Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Fractional ISDN PRI For Telephone Savings

For high performance business telephone usage, it’s hard to beat ISDN PRI. You get 23 digitized phone lines, fast out-of-band call switching, and Caller ID for your PBX phone system. It’s all delivered on a single line service that’s a lot cheaper than a collection of individual analog telephone lines. So what could be better?

How about the same quality and performance for smaller phone systems? How about, say, half-a-PRI with a substantial cost savings?

Sure, why not?

Honestly, not every business needs 23 outside lines. In fact, you have to be a fairly large operation or a specialized business like a call center to require that much capacity. But there are lots and lots of businesses that do need a dozen or so phone lines for sales operations or customer service. For those businesses there is Fractional ISDN PRI.

In the United States, ISDN PRI is delivered on a T1 line. Each T1 line has 24 channels. ISDN PRI uses 23 channels for phone conversations, 1 per channel, and the last channel for signaling and information. If you’ve ordered a T1 line for dedicated Internet access or point to point connection to another facility, you know that you don’t always have to take the full line capacity. You can generally order fractional T1 service and pay somewhat less for a smaller bandwidth.

You can do the same thing with an ISDN PRI, also called a T1 PRI. There’s no need to order and configure all 23 phone channels if you don’t need that many. The T1 line will always have this capability available, but you may be able to order 6, 12, 18 or some other number of active lines. Configure them as any combination of incoming, outgoing, local, long distance or toll free. The monthly price you pay will be based on how many lines you set up and how much you use them.

You should also known that there is a related service called Integrated T1 that combines telephone and Internet data on a single line. It has special equipment so that voice and data never interfere. Basically, some of the T1 channels are assigned as telephone lines and the rest are allocated to Internet data service. If all you need is 6 to 12 phone lines plus broadband Internet access, Integrated T1 service may be your best cost solution.

Which telecom service is best for your company: ISDN PRI, Fractional ISDN PRI, or Integrated T1 service? Why not compare costs from multiple providers and then decide? Go ahead, the process is automated and takes just a few minutes. Expert consultants are available free of charge to help you decide or talk over your business requirements.

Click to check pricing and features or get support from a Telarus product specialist.




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