transport when you need it.

The least expensive option is to use DSL or T1 connections from each location to the public Internet. You can set up a VPN or virtual private network using encryption software to protect the privacy of your data. It's possible to get connected to the Internet from just about anywhere and you can add locations at will. You are only subject to the vagaries of the Internet, which is a "best effort" service rather than guaranteed performance.

Trying to decide how best to interconnect your business locations? Talk it over with one of our technical experts, who will recommend the best options for your particular needs. Visit MegaTrunks now for a complementary consultation on point to point dedicated lines.

What's The Difference Between DSL and T1?

Digital is digital, right? If so, then there really isn't any big difference between DSL and T1 lines, is there?

Actually there is quite a bit of difference, but there are also similarities. You can get always-on Internet access on both a DSL line and a T1 line. T1 lines download at 1.5 Mbps. DSL may also be that fast. You can use either with your VoIP telephone adaptor. So why would you spend ten times as much for a T1 line as you would to get DSL?

The answer is that there's digital and then there's digital. Digital line services come in many flavors and the each have their advantages and disadvantages.

Take DSL for instance. When you think about getting a DSL line for under $50 a month, what you are thinking of is residential DSL service that is technically called ADSL or asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line. The asymmetrical part means that upload and download speeds are different. The reasoning is that most Internet users need fast download speeds for web browsing, but can live with lower upload speeds for sending email, typing in web addresses, filling out forms, etc. You might get 1.5 Mbps download but 128, 256 or 384 Kbps upload speed. There is a symmetrical type of DSL service with the same upload and download speed, but that is usually sold to businesses at a higher price.

T1 is based on a different technology, although both T1 and DSL are digital lines. T1 is a synchronous time division multiplexed system, meaning that it is not only on all the time, but it is sending something all the time and expecting to receive something all the time. That something might be no more than framing bits to keep both ends of the connection synchronized to define the individual time slots. That is not really important for Internet access, but does allow T1 lines to carry standard switched telephone calls as well as VoIP phone. T1 can carry 24 telephone lines to support a business PBX system. Each phone call occupies a well defined time slot in the T1 transmission.

T1 is also symmetrical. That means that the download speed is 1.5 Mbps and the upload speed is 1.5 Mbps. That synchronized line speed never varies and it doesn't matter how far you are from the phone company office. It's always 1.5 Mbps. DSL on the other hand, uses a Discrete Multitone Modulation (DMT) technology that adapts itself to the condition of the telephone line it shares. The speed you get depends on how far away you are from the equipment providing the DSL service, and the amount of noise and interference on the line. The closer you are, the higher your line speed. If you are more than a few miles away, you may not be able to get DSL at all. Just about everyone can get T1 service installed, but the cost goes up as you get more and more remote.

The other difference between DSL and T1 is not technical. It is in the commitment to availability of the service. T1 lines come with a Service Level Agreement or SLA that provides compensation for outages. DSL is a "best effort" service. That doesn't mean DSL is inherently unreliable, but if there is an outage then T1 with its SLA gets the highest level of attention.

So, why would you buy one service over the other? For residential use, DSL provided on your phone line or cable Internet service provided by the local Cable TV company give you very good Internet broadband service at a reasonable price. Businesses might choose business grade DSL if their need is fairly light Internet access or running a free WiFi hotspot.

But if full-time Internet access is key to your business or if you plan on running VoIP telephones or standard switched telephones using a PBX system, T1 is really what you need. T1 lines can also be set up as dedicated point to point connections between business locations. Granted, T1 prices are 8X to 10X what you'll pay for DSL. But that's still reasonable as a dependable digital lifeline for most medium and even small businesses.

If you need broadband voice, data, or Internet access for business applications, let our T1 consultants help you get the right service at the lowest price.

What's The Difference Between T1 and POTS?

T1 and POTS are both telephone services. In one way, they work the same. You pick up your phone handset and you hear dial tone. You then dial the number you want. If your business has a PBX telephone system, you'll probably have to dial a number such as "9" to get an outside line. But that's got nothing to do with the type of phone line you are using. It's simply so that outside lines can be shared, since you don't really need a hundred lines for a hundred employees unless everyone is living on the telephone.

Let's start with POTS. It's an acronym that stands for Plain Old Telephone Service. I'm sure that whoever came up that scientific term thought long and hard about it. POTS really is a good term because everybody can nod in agreement about what a POTS line is. Plain old telephone service is that pair of copper wires that connects to a standard telephone and provides power to the phone, a ringing signal when calls come in and connectivity to the phone company central switching system.

A POTS line, usually just called a phone line, can hook directly to a standard analog telephone. It can be one of several lines that you select with a key telephone system or it can connect directly to a PBX phone system. With POTS you can get local and long distance service, Caller ID and other calling features. POTS lines are also used for dial-up computer access using modems and they connect directly to alarm systems for central monitoring.

T1 can be thought of as a digital carrier for POTS lines. You can't plug a T1 line into a regular telephone set. But you can plug a T1 line into a T1 interface card in a PBX system. When you do that, the PBX can use the T1 line in place of up to 24 POTS telephone lines. You'll never notice the difference, other than perhaps the phone bill. The advantage of T1 is that it's cheaper to bundle all those individual phone wires into a single digital line that runs between your office and the phone company. The price advantage usually comes at 8 to 12 phone lines, although it might make sense for fewer lines if you do extensive long distance calling or want to split your T1 line into 12 phone lines plus broadband Internet service.

Because T1 is a digital service, it can carry both digitized telephone and/or Internet data. It can also carry other things like broadcast audio and surveillance video. T1 lines come in a variety of flavors. You can get inbound and/or outbound calling, local and/or long distance service, voice and/or data. Long distance rates are very attractive if you can commit to thousands or tens of thousands of minutes per month or more. A specialized form of T1 called T1 PRI or Primary Rate Interface is used by call centers. It provides 23 telephone lines plus Caller ID and Automatic Number Identification data.

If you currently have more than half a dozen phone lines or need digital connectivity for your business, you should let one of our technical consultants explain the various options available for your business and what each costs. You might just be able to save a bundle on your monthly phone bill with service that is as good or even better than what you have now. Simply enter a request for a T1 quote at T1 Rex.

Virtual Calling Cards Make Sense For Business

You probably carry one or more telephone calling cards in your wallet. They can save you a bundle if you make long distance calls from hotel rooms, pay phones, or client locations. One of the best cards you can have is called the "virtual" calling card. You may not have heard of it until now, but there are a lot of advantages to going virtual.

So, what is a virtual calling card and why would you want one instead of a regular phone card? It's called virtual because there is no physical card delivered. That seems different than buying a prepaid card off the rack at a drugstore or using the plastic card from your long distance company. Actually, you use a virtual card much like any other calling card. To make phone calls you dial a toll free access number. The system will ask you to enter your access code which includes your PIN number. Then you enter the number you want to call.

The big advantage to virtual calling cards is that they have truly low per minute rates. For instance, the popular CogniCall calling card offers 6.9 cents per minute for calls in the 48 US states. That's probably a lot lower that what you'd be billed if you use the card that comes from your long distance carrier. It doesn't seem as low as those colorful prepaid cards that advertise 1.9 or 2.9 cents a minute. But use one of those for awhile as see how many minutes you really get. They often charge "connect" fees for each call you make. Plus once you start using the card, the minutes start expiring if you don't use them all at once. After a few months your unused minutes have vaporized and you wind up paying a buck a minute for the one phone call you made.

Another thing to be aware of is the billing increment. Many calling cards charge in 1 minute or more increments. The time you call is rounded up to the next minute. CogniCall bills in 6 second increments with a 1 minute minimum. This smaller billing increment saves you money on each call and becomes really significant if you make a lot of calls.

The CogniCall card is called postpaid instead of prepaid. That's another way of saying billable. Your calls are charged to your credit card in the months that you make calls. If you don't make any calls, you don't pay anything. Minutes don't expire because you don't have a total number of minutes. You pay as you go.

Do you travel internationally? Most cards only work in one country. If you want to make calls overseas, you need a calling card that offers international origination. CogniCall lets you originate calls in over 50 countries by dialing toll free access numbers where you happen to be. That lets you avoid the monstrous phone bills you get stuck with if you make international calls from hotel rooms. If you stay with someone or visit a business client, you can make calls without running up their phone bill.

As of this writing, you can call the US from Germany for 8.7 cents a minute, from the U.K. for 11.6 cents a minute, from India for 32.3 cents a minute, from Mexico for 33.4 cents a minute, and from China for 59.5 cents a minute. Calls originating in the US cost generally less.

Another advantage of a virtual calling card is that you can get it quickly. You order CogniCall online anytime and you'll get an email confirmation. Then you call their office during business hours to confirm your account and they send you your access code and dialing instructions by email. You'll also have access to a website to monitor your account and get the access numbers you need for places you are going to visit. You can often get your virtual calling card the same business day if you forget to order until the last minute before a trip. Best to allow yourself a day or two, though.

There is no charge to order a CogniCall virtual calling card. You pay nothing until you use it and then you only pay for the calls you make. If you travel on business or vacation, it makes sense to have one of these handy just in case you ever need it. If you make a lot of calls away from home, you might save a small fortune. Find rates and get an international calling card now.