Cyber Monday Cell Phone Deals

Where’s the best place to find special offers on cell phones? Online, of course. If you are searching for Cyber Monday deals or just generally in the market for a new cell phone, you’ll save a bundle with these free and discounted cell phone specials. Take note that the offers I’m quoting are only good for the Black Friday weekend sale that ends at Midnight, today, Monday.

How about a free cell phone after an instant online discount? You have your choice of the BlackBerry Bold 9700 in black for AT&T. It’s not only one hot smartphone, it comes with a special bonus of free activation on up to five new or upgrade lines. Wow, you could order a family plan and get free BlackBerry Bolds for everyone. That’s one bill per month and you all share one bucket of minutes.

You like BlackBerry devices, but want a different model? How about the BlackBerry Curve in Titanium or silver? Or treat yourself to the advanced technology BlackBerry Storm2 Black for Verizon Wireless. I know, this phone comes with the hefty price of almost $600. But you’re not going to pay that. No way. Your price for this sale is just $9.99. You also get free standard shipping via FedEx and a bonus of no activation fee on the lines you order.

That’s right, a BlackBerry Storm2 for under ten bucks. Can you believe it? Well, don’t rub your eyes too long or this offer will disappear. Order the phone and plan you want now while this incredible sale is still in progress. By the way, the BlackBerry Storm 9530 Black is also available and it’s free after instant discount.

Wow! Are there any other good deals through Cyber Monday? You bet there are. On the Sprint PCS network you can get the Samsung Exclaim M550 Berry, the Sanyo SCP-2700 Blue, The BlackBerry Curve 8330 Red or the LG Rumor 2 Black in titanium, all for free after the instant online discount. You’ve seen these phones and priced them in the stores. You have your choice of the same service plans at the same prices as you would get in a cellular store or a big box retailer. But are they offering these phones to you for free? I’ll bet not. But shop for cell phones online and they are, indeed, free.

We just ran a review of the Samsung Solstice for AT&T. It’s one great smartphone. For you - free. How about a Samsung Highlight Blue for the T-Mobile wireless network? You guessed it - free.

Are you considering a netbook for work or personal use? You have your choice of netbooks with connectivity on the Verizon Wireless or AT&T networks. They’re under $200 when you order them online. These are serious computers with 1GB of RAM and large capacity hard drives. They’re just a bit smaller and lighter than your standard laptop computer. With both WiFi and 3G wireless connectivity, you’ll have Internet connectivity wherever you happen to be.

This is a terrific opportunity to get what you and your family really want for holiday gifts. It’s the good stuff. And now it’s well within your budget at these huge discounts and even free smartphones. Shop by carrier or just check out all the today’s special deals through Cell Phone Plans Finder. Even if you find this too late to catch the Black Friday Weekend through Cyber Monday sale, you may still be delighted by the variety of free and low cost wireless devices available.

Santa Is Real And Here’s The Proof

All you doubting Thomases and Thomasinas take note. There is visual proof that Santa Claus is not only real, but has visited your home. The same is true for the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy and Cupid. All are real. All have been caught in action at your home. Look at the photos. Now, who are you going to believe? Some bitter naysayers or your own lying eyes?

The photographic evidence is provided by CatchACharacter, a company specializing in capturing fictional characters in action. Their target market is small children who aren’t quite so sure what is going on and need to see it to believe it. Personally, I just bought into whatever the story was as long as the goodies kept coming. But kids today are more worldly. They’ve got to see the evidence.

Well, here’s how you get them the evidence. Don’t spend big bucks hiring a private detective who will run up a major tab watching your house on key nights. For much less than it costs to keep that gumshoe in coffee and donuts, you can have a professional quality photograph ready to present to your child. It’s about $10 for the pix.

There’s also sweat equity involved here. The way it works is that you get a snapshot of your favorite scene from inside or outside your home. You upload this photo to the CatchACharacter site. Then you select the character in question from the lineup and place that character into your photo. Magic completed, you download the composite photo and print it as your proof. If anyone dares to utter the dirty word “photochop,” they immediately get coal in their Christmas stocking, Easter basket or under their pillow. A nice earful of coal and no money will stop that maligning of the Tooth Fairy in short order.

What do you need to make this work? The most important thing is a high resolution photograph with up to a 12 MB file size. The higher the resolution, the better. Horizontal formats work best. File format should be jpg, bmp or png. Most photos are already in jpg format these days as they come off the camera. You’ll also need a broadband connection as the upload process can be very time and processor intensive.

Once you’ve uploaded your photo, chosen a character in the right size and achieved the best composition you can, your personal Character photo will be stored on the CatchACharacter servers. You can download it for printing in many popular sizes, email it to family and friends or post it to more than 20 social networking sites including Facebook, MySpace and Flickr.

I should go without saying that it’s a rotten thing to send Tooth Fairy pictures to your college student’s fraternity brothers. So, I’m sure I don’t need to say that. And kids, if you happen to be reading this and are computer savvy, it should also go without saying that it’s really rotten to show Santa kissing mommy or, worse, daddy and sharing that with their social circle or employer. If that’s the sort of thing you have in mind, just stay away from this site altogether and keep your mitts off the practice photos.

For those of you who are responsible adults and have little ones who would thrill at the sight of their favorite fictional character caught somewhere in or around their home, then you are both authorized and encouraged to visit the CatchACharacter Site to watch a quick tutorial video or try using the system free with one of their sample photos. Now, isn’t it true that seeing is believing?

Happy Thanksgiving

Best wishes for a safe and relaxing Thanksgiving holiday.

- John

Solstice Before The Solstice

The winter solstice approaches. But long before December 21 arrives, you could be in possession of your own solstice. That is, if you choose the Samsung Solstice.

This Solstice is a touch screen social networking phone. It offers a bright 3 inch color touch screen with tactile feedback and customizable app widgets on the home screen. Facebook and MySpace? They’re just a tap away.

So it’s dark outside. You don’t care. You’re too busy being connected on the Solstice... literally. This phone is built for messaging with a virtual keyboard on the high resolution screen. Incorporating the latest virtual technology keeps the Solstice just a half-inch thin. That’s much less bulk than the models with extra slide out keyboards. You’ll also enjoy extra long battery life with up to 5 hours talk time and over 10 days on standby.

Messaging features include an email client that supports the popular mobile email services, including Yahoo!, Windows Live, AOL and more. SMS text messaging is standard, as it multimedia messaging. Instant messaging uses your own IM application, such as AIM. This smartphone runs on the AT&T 3G network, so you’ll get fast data speeds and access to all the add-on features that AT&T offers for a rich mobile experience.

Did I mention video messaging? It’s supported on the Solstice, along with picture messaging. You can also enjoy video share calling that lets you stream live video during your phone calls. The 2.0 Megapixel camera with 3x digital zoom works as both a standard camera and camcorder. Don’t worry about running out of memory if you take too many photos or movies. You can expand memory with up to a 16 GB microSD memory card.

That memory will also come in handy if you like to take your music with you. This phone supports AT&T Music with an integrated MP3 player that syncs your music library or lets you download new songs on the go.

Do you travel overseas? If so, you’ll want a what’s called a quad band GSM phone. That’s the Samsung Solstice. It’s compatible with the GSM 850, 900, 1800 and 1900 MHz bands that form the basis of nearly all international cellular services.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Ethernet From Coast To Coast

You have Ethernet running from office to office on your LAN. But what if that same Ethernet network could exit the building and hookup to your other facilities around town and across the country. Would you like to have one comprehensive network that stretches from coast to coast?

That capability is here today. It goes by the name Carrier Ethernet. This is the same Ethernet that you are running on your LAN today. But now it’s been upgraded and standardized to run on metropolitan and long haul networks.

How do you get Carrier Ethernet? You need to sign up with a private network services carrier that offers that service. These are competitive carriers that have built nationwide footprints of fiber optic transport with points of presence in major metro areas. Often the core network is an IP based MPLS network that supports whatever protocol the customer needs.

Access to the nationwide network can be by fiber optic connection, Ethernet over copper or wireless Ethernet. The physical medium is less important that the fact that the network protocol is Ethernet from end to end. What the physical medium generally does dictate is the maximum access speed through the local loop. Even so, standard 10 Mbps Ethernet access is generally available in metro areas with lower speeds available just about anywhere via Ethernet over DS1 connections.

One advantage to the end user is that access to the Ethernet WAN (Wide Area Network) at each location is a standard RJ-45 connector. Just like with your in-house LAN, you plug into the Ethernet connector and you are on the network.

An even more important advantage of Carrier Ethernet versus traditional telecom services is cost. It’s not unheard of for an Ethernet service lease to cost half of what a company has been paying for similar bandwidth DS3 or OCx services. Sometimes the cost advantage is even more dramatic. It all depends on service availability in your area and how long ago you entered into your telecom services lease.

Would you be interested in less expensive WAN service with more bandwidth options? If so, check out Carrier Ethernet prices and availability for your business locations. Be prepared for a pleasant surprise.

$2 Toll Free Numbers Instantly

Why, oh why, don’t the customers call? Could it be because they hesitate at paying for a long distance call? That’s a good possibility. It’s especially true when they don’t know how long they’ll be on the line. Who wants to call for an inquiry or service and then pay to sit there on hold?

Customers and sales prospects are much more likely to call when they see those magic words “TOLL FREE.” So, give them toll free access and see how much it boosts your business. It won't cost you very much to add this valuable service. In fact, toll free numbers are available right now for $2 each and they’re instantly available for your use. See how much you get for so little by watching a one minute video on $2 Toll Free Numbers. In fact, you can watch it right here, right now:



With all the included features of this toll free service, wouldn’t at least one toll free number be a boost to the business you have now? Order your toll free number, set it up online, and then publish it on your website and your business cards. If it’s important to your business to talk to sales prospects or existing clients, make it easy for them to call you. Get a $2 toll free number and low cost toll free service from Agile Toll Free.

Copper Thrives In The 21st Century

Alexander Graham Bell loved copper wire. His Bell Telephone Company and others strung it on poles and buried it in the ground until there were thousands upon thousands of miles of small gauge copper wire connecting nearly every home and business. And that’s the way it’s stayed for over 100 years. Now that we’re in the 21st century, all that copper is just another metallic element being reclaimed by nature as we move on to fiber optic cables. Isn’t that the way it is?



Nope. The fiber optic era was fantasized along with flying cars. Fiber technology has advanced farther than George Jetson’s personal vehicle, but it’s still copper that rules. Even the old stuff that’s been in the ground for decades is getting a new lease on life in the digital age.

Copper is so popular because there is so much of it. A century of standardization and build-out makes it very attractive to connect to those copper pair fastened to the plywood sheet in the telephone closet. You could insist on a more modern fiber optic termination, but there are no glass fibers on that plywood. If you want fiber, you have to pay to have it brought in. It probably costs no more than stringing new copper, but the copper’s already there. Somebody else paid to have it installed a long time ago.

But isn’t copper an old analog technology that can’t possibly keep up with today’s high speed network demands?

Well, it’s true that copper telco wiring was installed with analog signals in mind. But a flowing electron is a flowing electron regardless of whether it is part of a 48 volt battery current or a Ethernet packet. The physics of conduction doesn’t know the difference. Where we hit the wall was when we tried to send digital signals down a circuit that was still set up for analog telephony. Those were the dial-up modems that topped out at 56 Kbps. But do you know that those very same telephone wires now carry Megabit per second signals?

In fact, DSL shares the very same wires as analog telephone service. Instead of trying to mimic a phone call the way modems did, DSL sends digital signals on frequencies well above those you can hear. True, DSL signals fade out quickly over distance. But if there is a digital termination nearby you can transport as much as 100 Mbps to the home or business using DSL technology.

That distance restriction is removed if you use two pair of copper telephone wires to deliver T1 line service. The bandwidth is a solid 1.5 Mbps in both directions and is highly reliable. Where can you get T1 service? Just about anywhere you can get a regular telephone installed.

T1 is the most popular form of digital connection for business. It is used for telephone trunk lines with up to 23 phone lines carried by a T1 PRI trunk, also knows as ISDN PRI. Business broadband is provided by T1 dedicated Internet access. You can also get something called Integrated T1 that combines both telephone and Internet on the same line.

As the need for business bandwidth expands, copper remains viable. It’s easy to bond T1 lines together to multiply bandwidth by 2x, 3x, or even 10x. Bonded T1 line service allows businesses to add lines as network activity increases.

A newer and lower cost bandwidth option is EoC or Ethernet over Copper. This technology uses special termination equipment to bond multiple copper pair to deliver Ethernet Internet service at the standard 10 Mbps up to 45 Mbps. You can also order lower bandwidths if you don’t need 10 Mbps at this time.

Standard analog loops, DSL, T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper are extending the useful life for installed copper telephone wiring well into the 21st century. Eventually it will all be replaced by glass fibers, but probably not in this generation.

Do You Need A Special Phone For VoIP?

I’ve been getting inquiries from people who are wondering if you need to buy a special phone to use VoIP as a replacement for regular telephone service. So, do you?

Answer: It depends.

Here’s why. You have probably figured out that you can’t just take a regular telephone and plug it into your router or broadband modem. The connectors aren’t the same size. That’s good, because you might just cause some equipment damage by plugging these incompatible devices together. What you need is a special phone designed to work on a data network or an adaptor for the phone you have now.

Most VoIP services designed for residential and home business (SOHO) take the adaptor approach. A good example is PhonePower’s VoIP service. You can get residential and small business plans with unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada for $14.95 a month. Your order the service online and they send you a free adaptor for your phone. In this case it’s the Grandstream HandyTone 502 ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor. You plug your phone in the phone jack that’s exactly the same size as the phone jack on your wall. You connect the ATA to your broadband modem or router using a standard Ethernet cable. Voila! You now have a regular telephone that works on VoIP.

But what’s going on in that ATA box to work the magic? There is circuitry that makes the phone connection look like it is coming right from your telephone company. That means generating the standard line voltage and ringing voltage that your phone is designed for. Those are analog signals because the phone is analog. The ATA also has to take care of converting between analog voice signals for the phone handset and digital packets for the Internet data network. This is done with CODECS or Coder/Decoders. In summary, the telephone needs to see its standardized analog signals and the Internet needs to see something that looks like a piece of computer equipment.

There’s a little more to it. Signaling for VOIP uses a standard called SIP or Session Initiation Protocol. SIP handles things like dialing and knowing when the phone is off-hook. SIP data is sent through the network just like other packets so it works just fine on the Internet or a private data network.

Because VoIP has become so popular for business, there are phones you can buy called SIP phones. These phones have the analog to digital circuitry of the ATA built-in. You can tell you have a SIP phone because it has a standard RJ-45 Ethernet jack on the back instead of the RJ-11 telephone jack. A SIP phone will connect directly to a LAN, a router or a broadband modem. It will need to be programmed for the VoIP service you are using. Some providers will give you instructions for how to do this. Others insist that you use their adaptor and an analog phone.

If you take your home phone into the corporate office, you may be shocked to find that there’s no place to plug it in. The company has installed an Enterprise VoIP system so that all desk phones plug into the corporate computer network. There is no separate phone network. All the phones are SIP phones. If for some reason you absolutely have to use your phone in that office, you’ll need to get an ATA and have it programmed to look like a SIP phone.

The bottom line is that regular telephones are analog. VoIP is digital. The way to make everything work is to use a phone that is matched to the network it is running on or use an adaptor to connect them.

Ethernet Internet For Your Business

There’s a new broadband connection service for business locations, and it’s one that is well worth a look. What is Ethernet Internet? I’ve prepared a short presentation on YouTube that explains the key points. Check out the Ethernet Internet business presentation on the YouTube site, or view it right here:



As the presentation states, Ethernet offers advantages in both price and performance at the same time. That’s nearly unheard of in most business products and services. But this is new technology on a fast moving learning curve. Look for Ethernet Internet to expand beyond its metropolitan roots and permeate every nook and cranny of the country. In rural areas, this may mean wireless delivery. In town, provisioning will be over copper for speeds up to 10 Mbps or so and fiber optics for the higher speeds.

Would you like to get more bandwidth for less money? You may very well be in a position to do so. Take a minute or so to use our GigaTrunks Ethernet Internet Finder to see what services and pricing is available for your specific location. To get maximum advantage, be sure to discuss your needs with a Telarus expert consultant. They have knowledge of the latest short term special offers that may not show up on the automated listings.

DROID is the Woid

Motorola and Verizon have put their heads together to take on the juggernaut that is the Apple iPhone. The result is the much heralded DROID that promises smarter than smart operation thanks to it’s Google Android 2.0 operating system. But let’s have a look and see what you get when you pack a DROID.

One big difference between the iPhone and every other smart phone, save the BlackBerry Storm, is a physical keyboard. If you’ve spent years developing texting thumbs, then moving to a virtual on-screen keyboard is understandably uncomfortable. Some people gotta have their little pushbuttons. Others just prefer a physical QWERTY keyboard. The DROID doesn’t disappoint. Slide out the hidden keyboard and text so fast you cause sonic booms.

Those who believe that the Microsoft Windows operating system rules the universe and always will, may not have noticed that there are other players looking to unseat the king of Redmond. Apple is quietly selling premium price and quality iMacs in a recessionary economy. The iPhone is going strong and now making a move into other countries, like China. Meanwhile, Google is stretching its tentacles far beyond search. The Android operating system has only crept into the mobile marketplace, but it’s growing. The new DROID will be a big boost to that initiative. Especially since it’s coupled to Verizon Wireless with their excellent nationwide coverage.

With the DROID comes a tight integration between phone and Google’s online empire. That includes thousands of apps downloadable from the Android Market. Apple has quite a head start in the apps marketplace, but DROID has the potential to make downloadable apps a key advantage of this phone. There’s an onboard eCompass along with the expected GPS to enable Google Maps, geo-location web search, geo-tagging and other location based applications.

You can expect a desktop-like experience surfing the Web from your DROID. That’s thanks to the HTML Web browser and Verizon’s 3G data connection called EVDO Rev A. For even faster performance, you can connect to public, personal or corporate WiFi hotspots running 802.11b or g. That’s pretty much all of them now.

What’s a smartphone today without advanced multimedia support? The DROID sports a 5.0 Megapixel digital camera with geo-tagging, flash auto-stabilization, zoom and editing tools. Do you really need to buy a separate digital camera anymore? For most purposes, I’ll bet not. This high resolution camera takes pix good enough to print, as well as share with friends via multimedia messaging or post to photo sites. The 3.7” light responsive color display that doubles as a touch sensitive control screen offers a great platform for viewing video. It has a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels so your images and videos will have a sharp appearance.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

When You Call My Equinox I See Purple

I’ve not only got your number, I’ve got your color. That’s what you’ll be telling people when you start carrying the new Sony Ericsson Equinox Carbon cell phone for T-Mobile. This phone goes beyond Caller ID. It’s got pulsating caller colors.

Anxiously awaiting a call from that special someone? No need to keep the ringer turned up and embarrass yourself in the movies or at dinner with friends. No need to squint at the caller ID hoping to see that magical number appear. Just set your phone on the table and glance at it inconspicuously from time to time. You know how to be nonchalant, right? You won’t miss a thing, because when the call comes through you’ll see a pulsating colored light, perhaps purple, that’s you’ve assigned to that special number. You actually get 5 different colors that include amber, sapphire, beryl, diamond and amethyst. That’s five friends you have color coded. Or, four friends and one person you’re trying to avoid. When that color comes up, just pretend you’ve seen nothing at all.

The Sony Ericsson Equinox has other special features beyond the color coded call alert. The smooth black case of this flip-phone has a disappearing external display. It’s there when you want it, with battery power, signal strength or caller ID. Then it disappears into the background where it won’t distract from the sleek appearance of the outside cover.

You’ll also notice the lens of a digital camera near the top of the case. This is a high resolution 3.2 Megapixel camera that also functions as a camcorder. Sony Ericsson knows that you like to upload your photos and videos to social networking and photo sharing sites. So they’ve made it easy to get your videos on YouTube and other popular sites. Print the pix you want hard copies of using Bluetooth wireless printing. Geotagging is also available so you can identify where your pictures were taken much later on.

The GPS services support for picture geotagging is also used for the TeleNav Navigator navigation service for turn by turn driving directions. This phone also works with Google Maps. Yes, it’s a 3G phone with download speeds up to 3.6 Mbps where available. That means mobile Web browsing and email, along with text messaging, IM, and multimedia messaging.

What else does this sleek and clever cell phone offer? Why, an MP3 player of course. This one includes an FM Radio so you’ll have music or the latest news wherever you go. You can expand memory by adding a Memory Stick Micro (M2) memory card up to 8 GB so ensure that you’ll have plenty of storage for your tune, pix and videos.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

Host Gator Serves The Web On Texas Wind Power

Are you torn between your need to support businesses that are easy on the environment and the need to minimize the cost of your online services, including Web hosting? Relax. HostGator gives you cheap and green at the same time.

You probably know that web hosting is an energy intensive business. Web servers are like any other computer, except even more power hungry. The more performance you push from your server farm, the more power you pull from the grid and the more heat you generate that has to be removed from the facility. Doesn’t sound very green, does it?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with energy. Energy is what gives us life and makes everything else possible. The problem is that we’re such an energy intensive society that we’re damaging our environment even as we progress in our way of life. The key to living in the kind of technological society we desire while preserving our natural environment is to get our energy from clean sources.

This is what Host Gator has committed to doing. Their first approach was to switch to 36% more efficient servers to reduce the carbon emissions of their shared and reseller servers. But with around 2 million websites to be served, that only went part of the way toward being a truly green business. So, HostGator purchased renewable energy credits for 130% of their server power and cooling.

Why 130%? That covers every watt needed to power the servers, cool their heat output, and operate the rest of the business. They’re effectively paying a Texas wind farm to generate renewal energy on behalf of Host Gator. It’s the next best thing to putting up windmills on their own property and generating the power themselves - except they can’t do that in downtown Houston. The money from renewal energy credits goes to offset the costs of constructing more wind generators, helping this green source of energy get deployed for today’s and future generations.

But doesn’t this green energy approach make HostGator non-competitive with web hosting services that don’t consider their environmental impact? It certainly doesn’t seem to. In fact, it’s a credit to their management that Host Gator features and pricing leave a lot of their competitors in the dust. Are you as astounded as I am to find that you can get unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for your domain name for under $5 a month? That includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a 45 day money back guarantee, 24/7 support, and a wealth of web hosting and email hosting features.

The Business package with the ability to host unlimited domains, a dedicated static IP address, and private SSL starts at under $13 a month. Reseller plans are also available for under $25 a month that allow you to start a web hosting company of your own. You set up the accounts and give each of your customers their own control panel. You get to establish your own brand and decide how much to charge. Then keep 100% of the money you collect from your clients. HostGator will even give you a free copy of “The Web Hosting Book” to help you get started.

Does high quality green web hosting at bargain prices sound like the type of hosting you want for your business? If so, learn more and order Host Gator web hosting and reseller hosting services right now.

TelePacific Takes Business Continuity Seriously

TelePacific Communications, a competitive telecommunications carrier serving customers in California and Nevada, is taking a comprehensive approach to disaster planning and the need for business continuity that follows disasters natural and man-made.

Their Business Continuity Services are focused on maintaining your ability to use voice and data services in the event you lose a trunk line or even your entire facility. But how just how can you do that?

Let’s take a look at telephone first. Most medium and large size businesses, and some smaller businesses that are heavy users of telephone communications, are using digital trunk lines. T1 PRI and SIP Trunks provide one to two dozen outside lines for management by an in-house PBX system. That trunk line offers a considerable cost savings over multiple individual phone lines, but does represent a single point failure risk. With that in mind, you can backup your primary trunk line with a few individual analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines. The key is to have the phone system programmed to automatically switch over to the backup lines when the trunk goes down. Another approach offered by TelePacific is to have your incoming calls automatically forwarded to the backup lines.

Even smaller businesses using IP PBX systems or Analog Telephone Adaptors may keep one analog telephone line in service as an emergency backup. The idea is that a fault that takes out your digital data line may not affect the analog lines. In many cases, that’s true. But what happens if a construction accident cuts all the underground lines in an area or the ground opens up in an earthquake and breaks every wire in the area?

If all your telecom connections are out, you may have also lost power. In that case, TelePacific has the ability to forward your incoming calls to a number at another business location. You could also choose to have your most important numbers, such as your main phone line and FAX number, forward to a mobile phone or even a residence. If there are too many incoming calls for you to answer immediately, the overflow can be answered by voicemail at the carrier’s facility. You then have the option to listen to and return those calls from another location when time permits.

Data lines, such as Dedicated Internet Access, are subject to the same disasters that befall telephone lines. T1 lines are the most popular connections for business users. If all you have is a single T1 line and it goes down, your connection is broken until it is fixed. But bonded T1 lines can be set up so that if you lose one, the secondary or other T1 lines will keep running. Your bandwidth will be temporarily reduced, but you’ll still have broadband connectivity.

Of course, if all lines are cut you will lose data service coming in and going out of your business location. If you have a second business location you can set up a private IP VPN arrangement so that all traffic can be routed to the secondary location. If you have only a single facility or all of your offices are located so closely together that they might all lose power or communications in the same event, you probably want to think about using a colocation service. A carrier colocation facility is probably more robust than your onside data center. The facilities are built with extensive physical security, fire and flood control, and both battery and generator backup. They also have multiple incoming and outgoing trunk lines going in different geographical directions.

TelePacific offers colocation facilities as do other providers around the country. You can house your application servers there and have an email backup server in case your primary email server fails. Remote data storage is a necessity these days since the most important business documents are now electronic documents.

Do you feel a bit uncomfortable with your ability to conduct business in the event of a fire, flood, tornado, earthquake or other unforeseen disaster? If not, it’s worth your time and peace of mind to talk with an expert consultant who can recommend the most cost effective ways to ensure your business continuity. Find out now what TelePacific and other competitive carriers can do to ensure your voice and data reliability with a toll free call or online inquiry about business continuity options.

MegaPath’s Black Friday Strategy

Black Friday will soon be upon us. This is the day after Thanksgiving that marks the traditional start to the Christmas shopping season. It’s a day that retailers brace for and depend on. For as Black Friday goes, so goes the profitability of the year.

The name Black Friday is generally attributed to the accounting practice of using red ink to show losses and black ink to show profits. Many retailers struggle all year long just to pay the bills and keep the lights on. Black Friday represents, at least symbolically, the change of the company’s fortunes from red ink to black ink. That’s how important the holiday shopping season is every year. It can be the difference between profit and loss, survival of the business or bankruptcy.

Since Black Friday and its online equivalent called Cyber Monday (The Monday after Black Friday) kickoff the most stressful and highest sales volume month of the year, it behooves retail businesses to have robust processes in place ahead of time. That includes the ability to process credit card transactions rapidly and securely. Lose your connection to the credit card processing companies, even for an hour, and you risk a stampede of irate customers out your front door and directly to your competitor. It’s even worse online. If your site is down or slow or you can’t accept credit card payments, your competitors are just a click away.

With this in mind, MegaPath is asking retailers, “Are You Prepared For Black Friday?” Even with predictions that consumers will be spending slightly less this year than last, there will still be a torrent of sales activity this shopping season. In fact, it might be argued that with less spending each customer becomes more valuable. Anything you can do to give that customer a pleasant shopping experience will work to your advantage.

MegaPath is a major competitive telecommunications carrier and leader in managed IP services. They serve the retail sector with high speed network connections specifically designed to support secure payment transactions. They call their service a “Payment Processor Extranet.” As the name implies, this is a specialized form of connectivity unlike simple Internet broadband. MegaPath’s Payment Processor Extranet connects to your retail site-to-site MPLS VPN service to securely carry credit card and other payment information from your point of sale locations to credit, debit gift and private label card payment and check payment processors. You choose which processors you work with and can and or change them at any time. MegaPath provides a fully redundant proactively monitored communications network to the processors to ensure that your transactions will get through.

For gas stations, convenience stores and other retailers not connected in a MPLS network, MegaPath offers “StoreConnect,” an IPSec encrypted service that works over a wide variety of broadband connections including DSL, cable, wireless and T1 lines. Like the Payment Processor Extranet, this service gives smaller retailers access to the leading payment processors for fast, secure and reliable transactions.

One of the most important processes involved in payment transactions is PCI or Payment Card Industry security. This standard involves a firewalled secure network protected by encryption and strong access control. MegaPath’s retail solutions are designed from the ground up to be PCI compliant.

So, what’s it going to be this year? Will you depend on slow dial-up access from your POS terminals that will likely keep your customers waiting and irritated as they stand in line? Or will you make the transaction process as transparent to your customers as possible with fast and reliable broadband connectivity? If you choose to make your transactions fast, efficient, reliable and secure, there’s no time to waste. Get more information about MegaPath and other retail connectivity solutions and be ready to make the most from the Black Friday weekend and the entire holiday shopping season.

Wireless Business Broadband Available In A Day

You’re opening a new store this week and everything is all set to go. Construction is done, the fixtures are in place and the shelves are stocked. The announcements have been sent to the media and all that’s left is the ribbon cutting. After that, let the profit making begin. Oh... NO... There won’t be any profit making because there won’t be any sales. The broadband service you were promised won’t be installed for another couple of weeks. Well, that’s what they said anyway. But they said that two months ago. What are you going to do without any connectivity? Is there anything that can jump in and save the day?

Yes there is and you’ll be glad you found out about it. Instead of grinding your teeth or just leaving the doors closed until your DSL or other provider can get around to bringing up your business broadband, get a wireless solution from Accel Networks. It’s highly secure and PCI/Visa compliant, so you can make cashless transactions with confidence. Data rates are typically 768 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps download and 384 Kbps to 512 Kbps upload with solid signals covering 90% of the United States. Best of all, it can be deployed in 1 to 3 business days.

A broadband wireless connection available in as little as a single business day? How come other providers don’t offer that. One word: Wires. No wires means no digging in the yard, stringing pole to pole, or fishing cables through the building. Those are things that take time. Avoid the wires and a good bit of the provisioning time goes away.

Accel offers a wireless solution that cleverly makes use of existing infrastructure. Most WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers are very localized and require direct line of sight to their towers. They likely will have to come out and put a dish or other external antenna on your building even if you can see the tower. Accel Networks doesn’t use proprietary towers like your local WISP. They’re using some or all of those cellular towers you see all over town. That's another reason why they need so little provisioning time.

Accel Networks has made agreements with the cellular carriers to use some of the data bandwidth that is available from every cell tower. But rather than limiting their options to one carrier, they’ve contracted with both CDMA and GSM carriers so that their service footprint covers 99% of business locations in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. Their specially designed “Accelerator” customer location equipment is capable of 99.9% availability and network management from Accel headquarters. Installation takes less than an hour from the time your equipment arrives.

What can you do with a wireless network solution? The quick start option to have your business up and running in days, not weeks or months, is an obvious winner. It’s perfect for point of sale terminals in retail stores, quick service restaurants and hospitality providers like hotels and motels. It’s also a fast solution for disaster recovery in any business that can’t function without an Internet connection. Dial-up was once the answer to backing up broadband. But dial-up is just too slow for many applications anymore. Besides, the same disaster that took out your main wireline service might well have knocked out the phone lines as well.

The low capital and operating expenses per location for Accel Network’s wireless has given many businesses the incentive to upgrade from their old VSAT and frame relay connections or their current DSL and Cable broadband services. Accel is and can be the primary network service for restaurants, gas stations, banks, convenience stores and many other businesses. Some businesses have started with a panic call for quick start service and later decided to keep Accel Networks as their primary broadband connection.

Are you in dire need for fast and effective WAN network bandwidth at a reasonable price for a single or multiple business locations? Perhaps you’re just shopping around to see if you can do better than the high cost and unreliable service you have now. Either way, call the toll free number or enter an online inquiry for wireless business WAN bandwidth to get prices and availability.

Fast MEN Available Cheap

When you’ve got packets to move and lots of them, you need MEN to get them from point A to point B. If your MAN is a sluggish wimp, what you need is real MEN to get things moving. If the cost of your telecom connection has you seeing red, what you need is MEN - fast and cheap MEN.

What this testosterone laden introduction suggests is that MEN are the answer to your telecommunications problems. So they are, as long as we’re talking about Metropolitan Ethernet Networks as the MEN in question. What? You were expecting some guy in a cape?

Metro Ethernet is rapidly becoming the connectivity solution of choice in downtown and suburban areas for two reasons. Compared to traditional telecom solutions, they are fast and they are cheap.

Normally fast and cheap don’t go together, at least in the technology world. If you want more bandwidth, you pay more money. It’s a simple and longstanding relationship. Well, your relationship with MEN is going to change all that. Metropolitan Ethernet offers the connectivity you need from point to point or multipoint to multipoint at prices per Mbps that can be half that of high bandwidth SONET services and even less than T1 lines.

Metro Ethernet is a fairly new business-grade telecom service that has been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum, an industry standards group. The move from circuit switched telecom to packet switched networks, such as Ethernet, is based on the almost universal adoption of Ethernet as the local area networking protocol of choice. If every LAN is running Ethernet, then why do a protocol conversion between the local network and the wide area network only to get the packets across town?

Why, indeed? When all inter-location connections were under the control of local telephone companies, then telephone company standards defined the services available. Now that competitive carriers have entered the marketplace with their own networks based on IP rather that telco TDM standards, there’s no good reason not to keep the networks and all their connections as Ethernet. Interfacing is trivial, network efficiency is improved, and scalable service levels are much easier to provide. It’s not unusual to be able to purchase Metro Ethernet services in 1 Mbps increments and add bandwidth when your business needs dictate.

Just how powerful are these MEN? They range in bandwidth from 1 Mbps on up, although 10 Mbps Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and 1000 Gigabit Ethernet levels are very popular as they mirror the standard LAN and network interface speeds. Lower bandwidth services, including standard 10 Mbps Ethernet, may be provisioned over copper as well as fiber to save construction costs for buildings that are not “lit” for fiber service. You need to be reasonably near a carrier’s facilities for Ethernet over Copper or EoC to work.

Would you benefit by putting real MEN to work for your organization? If so, check pricing and availability of Metropolitan Ethernet Network services for your location.

Expand Your Existing Business With Commission River

We can all use a little more business these days. But do you realize that you already have a way to increase your income without having to chase after new customers? It’s true. The secret is in leveraging customers and prospects you already have by offering them products and services they need but are currently buying from someone else.

Let’s say you sell a business service of some type. Every day you visit with customers and new prospects. Do any of them have a telephone? How about Internet service? Oh, they do? Why aren’t they buying those services from you?

“Because I’m not in that line of business,” is the quick comeback. But why not, when you could so quickly and easily be in that line of business in addition to whatever else you’re doing?

Let’s face it. Anyone who is in business likely has office telephone service, a cell phone, a toll free number, and some type of broadband Internet connection. They may also regularly use a conference calling service, make overseas long distance calls, and have a calling card in their wallet. Medium and larger size businesses have a PBX telephone system and a computer network that both need servicing and may be due for an upgrade.

So, how much trouble is it for you to ask about your customer’s telephone system needs or if you can look at their phone bill and see if you can save them money? If they have a T1 line, an ISDN PRI phone trunk or some other professional grade connectivity, there’s a very good chance you can save them money. Would your prospects go for $2 toll free numbers or international calls at a few pennies a minute? I’ll bet they would.

What makes it quick and easy for you to get a share of the lucrative and always in demand telecom market is a company called Commission River. The name describes what you’ll be getting. That is, a steady stream of residual income and monthly one-time payments for the services that your customers buy through your business.

All the services I’ve described are available through a Commission River public website like the one for Long Distance Rate Finder .com. You’ll get your own version of this, ready to go. Just add your business name and logo and you’re in the telecom business. Anytime someone orders through your website, you’ll get a commission. It only takes a few orders before those commissions become a commission river flowing right into your bank account.

You can see how easy it is to add Commission River services to your product line. Add links or banners to your current business website or buy a new domain name and use your customized Commission River website as a fully featured telecom services store. It’s self-service with online ordering for most services. For more sophisticated services like T1 lines and Ethernet connections, prospects enter contact information and an expert consultant helps them through the selection and contract process. You can also get take their basic information and enter the lead yourself as a service to your client.

If you are interested in boosting your income and you think that these telecommunications services nicely complement the business or consumer products that you already sell, then you should learn more about the Commission River affiliate opportunity and sign up immediately. There’s nothing to lose because there is no cost to join this program or continue participating. You don’t pay for this business... it pays you.

Even If There Is No Global Warming

Global warming is heating up. Regardless of what the atmosphere is doing at the moment, the rhetoric on climate change is getting hot and proponents on both sides of the issue are getting really hot... under the collar. The irony is that green energy makes sense regardless of whether we’re about to boil over or freeze our toes off.

To be sure, the consensus among the most respected scientific minds worldwide is that the average temperature of the planet is increasing and our industrial age emissions of carbon dioxide are causing it. But for the sake of discussion, let’s say it isn’t so. Let’s say that we’re just riding natural changes in the climate that are driven by subtle variations in the sun’s energy output, wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, a rash of volcanic eruptions or whatever. What if any or all of these influences are really what we’re observing?

The best answer might be: “So what?”

There are really good reasons for us to behave like CO2 is bringing disaster upon our heads, regardless of the scientific connection. We need to change our relationship with energy or disaster will come down upon us and likely sooner rather than later. In fact, we could be in deep trouble long before Florida slips below the waves and it will have nothing to do with carbon-anything.

We are currently in the midst of one nasty recession that has had the side effect of buying us valuable time on both the climate and energy fronts. All those tankers parked in the Persian Gulf and the dearth of oil exploration are evidence that we’re not consuming energy, especially oil energy, at anything like the rate we expected a few years ago. Before people started throwing punches over global warming, the big fight was over peak oil. That’s the prediction that we’re draining old oil wells faster than we’re finding new ones to replace them. The forecaster was M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil researcher, who had the gall to announce in 1957 that U.S. oil production would peak in the late 60’s to early 70’s. A lot of well meaning dissenters thought he was nuts until, right on schedule, our production topped out in 1970.

Well, guess what? There is also a peak oil prediction for global oil production. By some expectations we should have already passed it. Most likely we’ve been spared by those nasty recessions that followed the bursting of the tech bubble and now the housing bubble. It’s just a short term reprieve, however. As soon as business starts kicking back into high gear we’re going to realize that we’re strapped for oil and those $4 and $5 a gallon gas prices will be back in no time. Perhaps worse, as we’re doing nothing to increase the supply at the moment.

To be sure, we’re not on the verge of running out of oil anytime soon. What we’re on the verge of is running out of the cheap, sweet, light crude that we’ve all come to know and love. Half of it is still in the ground, but there are a lot more of us who want it and the price is going to spiral upward as we try to outbid and perhaps out shoot each other to get it. What’s in plentiful supply are the gooey tar sands and other thick sulfur-laden muck that cost a fortune to turn into the nice sweet light gasoline and diesel that won’t clog up your injectors.

The choice we’re facing is to persist in slugging it out over the remaining oil reserves and keep coming up with more and more money to get it one way or the other, or break the cycle by moving off oil and onto something more promising before the situation is totally hopeless. That something is green energy. A generation ago, solar panels and wind generators were scientific curiosities that only made economic sense in unique situations. Now they’re in mass production with costs that can be easily be paid back within the lifetime of the equipment. Are green sources as cost effective as coal, oil and natural gas? Wind is almost at parity, with solar not that far behind. We haven’t even started to tap wave and tidal energy for coastal cities, nor geothermal for areas where it’s boiling hot close to the surface.

Even if all we do is keep squabbling, the production learning curve will continue to reduce the cost of green energy until it becomes the obvious choice. Wouldn’t it be smarter to embrace the change now and gain the advantages sooner? Green energy gives us an unlimited source of power with energy that is naturally provided by the Sun (solar and wind) and the Moon (tidal). There’s no worry about investing in “dry holes.” It gives us national security in that no other country can take away our sunshine and breezes. Any money we invest in the generating equipment and maintenance, we could be paying to ourselves. That’s domestic security, a reduction in the portion of our national debt that comes from paying for foreign oil, and employment that is easy to keep on-shore.

Green technology and manufacturing practices also give us efficiency improvements that result in less energy needed for a given process and lower costs through recycling, rather than always starting with mining raw minerals and ending with paying to bury perfectly good processed materials when we’re done with the product.

Green energy production and green product technology complement each other. From an efficiency standpoint, they “pull in the same direction” and accelerate the cost and supply advantages we’d gain over industrial-age technologies based on fossil fuels. It’s a win-win situation and, if we’re smart about it, we’ll be the winners.

Phone Power’s $14.95 A Month VoIP Service

Are you interested in VoIP phone service, but horrified by the costs involved? What’s that about anyway? The whole idea behind VoIP as a replacement for landline telephone service is that it’s supposed to cost less, not more. Well, there’s still hope. Phone Power is offering their full featured residential and home office VoIP service for just $14.95 a month.

Now that’s more like it. There’s no good reason to reason to pay $25 or $35 a month for local and long distance calling when you can get service just as good or better for $14.95 a month. But is it really as good? Let’s take a look at what you get for your VoIP dollar.

First, you get unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada. Unlimited, that is, if you are among the 99.9% of users who use less than 5,000 minutes a month. Extra minutes are just 2 cents each, less than you'll pay with just about any long distance service. So go ahead and chat to your heart's content.

You also get to keep your current phone number. Just transfer your number for free for the convenience of everyone who calls you now, or get a new number to start with a clean slate.

Here’s something you won’t get elsewhere. It’s a cloned second line. This included feature makes use of the fact that there are two telephone ports on the adaptor box that connects your phone to your broadband router or modem. You can plug two phones in the adaptor. When a call comes in, both phones ring. If you are on one phone, only the other one rings. But here’s the really cool feature. Two people can call out to different numbers at the same time. You just have one incoming phone number. By cloning, you get to handle two calls at once on that single line.

Phone Power VoIP service includes over 25 other features at no extra cost. You get the expected Caller ID with name support, voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, and E911. But you also get extras like find me - follow me, voicemail to email, anonymous caller rejection, do not disturb, simultaneous ring to your home, work and cell phones, and specific number block list. Check the complete features list and you’ll be delighted how much you get that you’d pay more for with other services.

Phone Power’s $14.95 a month VoIP service is a real bargain compared to what the telecom carriers or those heavily advertised services charge. This offer is a two year plan that comes with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. You can also get one year and monthly plans for a bit more. But here’s the special deal for new customers that really can’t be beat. If you prepay for 12 months of service at $199.95, Phone Power will give you a second year free. Divide 199.95 by 24 months and you get $8.33 a month. Yes, it’s fantastic but this is a special promo offer that won’t last long. If you want it, better grab it quickly.

So, does Phone Power look like the VoIP phone service that you’ve been wanting all along? If so and you have DSL or Cable broadband already, then learn more about Phone Power and order your service plan quickly and easily online.