Cell Phone Bill Shock Is So Easy To Avoid

The Federal Communications Commission has gotten so many complaints about "cell phone bill shock" that they are considering new regulation. If you’ve been a victim, this probably sounds like something long overdue. But why be a victim in the first place?

Cell phone bill shock, aka “bill shock”, is the horrible feeling you experience when you open your monthly cell phone bill to find humongous overage charges. Your first reaction may be a stunned silence, followed by rubbing your eyes to see if those numbers are really on the paper. Then a gasp of “WHAAAAT??????”

If you haven’t collapsed by this point, you’ll be scouring the bill trying to figure out if it’s for real or a mistake by your carrier. Overages of hundreds or thousands of dollars have to be a mistake, right?

Oh, no they’re not. Sure, any billing system can make a once-in-a-blue-moon error. The vast majority of the time, however, those charges are absolutely accurate. The problem is that the cellular company didn’t make the error... you did.

That’s right. The error you made was not knowing every picky detail of your contract and/or not paying close enough attention to your usage. Often, the problem arises when someone else uses your phone. Teenagers are blissfully ignorant of wireless contract terms. They’ll play games, download music & videos, and yak it up till the battery goes dead. Hey, it’s not a problem on the home computer or telephone line so why would they expect it to be on a cell phone?

As bill shock victims can attest, this IS a problem with wireless services. That package of anytime minutes has a hard limit. Exceed it and the cost per minute goes up to the Moon. The same is true of data plans. How many people truly realize that they have a 2GB or 5GB limit with large per KB overages above that? If you never hit the limit, you might think you have unlimited service. The first time you exceed it, you’ll get a nasty, nasty dose of reality.

The FCC is considering mandating that wireless carriers send users a text message to tell their customers when they get within 80% of their usage limit or are about to incur expensive data-roaming charges. That sounds like a sensible reminder. If you get the warning and exceed the limits anyway, at least you can’t say you weren’t warned.

If you enjoy the benefits of having a particular phone on a traditional cell phone plan, including getting a free phone, then you need to be vigilant about your usage or upgrade to an unlimited plan so you don’t have to worry about it. But if you want more control over your cellular costs, consider a pre-paid service instead. Pre-paid is just what it sounds like. You buy a certain bundle of minutes in advance and then work them down. When you run out, you buy more minutes or simply stop using the phone... at least for awhile.

NET10 is one of the leaders in pre-paid cell phone service. The “10” in NET10 stands for 10 cents per minute. That’s what all calls cost you. There are no roaming charges, no overages, no contracts and no bills. You pay 10 cents per minute for calls. Text messages are 5 cents each. It’s easy to remember and easy to manage.

It’s really easy to manage NET10 prepaid cell phone service because you buy a special phone that displays your exact airtime balance. When you get low, you can buy more time on the Web, in retail stores that sell airtime “cards”, or by calling a toll free number for NET10. Your minutes don’t expire, but you do need to refresh your service to keep it active.

If you are a casual user or just want to keep a cell phone around for emergencies, pre-paid service can be a big money saver. It will cost you $15 a month on an automatic monthly plan for 150 minutes. That’s half the cost of the smallest plans offered by most traditional carriers. Plus you avoid signing a contract or having your credit checked. When you want to discontinue service, you simply stop using it. Pretty easy, right?

If prepaid cellular service sounds like the service for you, take a few minutes and see what NET10 has to offer in the way of phones and plans. It could save you from that awful cell phone bill shock that has horrified so many others.

Fixed Wireless Broadband Services For Business

We’ve come to think of business grade telecom services and copper wireline and fiber optic services. That’s why IT managers may cringe when someone says they’ve got to have new high bandwidth Internet access, point to point transmission or VoIP telephone service right this minute. We all know that there is no such thing in WAN networking as right this minute. Or is there?

An option that’s becoming increasingly available is fixed wireless service. Think of getting the same bandwidth services you have now delivered without the wires. This is quite different from cell phone service designed for mobile use or wireless access points that have a range of only a few hundred feet. It’s also not satellite broadband, which has such long latencies and limited bandwidth that you can’t really use it for any but the most limited applications.

This fixed wireless service uses outside antennas that communicate over a range of some miles. Airband, a leader in this field, has installed base stations in 14 major cities. Each base station can communicate with customers up to 5 miles away, forming a service footprint of 78 square miles. Each customer has a subscriber unit (SU) that provides a two-way radio connection with the base station and a simple Ethernet connection to the LAN.

What services can Airband offer? Broadband Internet is a popular choice. You can get speeds from 2 Mbps to Gigabit Ethernet. Yes, you can get replacement service for T1 lines and DS3 connections. But there is also the standard Ethernet speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps. Plus you can choose any bandwidth in-between to scale your service to exactly what you need. Don’t worry about picking the wrong bandwidth level and needing an upgrade quickly. Upgrades are made by network software changes and can be accomplished in hours. Installation itself can be completed in just days. What’s that quote you got to bring in fiber? Six months? Outrageous!

Being wireless, can’t anyone just stick up an antenna and intercept your datastream? They won’t have much luck. Airband uses 128 bit AES encryption to keep your data safe. They also offer a 100% uptime guarantee, with service level guarantees on jitter, latency and packet loss.

With such tight control on network parameters, this fixed wireless solution can be used with confidence for VoIP as well as point to point data, business Internet and private IP VPN. There are several options available. You can simply replace your existing ISDN PRI trunk lines (or add new ones) using a SIP trunk with PRI interface. The newer IP PBX systems can often connect directly to a SIP trunk. Or let Airband own and manage the hosted PBX system and just have telephone sets at your location. This is all done on a private IP network so that the quality of your voice communication is assured.

Does this sound like the quality of service you need with the speed of installation and avoidance of copper and fiber line construction costs you require? If so, you may be delighted with how little you have to pay to enjoy fixed wireless services from Airband and other providers. Get details on fixed wireless costs and availability now.

From LAN to MAN to WAN

We’re in something of a network revolution right now. Computer networking has deployed many different protocols for communication. Some of these have been borrowed from the telephone industry. But there’s a consolidation underway that is moving toward a single IP networking standard. From LAN to MAN to WAN, it’s all headed toward IP.

The standardization really started in the LAN or Local Area Network. Nearly all LANs are now constructed using Ethernet network interfaces? It’s not that other network architectures don’t have merit. It’s simply economy of scale. Perhaps the PC, more than anything else, helped to settle the issue with 10/100 Mbps NICs (Network Interface Cards) being included as standard equipment. Today’s faster machines offer 10/100/1000 interfaces with RJ-45 as the standard connector. If you want anything else, you have to pay extra.

This economy of scale encompasses not only desktop computers, but laptops, network switches, routers, servers, cabling and various appliances. The higher the volume produced, the cheaper each interface circuit becomes. Until something very much better comes along, Ethernet is the low cost solution.

The situation has been quite different beyond the company premises. The telephone industry has about a 100 year lead on the computer industry. If you’ve wanted to connect two business locations together or join the Internet, you had to convert your Ethernet protocol to something the telephone system could understand. Remember dial-up modems? Today’s equivalent is the T1 line. It’s all digital and offers rock solid 1.5 Mbps connectivity, but it’s a telco standard service.

The LAN to MAN or WAN connection is most often made with an interface called a CSU/DSU. This can be a stand alone box or a card that plugs in an edge router. It provides the protocol and signal level conversion between Ethernet on the LAN and T1 line connecting through the central office.

More recently, the T1 connection and faster speed DS3 and OCx services have been challenged by the rise of Metro Ethernet services. With MetroE, you connect directly from your Ethernet LAN to an Ethernet MAN and back again at other locations around town. Since this is a Level 2 switched service, it’s like having a way to expand your LAN over a much larger area to include other offices, a factory, warehouses, and an offsite data center.

Metro Ethernet melds LAN and MAN with one common service protocol. But what about the WAN or wide area needs? WANs often encompass regional areas of the country or even the entire US. Very large WANs include locations around the world. These, too, can now be joined by Ethernet through MPLS networks. While MPLS has an IP core, it uses its own tag switching system instead of IP routing while on the network. But being a multi-protocol system, it can easily transport Ethernet. Some larger providers have national and international service footprints, making it easier than ever to connect from LAN to MAN to WAN.

Are you interested in maximizing the efficiency of your metropolitan and wide area network services while minimizing your costs? You should get a quick quote on MAN & WAN Network Bandwidth to see how much you could be saving.

Fiber Plus Copper Equals High Bandwidth

We’re bandwidth hungry and getting more so by the day. Both businesses and consumers are finding themselves frustrated by their inability to take advantage of all the latest technologies due to bandwidth limited connections. Productivity vendors and content providers are in the same fix. They’re having a hard time delivering everything they can produce simply because the demand for transport and last mile bandwidth has exceeded the supply.

This situation is reminiscent of the early days of the personal computer. For several decades you just couldn’t get enough processor speed, RAM memory or hard disk capacity. Cheap RAM, huge disks and multi-core processors have pretty much eliminated this bottleneck. Well, not completely. You still find yourself having to upgrade your machines every few years to keep up with the demands of applications, especially video. But today’s limitations on progress are more related to the size of the pipe than the size of the machine.

Seems like the solution is pretty obvious. All we need to do is replace our outmoded copper infrastructure with fiber optic bundles and we’ll have all the bandwidth we can use.

In a sense, that’s what’s happening. Nearly all carriers have embraced fiber optic IP networks and are expanding their fiber footprints as fast as they can. But to think that we’re going to completely retrofit a century and a half’s worth of copper build-out with fiber optics on a one to one basis is just fanciful. Even today there’s no standard that mandates fiber optic service for new homes and businesses as a utility. You can bet that every building gets universal phone service delivered over twisted pair copper. But how many have a multi-fiber bundle terminated on the premises?

Someday fiber optics will be the default for voice, data and video. Copper will be for power. But today’s reality is that most bandwidth will be delivered to homes and businesses over standard copper telco wiring. Fortunately, technology has come to the rescue with new modulation techniques to squeeze higher and higher bandwidths from already installed copper wiring.

For businesses, the hottest bandwidth service right now is called Ethernet over Copper. It is becoming the upgrade of choice by companies who have tapped out the capacity of their T1 lines but can’t afford the construction costs to bring in fiber connections. The new terminal equipment combines the capacity of multiple copper pair to create a single wide bandwidth Ethernet service from carrier to user. The bandwidth is anywhere from 1 to 50 Mbps over a distance of a few blocks to a few miles.

That’s a considerable increase for many small businesses, although medium and larger companies still need to pony up for fiber to get the 100 Mbps to Gigabit Ethernet connections they need. But what about the consumer and companies that have a crying need for higher bandwidth but don’t have the budgets yet for fiber?

AT&T is pursuing a solution for residential users called FTTN or Fiber To The Node. This is a hybrid arrangement that uses the high bandwidth of fiber to get close to a neighborhood and then leverages the value of the already-installed telephone wiring to carry the signals into the home. It’s a way to jack up the speed of DSL way beyond what copper can carry all the way from the central office. How fast? AT&T is reportedly going to start trial service at 80 Mbps next year. That’s faster than the speedy 50 Mbps broadband service offered by Cable’s upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 modems and even Verizon’s FiOS. Of course, both fiber and Cable have room to increase their speeds as competition demands. But perhaps AT&T can also push the envelope to 100 Mbps and beyond.

FTTN advances can benefit business, too. In metropolitan and suburban areas, carriers establish POPs or Points of Presence where they can connect to their fiber networks. From there they can “light” buildings with fiber service or provide EoC or Ethernet over Copper. The more fiber services there are in a particular area, the more options you have for both fiber and copper bandwidth at reasonable prices with minimal or no construction costs. Knowing where the high bandwidth services are already installed can also be a strategic advantage. If you are looking to relocate anyway, it just makes sense to find a location that already has the network services you’ll be needing. Use the Lit Building Finder to see what fiber optic bandwidth services are nearby.

Tech’s Moo Poo Buy Plan

The Internet is fast on its way to become an insatiable user of electricity and producer of heat. No, not the Internet you think of as vast expanses of fiber optic cables spanning the globe. It’s all the equipment that makes those cables glow with infrared light, serves up the information on that Information Superhighway, and provides the glowing screens we all stare at for most of the day. The Internet is like a vampire on the prowl for new power sources to tap. Now it’s after our livestock.

Relax. Your hamburger is not at risk. Nor is your milk. The Internet is only after electrical power. It’s the huge server farms run by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and now Amazon that are fast running out of places to plug-in and suck gigawatts. Their traditional sources of coal, nuclear and hydro are becoming tapped out. Their eyes now turn to a less conventional source of power generation that’s brown and round. Pi R Squared? No, pie are powerful. That’s cow pie we’re talking about.

This is where server farms meet dairy farms. One is hungry for resources and the other has certain resources that it needs to get rid of. There’s synergy to be had by getting together according to a recent report. The idea is that a farm’s animal waste, and there’s plenty of it, can be converted into power to run a nearby data center. The waste is consumed in the process and good riddance. The bio-energy stored in the animal dung is turned into electrical power to run sophisticated equipment that makes our Internet experience possible. The lowest tech resource imaginable can enable the highest technology available.

Turning waste into electricity has been around awhile, and it’s becoming more in vogue all the time. Many landfills are now being tapped for the methane gas that results from decomposition deep in the pile. That gas is burned in a turbine engine to efficiently generate energy for years, even decades. A similar principle is used to convert animal droppings into biogas. Once the methane has been liberated, it can run a gas turbine engine just like they have at the landfill.

NativeEnergy has sponsored a number of what they call “Remooable Energy” programs to install manure digesters on family dairy farms. These projects typically take the waste of hundreds of cows and turn them into hundreds of kilowatts. It’s independent small scale renewable energy production. But thousands of servers need tens of thousands of cows to produce enough smelly stuff to generate the megawatts required by a modern data center. Who’s got that many cows?

Factory farms do for sure. Groups of family farms can also have the required threshold of animals needed to make this system work on a commercial scale. That argues for regional facilities that would have both the power plant and data center on-site. Colocation means no transmission costs or resistive power loses. The rejected heat from the power plant can be recycled to support the anaerobic digestion process. It’s neat and efficient and very, very green.

You wouldn’t think that cow pies would be worth much, but the day is coming when power plants will pay for poo. Lumber mills used to pay to have their sawdust hauled away. Now they get paid by companies that turn sawdust into pellets for wood burning stoves. Nobody burns tires anymore. They’re too valuable for recycling to recover the rubber and even the oil content. As electrical demand begins to exceed supply, farmers may find competing bioenergy companies fighting to buy their manure. How ironic it will be when dung is powering the mail servers that bring so much dung to your inbox.

You’re Not Throwing Out That Cell Phone, Are You?

You’re not really going to throw out that cell phone, are you? In THIS economy? That’s just nuts. Yeah, the contract is expired and you can’t make calls any more. But that’s a wad of bills in your hand there. You wouldn’t throw a handful of cash in the garbage would you? Well, then, don’t toss that moola just because it still looks like a cell phone.

Every year, millions of dollars are hauled off by trash trucks just because people don’t realize that their old cell phones and other electronic gadgets have cash value. Those who suspect that their phone might still be worth something are put off by the thought of having to run a classified ad and deal with people coming to the door, or having to take pictures and write up an auction listing. It seems like too much work for too little money, and it often is. But what if you could drop your old mobile into a prepaid mailer and just send it on its way? It that still too much like work?

The other thing you need to know is that some cell phones, especially smartphones, can be worth a pretty penny. How would you like to open your mailbox and find a check for $100 or more? It could happen. Not all cell phones are worth premium prices, but even if you only get $5, $10 or $20, that’s still a nice chunk of change for a few minutes effort.

Interested? I thought so. Here’s what you do for the next 5 minutes. Check the value of your old cell phone by running a quick search at an online recycler. You’ll get an excellent idea of what it’s really worth by finding the exact make and model, selecting the condition and what accessories you still have available, and clicking the “calculate” button. You’ll find out instantly what they’ll pay you. If you like the answer, request a prepaid mailing box. When it comes, you pack up your phone and accessories, seal the box and drop it in the mail. Away it goes. Once the condition of your phone has been verified, you’ll get a check by return mail quicker than you think.

If it got any easier, that phone would turn itself in for the bounty. What? You got your phone free because you bought it online? Keep that to yourself. You can still get cash for your old cell phone even if you never paid any in the first place. Just look it up and send it in.

While you are at it, check and see if you might have other electronic gadgets that still have cash value. These include video games and gaming consoles, GPS devices, MP3 players, digital cameras and camera lenses, camcorders, Blu-ray players, home audio, projectors, streaming media, external disk drives, PDA laptop and desktop computers, satellite radios, calculators and even movies. That’s a lot of categories. I’ll bet you have some of this stuff hiding in drawers or the basement right now. Wouldn’t you rather have the money before the value of these items drains away completely?

I suspect that once you discover the hidden value of your old electronics, you’ll go on a de-junking spree to get the most money you can. As a side benefit, you’ll have lots of extra space available for your next acquisitions.

Add International Calling To Your Cell Phone

The reality of telephone conversations today is that at least one of the phones is a mobile. Yet, many US cell phone plans limit you to domestic USA calls. Those that let you call out of the country can make you sorry you did when the bill arrives. Doesn’t anyone offer a way to call Mexico, Europe, China or even Canada at a decent rate?

There is such a deal and you’ll love it. What you need is a special add-on plan to the service you have now. There is no need and, frankly, no advantage to switching carriers mid-plan. Instead, you keep your current US calling plan and add an international calling service to it. It’s fast, it’s easy and, best of all, it’s cheap.

The service I’m talking about is TEL3Advantage
. What kind of rates are we talking about? Right now, TEL3Advantage is offering discounted international rates that include calls to China for 1 cent per minute, Berlin Germany for 1.4 cents per minute and calls to Canada for 0.9 cents per minute. You saw that right. You can call numbers in Canada for less than a penny a minute. I’ll bet you can’t do that on your landline!

Actually, now you can. The same TEL3Advantage account that works on your cell phone also works on your home phone or your office phone. You can use it on any private touch-tone phone.

OK, now back to those incredibly low rates. They’re for real as part of a special 30 day discount. After that they go up to the regular rates that aren’t much higher. China, for instance, is 1.32 cents per minute instead of an even 1 cent. Calls to Canada cost 1.6 cents per minute. Calls to Berlin Germany are 2 cents per minute for the regular rate. Bet you still can’t beat these rates on your regular landline service. Calls to other locations worldwide are also available at eye-popping low rates.

So how does this work? You sign up for TEL3Advantage with a valid credit card or PayPal account. You order a package of minutes for $10, $25, $50 or $100. What you are doing is pre-paying for your international calls. There’s an extra bonus involved. You get extra free minutes with all but the $10 package. How about 900 free minutes to China on sign-up with the $100 plan. Astounding, but true.

Now you are ready to place your call. Simply dial the local access number for the TEL3Advantage service on any phone you have registered. When the service answers, you dial the international number you want to call. Your call goes through just like on any other phone and you enjoy a nice long conversation. At these rates, it can really be a long conversation. When you run low on minutes, the system will recharge you so won’t be left hanging without service like happens on those prepaid calling cards.

Do you have a smartphone? Your life gets even easier when you download a TEL3 app. It is smart enough to know all the local access numbers, so you can just place your international call with no fuss whatsoever.

Thousands of satisfied customers love this service, and why wouldn’t they? There are no monthly fees or taxes, no contracts, no expiration and no obligation. Just fast and easy access combined with extraordinarily low calling rates. Does this sound like a service that will work for you? If so, learn more, take advantage of the introductory specials, note the 30 day satisfaction guarantee and order your TEL3Advantage service now.

Qwest Embraces Ethernet over Copper to Reach Rural Business Locations

Qwest Communications is one of the country’s premier telecom services providers, with a fiber optic backbone that spans the nation with data transmission rates of 40 Gbps. Their next step up will be 100 Gbps. When major enterprises need serious bandwidth, they find that Qwest has all they need and then some. But what about those locations that are a bit off the beaten path? Are they pretty much out of luck or what?

Not any more they aren’t. While it’s true that remote offices of even the largest corporations have a hard time justifying the construction costs involved in trenching fiber cable so far away from the carrier POPs (Points of Presence), that doesn’t mean they can’t get significant bandwidth at decent prices.

The magic that makes it possible for even out of the way locations to get Ethernet services at Ethernet speeds is called Ethernet over Copper. The copper we’re talking about is standard twisted pair telephone cable. Not only that, it is the same telco cable that is already in the ground. Nearly every business location gets multiple pair cabling installed by the local telephone company during construction. It’s traditionally used for multi-line telephone service and, more recently, to bring in DSL and T1 broadband Internet access. The new way to employ the same old wires is to install specialized equipment to transport Ethernet signals over copper.

Qwest has just announced new Ethernet services for nationwide availability. These include 3 Mbps, 5 Mbps, 7 Mbps and 10 Mbps, all delivered over bonded copper pair. The bonding process is a software solution that combines what are normally separate signals on independent copper wire pairs so that they act as one much higher speed conduit. That process was originally employed by carriers to bond T1 lines to increase bandwidth beyond the 1.5 Mbps T1 limit. With different terminal equipment, those copper pair can now deliver Ethernet services as well. You need up to 8 pair to get the maximum 10 Mbps speed level.

Most smaller businesses and branch offices of medium and larger size businesses can run just fine with 10 Mbps bandwidth for last mile connectivity to MPLS networks, dedicated Internet connections, or Ethernet Virtual LAN service. Since the copper is already in place, construction costs are minimized and service can be deployed rapidly. They are also scalable. You can start off with 3 Mbps bandwidth, if that is all you need, and then scale up to 5, 7 or 10 Mbps as your business level requires.

Is your office, plant site or warehouse struggling with too limited bandwidth because you think that a speed increase is prohibitively expensive? You may be surprised and delighted by how much bandwidth you can get for the same budget you have now. The way to find out quickly is to check prices and availability for Ethernet over Copper service in your area right now.

Transparent LAN Service for WAN Bandwidth

As businesses increasingly move from having all of their activities in a single building or campus, the need for wide area connectivity is increasing. This is especially true of companies with nationwide branch offices, and medical centers spread out over regional areas. There have always been telecommunications services to tie multiple locations together, but now there are services that actually let your local area network span an entire metro area, even multiple states.

The service you may be looking for is called transparent LAN service. It’s pretty much what it sounds like. Instead of maintaining individual LANs for each location and then using legacy telecom services to transfer data between them, the transparent LAN makes all those separate LANs look like one big one.

Transparent LAN service is an Ethernet layer 2 switching service. It’s similar to bridging a number of smaller networks together as you would in-house. The difference is that this capability lets you bridge branch offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Seattle and elsewhere so that they are part of a unified whole.

One technology that is rapidly gaining popularity for implementing transparent LANs is VPLS or Virtual Private LAN Service. This is a standards based carrier service that uses IP / MPLS networks for core network. Some carriers have a nationwide footprint for their IP networks, so they can easily offer VPLS in many major cities.

Transparent LAN services run at native LAN speeds of 10, 100 and 1000 Mbps. Higher speeds of 10 Gbps are becoming increasingly available for enterprises with demands for high traffic levels and low latencies. Fully meshed multipoint-to-multipoint layer 2 services require special equipment at both the provider and customer edges. For that reason, a transparent LAN solution is a managed service between all locations. The carrier will install a CE (customer edge) interface and provide the last mile connection between each of your locations and their core network.

With transparent LAN service, a PC on the West Coast is located right next to the printer on the East Coast. You can converge your networks so that you have voice, video and data all running on the same Ethernet network from coast to coast. You don’t have to make all of these WAN connections work, your managed service provider will take care of that. Even a huge network can be managed as if it were right there in your office building.

Does this sound like a service that would benefit your enterprise? If so, get more details and pricing for Transparent LAN Service with a simple online inquiry.

Why Managed MPLS Networking Services

Let’s say your company has offices located all across the country. Each location has its own private local area network , perhaps supporting computer networking, IP telephony, and video conferencing. As stand-alone facilities, things work great. But your enterprise is more than just a collection of geographically dispersed sites. It is an organization with a common mission and processes.

You decided long ago that you needed to integrate your network facilities to unify the company. There are big efficiency improvements to be gained by not having to support every function at every location. When employees across the country are electronically just as close as those down the hall, you can establish centers of excellence and marshal short term support when there are local overloads.

There’s also the opportunity to avoid toll charges on internal telephone calls when you put your phone system on your own network. That can amount to an enormous cost savings when there is regular communication between sites. Only when you need to go off net, or on to the public switched telephone system, do you pay for local telco lines and, perhaps, toll charges. You can decide whether it makes more sense to have local access at each location or consolidate your lines with ISDN PRI service or SIP trunking.

The trick becomes how to interconnect those far flung business sites. Most companies start out with dedicated point to point T1 lines and move up to faster services, such as Ethernet, DS3 or OC3, as the traffic levels increase. What gets lost in incrementally adding line after line is the opportunity to save cost on WAN network bandwidth. One day you find yourself with a huge portfolio of telecom line charges plus a considerable staff to manage your ad-hoc WAN network.

What’s better? Today’s answer is managed MPLS networking services. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is a “cloud” network designed specifically to link multiple locations with specific connections or in a fully meshed network. What characterizes a fully converged MPLS network is scalable bandwidth, privacy of connections, high reliability with fast response when issues do arise, a service footprint that covers all of your locations, and quality of service controls that ensure high performance for time sensitive applications like enterprise VoIP and real-time two-way video conferencing or telepresence.

That sounds like a tall order, but there are a number of top carriers who specialize in offering private networking services with nationwide footprints. It is even possible to include overseas offices through traffic exchange with carriers in foreign countries. Each of your sites is connected to the cloud through an appropriately sized dedicated access connection. From there the network operator programs your connections into the tag servers that manage network traffic. Even though your share the cloud with other customers, your bandwidth is guaranteed and your connections are private. For the ultimate in security, you can choose to encrypt your data during transit.

By turning your WAN network operations over to a MPLS networking carrier, you unload the burden of constant monitoring and network management, but you’ll also likely realize a significant cost savings. Will quality of service suffer? On the contrary, a top tier carrier has more resources at their disposal than you can afford to manage a nationwide network 24/7. They’ll also have far more bandwidth in their core network than makes sense for any single enterprise. That means you can grow your resources to match the growth in your business without incurring extensive construction delays every time you want to increase throughput between locations.

How do you find these high performance network providers? The best way is to go through a telecommunications broker who has a complete suite of carriers available to bid on your business. You can then feel confident that you are getting the best service at the best price, without having to develop the expertise and staff a group to search the industry. That’s all taken care of quickly and easily. How quickly and easily? Take literally a minute to enter an inquiry for managed MPLS networking services and an expert Telarus consultant will be at your service in no time at all.

Browser Based Video Conferencing and Webinars

Video conferencing, once limited to the corporate environment, is now available to anyone with a broadband connection and web browser. MegaMeeting has a new suite of products available for PCs, MACs and Linux computers that don’t require the usual downloads and installations. If you can browse a website, you can participate in a video conference or webinar.

MegaMeeting’s web-based video conferencing system takes advantage of the Flash Player 9 plug-in that is already installed in most Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers. If your computer has 256 MB of RAM and a 1.2 GHz or faster processor, it should work fine. You’ll also need an Internet connection with 240 Kbps bandwidth. That’s pretty much anything that dares to call itself broadband. In actuality, though, you’ll only be using 70 Kbps per video feed. Pretty easy requirements to meet, don’t you think?

A video camera isn’t required to be a participant, but if you have one, or can get a cheap one, you can be one of the 16 simultaneous video screens streaming in the conference. It’s just like one of those discussion shows on TV, but with a lot more screens. Unlike many competing services, MegaMeeting includes free Voice Over IP, so you get audio along with your video. No separate telephone calls are needed.

MegaMeeting’s product also scales from personal and small business use with 10 participants or fewer, on up to private branded enterprise solutions with the maximum number of attendees determines only by your available bandwidth and the number of seats purchased in your account. All of their plans offer unlimited video conferencing worldwide 24/7. Professional solutions support screen, application and desktop sharing plus PowerPoint presentations and computer sharing.

How much does all of this cost? Personal accounts start at under $50 a month. Professional accounts start at $15 a seat with a 3 seat minimum and get cheaper from there. Enterprise level solutions hosted on your own servers are appropriately priced, but considerably cheaper than alternative solutions.

Amazing Sonos S5 Wireless Whole House Music System

Remember record players? I didn’t think so. How about stereos? They were ubiquitous in every dorm room and then every apartment and home. Record players and stereos are yesterday’s news, but high quality music listening is alive and well. If you want the latest in high performance equipment, you need to be looking at the Sonos S5 wireless music system.




What’s wrong with stereos? Nothing, if the local FM stations or your old Edgar Winter vinyl is all you need. Oh, you’ve upgraded to CDs? Great. Can you still buy those things?

I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I only poke fun a these traditional music systems (my Electro-Voice speakers still take up most of the living room cabinets) to emphasize the advances introduced by Sonos in their ZonePlayer S5 wireless multi-room music system. Each of these devices looks something like a bookshelf loudspeaker. But behind the grill are 5 separate speakers. There are 2 tweeters, 2 mid-range drivers and 1 subwoofer, each with their own Class-D digital amplifiers. The rest of the electronics package is a wireless connection system that allows you to set as many of these as you want around the house and they’ll all play the same song or each can play something different.

What’s driving the music? Your electronic song collection on your computer. You can also tune-in Internet music services, such as Pandora, or choose from a huge selection of Internet radio stations. You simply connect one of the S5 units to your router with an Ethernet cable and the others will form a mesh network to get a wireless connection.

What’s even cooler is the iPhone app for Sonos. Your iPhone or iPod touch becomes a portable controller to select what music plays on which ZonePlayer. Sonos also sells a dedicated controller if you don’t have the necessary Apple gadgets. Or go without the controller and use your computer to run the show.

You’ll have a hard time believing just how different this system is without watching the video and reading through the descriptions. Take a few minutes and check out the amazing Sonos ZonePlayer Wireless Music System .

Merchant Account Credit Card Processing Made Easy

Credit card payment processing is essential to even the smallest businesses doing retail sales. You can make this easy or hard, so why not make it as painless as possible with support from one of the best credit card processing companies. Elite Processing Systems makes the complexity of electronic payments invisible, so you can focus on providing the goods and services that your customers want. They also go beyond the traditional credit card processing service to provide a complete suite of financial services for small businesses.

Somewhere along the line you may have heard of EPS or Elite Processing Systems. They’ve been in the business of providing merchants the capability of accepting credit, debit and EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) forms of payment for almost a decade. If you want to be able to accept credit card payments, your system needs to meet electronic security standards set by PCI or the Payment Card Industry. There’s really no need for you to become an expert in this field. EPS has already taken the necessary steps to ensure that all of their merchants are PCI Complaint. They’ll provide you with the right supplies, point of sale terminal equipment and support to ensure your success from the very start. You’ll have access to 24 hour U.S. based support, including technical support, at all times.

You know that not all of your customers have or want credit cards, even at this late date. Their comfort zone is writing checks to manage their money. That can present a serious risk to merchants who don’t have the ability to verify that the funds are really available. Elite Processing Systems works with Telecheck to let you accept checks and immediately verify funds electronically. Save yourself the anxiety of having to take those checks to the bank and wait for them to clear, only to find that there is a problem. Know immediately if that check is good or not.

Most credit card processing companies limit their services to point of sale payment solutions. Elite Processing Systems goes beyond that to support your business operations in other ways. For instance, they also offer a cost effect payroll processing system that keeps your payroll information confidential. Additional services include life insurance, health insurance, disability and simple IRA plans.

Elite also has a service available for cash advance funding. You know how tough it is to get a bank loan these days. Elite Processing Systems can set you up with Merchant Money, Ltd. cash advances based on your credit card processing future receivables. You get cash up front. Funds are taken back through your credit card sales in your merchant processing account. That helps you meet payroll, purchase inventory, pay taxes and fund your marketing campaigns without having to worry what mood the bankers are in this month.

Credit Card Processing by Elite Processing Systems a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. Walnut Creek CA.

Fiber Optic Communications Without The Fiber

It’s generally acknowledged that we are eventually going to run out of bandwidth capability using twisted pair copper. We’re in serious danger of running out of wireless bandwidth now. The FCC is already scouring the spectrum, looking for underutilized frequencies that can be assigned to wireless broadband. Will technology soon grind to a halt because we’ve used up all the spectral natural resources? Not if we see the light!

Radio frequencies are truly in limited supply. The lower frequencies don’t have as much value because the lower the frequency, the lower the information carrying capacity. The higher portions of the electromagnetic spectrum are also limited because they can be expensive to deploy and have shorter range propagation characteristics. WiFi is pretty much tapped out for broadband. That trusty WiFi router isn’t up to transporting HDTV. But your reading light might be.

In a development that is somewhere between odd and ingenious, German researchers are looking at piggybacking digital signal transmission on normal household lighting. If it works it could easily be expanded to office and factory environments as well.

So, do you just plug your modem into your desk lamp, or what? As you might expect, the types of lighting we’re using now aren’t worth much for data transmission. The intensity of incandescent light varies so slowly that we don’t get flicker even from 60 Hz light dimmers that chop up the power line voltage. Fluorescent isn’t much more responsive, but LED lighting sure is.

LEDs have been used as cheap substitutes for lasers in short range fiber optic links. They are the ubiquitous transmitter for television and other remote controls. Those use infrared LEDs, so you can’t see the transmission. The amount of data transmitted to change channels or volume is also nearly trivial. But that’s no ding against LEDs. As solid state devices, they are capable of very high modulation rates. What we need now is a combination of high power LEDs with the optimum color for room lighting at low enough prices that people will use them to replace the hot incandescent bulbs or compact fluorescent lights they have now.

This may be a technology of the future, but I’ll bet it’s the near future. Everybody is using CFLs now. You can find them for as little as a dollar each in the big box stores. I remember a few years ago when they went for $10 or $20 and were only being bought by early adopters. LEDs are on a similar learning curve. Those on sale in retail stores are as pricy as the early compact fluorescents. They also seem to be much lower in light output than equivalent size bulbs. But that’s going to change, and fast, as manufacturing scales up and new designs come on the market.

Don’t be surprised if your next wireless router is really a desk or ceiling lamp. The hall lights might act as repeaters to send the signal around corners. Current research has the bandwidth up to 230 Mbps with expectations to double that with upgraded terminal equipment. That’s fast enough for today’s high bandwidth applications. Further research will likely increase bandwidths into Gbps territory, perhaps enabling 1000 Mbps wireless links to computers using LEDs and photodiodes. GigE to the desktop with no wires? It could happen... sooner than you think.

How Telarus GeoScan Finds Better Network Deals

The nation’s premier telecom brokerage service, Telarus, Inc., is introducing an advanced telecom carrier research tool to its family of proprietary software-based services. The new GeoScan enables Telarus consultants to better search and refine carrier service offerings for clients. By making the search and evaluation process more sophisticated, Telarus agents can ferret out the closest matching offers for a particular set of applications.

Why is such a tool needed? After all, the patented GeoQuote process already leads the industry in its ability to find and organize dozens of competing services from a plethora of carriers. What’s happened is an embarrassment of riches for Telarus. As the company’s reputation has grown in the industry, more and more carriers have requested to be included in the Telarus search results. On top of that, the telecom industry itself is undergoing a major transformation from switched circuit services to packet switched networks worldwide.

Within the last few years, the venerable T1 line, DS3 connection, and SONET/SDH fiber optic carriers have been challenged by Metro Ethernet services with scalable bandwidths from 3 Mbps through 10 Gbps. Include SIP trunking, wireless last mile links, and MPLS networks and you have an order of magnitude, at least, multiplication in the variety of service offerings available to businesses and organizations. It’s a deluge of options that can easily overwhelm the time-honored quote methods used by most telecom agents.

Telarus saw this coming when they refined their GeoQuote system to electronically connect with carrier databases and then assemble a list of appropriate quotes instantly. But a database connection can deliver a fire hose stream of data that’s hard to analyze at a glance for the best opportunities. That’s where the value of GeoScan shines. With this additional tool, Telarus agents can specify parameters such as the max MRC per location, the type of product and term for each circuit. That allows them to mine the data to find the particular service deals that are exact matches to a customer’s requirements.

Today’s business environment is more highly focused on productivity than ever before. That’s resulting in more sophisticated computer processes linking an ever increasing number of physical locations including overseas offices and factories. To keep up, telecom service providers have to step up their own processes to quickly analyze a prospective customer's needs and generate accurate quotes. They also need to be able to rapidly modify options to try “what ifs” and deal with a customer’s dynamically changing requirements.

This is where Telarus shines as the next generation of telecom brokers. They have the tools to tackle large and complex situations and the carrier relationships to offer the best-fit solutions available. This process scales from small businesses such as insurance or real estate offices up through major medical centers and Fortune 500 companies. The tools and the consultants can service any serious business opportunity that comes their way.

Could your company benefit from a complementary review of your voice, data and video networking needs? It’s free, of course, and you’ll likely be surprised by the variety of service options that you didn’t even know exist. Why not give it a try? Take just a minute and tell Telarus about your applications. It will be well worth your while.

Trunk Calls Soothe Lonely Elephants

The introduction of the smartphone, especially the Apple iPhone, began the mad dash to create applications or apps for everything. Lost? Can’t speak the language? Want to find a good ethnic restaurant? There are apps for all those things. But what if your elephant is sad and lonely? Is there an app for that?

Actually, you don’t need any high tech special applications. A regular cell phone with speakerphone capability will do just fine. That’s what they used to calm and reassure two Bengal elephants that had been given to the Okinawa Zoo in Japan. Once the elephants had been relocated and their trainers, or mahouts, returned to India, the homesick elephants became depressed and hard to control. What to do?

The Japanese handlers made quick calls to the mahouts familiar to Devi and Rahul, the lonely elephants. Sure enough, as soon as they started receiving commands from familiar voices, the elephants perked right up. One of the mahouts even sings folk songs to them, according to the story reported in The Times of India. There’s no mention of the elephants joining in the singing, although they certainly could if they wanted to.

The clever Japanese officials of the Okinawa Zoo also found a way to limit the cost of all those long distance calls to India. No, they didn’t Skype the elephant exhibit. What they did do is record the mahout’s voice over the phone so they can play it back whenever Devi or Rahul need a little boost in spirit.

It seems that elephants are more like us than we thought. They form natural societies in the wild, with the older matriarchs looking after the youngsters and teaching them the lay of the land. Knowing where the water holes are during the dry season is truly a matter of life and death. Elephants rescue other elephants in trouble and grieve the way we do when one of the herd dies.

Do elephants have emotions? You bet they do. They trumpet with delight when they recognize another elephant they haven’t seen in years. They get depressed when left alone. Indian elephants bond with the human mahouts who raise them and, as they story shows, can recognize and respond to their voices even through the decidedly low fidelity connection of a mobile phone.

So how does this apply if you don’t happen to have an elephant in your care? There are others who will also respond with delight to the sound of a loved one they haven’t heard from in awhile. How about your mom? It is Mother’s Day this Sunday... and you do have a phone!

Two Routes to Virtual Private Networking

Virtual Private Networks or VPNs have become the preferred solution for connecting multiple business locations. What’s caused this migration from private ad-hoc point to point connections is cost and ease of maintenance. By partnering with a managed service provider, you can have the benefits of secure multipoint communication without having to staff up or pay exorbitant monthly line lease fees.

Virtual private networking is in the clouds. The question is which type of cloud to choose? You can implement your VPN solution using the public Internet. You can also choose to go totally private for higher performance.

The Internet based VPN is where the term virtually private got started. Everybody knows that there is little private about the Internet. It connects everyone, everywhere with nothing in the way of assured performance or data security. What the Internet has going for it is economy of scale. The monstrous size and diverse connection methods mean that broadband connections are fairly cheap at the consumer level and reasonably priced for dedicated business access with a service level agreement.

What about those security issues? It seems like any data you put on the network is subject to interception by those who could do you harm. It’s not even safe to connect a PC to the Internet without installing virus blocking software first. Some tests have shown that it takes only a matter of minutes to browse the Web with an unprotected computer to have it become infected by compromised sites or malicious messages.

Yet, we use the Internet every day for such sensitive applications as banking and shopping. The key to keeping your data secure is encryption. Establishing encrypted links through the Internet is called “tunneling.” You create a private tunnel through a public thoroughfare. Your network connection isn’t private, but it is virtually private.

Another form of virtual private networking is provided by privately run network clouds, such as Frame Relay or MPLS. These networks strictly limit access to paying customers. They are also managed to establish only those connections that you specify. Because you are sharing the network cloud with other users, your connections are described as virtually private rather than private line. They offer a high level of security, but may also be encrypted to provide an even higher level of guaranteed privacy.

Private networks offer assured performance, especially in the critical areas of latency and jitter that are important for VoIP telephone and real-time video. The Internet is offered with “best effort” performance, but generally lower costs. How do you choose the right solution for your application? Perhaps the best answer is the obvious one. Get price and performance quotes on competing solutions and recommendations from experts before choosing. That’s all made easy with a quick Virtual Private Networking inquiry at AffordableVPN.com. You’ll get a fast reply and the support you need to make the right VPN decision.

Ethernet Connections To The World

If there was any doubt that Ethernet has moved from beyond the LAN to encompass the world, it should be settled by the establishment of first Carrier Ethernet Exchange, CENX, and the carriers that are connecting their networks to it.

What is CENX? It is the world’s first neutral exchange provider specializing in Carrier Ethernet services. CENX provides interconnect services that link carrier networks in the United States and around the world. What this does is give independent Ethernet based carriers access to each other’s networks and customers, so that voice, data and video packets can be transferred efficiently from anywhere to anywhere.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the idea of international connectivity was first established with the telegraph and telephone companies more than a century ago. You don’t think twice about being able to direct dial anyone, anywhere in the world, even from your cell phone. The Internet is a digital example of the same idea. Large network operators connect to each other at designed peering points to exchange data. Without peering, either one company would have to own and operate the Internet or there would be only local and regional connectivity.

Carriers can always make their own individual deals with other carriers to exchange traffic, but the emergence of CENX makes this process easier and more efficient. Interested carriers meet at strategic interconnection points called “carrier hotels” to get connected to the CENX service. Carrier hotels are also called colocation centers and are in-demand by businesses that want to locate their servers and other network equipment in close proximity to a multitude of carrier services. Often, you can get the best bandwidth prices at the “colo” due to competition and the trivial construction needed to connect with the carrier of your choice.

Carrier Ethernet Exchange is just getting started. CENX has three connection points operational in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. London is expected to come online in June. They have a partnership with Interxion, a provider of colocation data center services in Europe with 27 data centers in 11 European countries. CENX presence in Asia, South Africa, Australia and South America is under development.

What carriers are connecting to CENX? Big ones, including XO Communications, Verizon and Level 3 Communications. Ethernet connections to CENX now exceed 5 million locations, likely just the tip of what will be a Carrier Ethernet iceberg. Why? Carrier Ethernet offers advantages of point to point and multipoint network connections using the same protocol that’s the universal standard for local networking. Bandwidth scales easily from 1 Mbps to 10 Gbps with many granular levels offers by Ethernet carriers. In many cases, Metro Ethernet is the low cost solution. Now it has the opportunity to be the worldwide low cost connectivity solution.

Does your business have a need to connect with locations nationwide or internationally? If so, you should get a competitive pricing quote for Ethernet service to see just how much bandwidth you can get for your budget. You may be pleasantly surprised by the result.

The Incredible DROID INCREDIBLE

Android phones continue to increase their capabilities with an eye to unseating the king of the smartphone hill, the Apple iPhone. The latest and arguable the greatest entry in the Google vs Apple wars in the DROID INCREDIBLE.

Incredible it is. This HTC phone for Verizon Wireless implements the Android 2.1 operating system. You can customize your INCREDIBLE with thousands of apps and widgets from the Android marketplace. What’s inside this phone will also have you saying, “that’s incredible!”

Let’s start with the 8 Megapixel digital camera and camcorder. This resolution is approaching the best you’ll find in dedicated digital cameras of about the same size. This one has auto-focus and a 2x power LED flash. There’s integrated GPS to tag the location of your photos. Instantly share your photos and videos via multimedia messaging and by posting to social media sites.

You have Web access with a full HTML browser and fast 3G Internet service via Verizon’s EVDO Rev A network. The processing power of the phone won’t slow you down either. It sports a 1 GHz Snapdragon Processor with 8 GB internal flash memory. Your color display is a 3.7 inch AMOLED touch screen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The HTC Sense user interface and your photos and video will look spectacular on this high definition screen.

This is both a work phone and a personal entertainment phone. You can view Microsoft document attachments in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. When you’re not otherwise occupied trying to put bread on the table, you’ve got a built-in FM radio, MP3 player and streaming video capability. Stay connected with friends and colleagues through texts, emails, Tweets, and Facebook messages. HTC sense will organize them all for you. You can even Sync to Microsoft Exchange email for that corporate connectivity.

Does this sound like an incredible smartphone to you? If so, learn more and order your HTC DROID INCREDIBLE for Verizon Wireless at a deep discount online.

You can also peruse the current special offers at Cell Phone Plan Finder for just the right phone to meet your needs and your budget. Don’t forget to check out the free cell phones before you buy anything.

Free Cell Phones Galore

I’m looking at two Web pages full of cell phones, 26 of them in all. They’re supported by wireless service from the major cellular carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. These phones are of all different types and retail prices, but they have one important thing in common. They’re free of charge.



Oh, sure. Every cell phone store has a few dog phones that they can’t move, so they offer them free to get shoppers in the place. They’re usually something that went obsolete last year. How is this any different?

Well, let’s take look and see what kind of free phones you can get. Do you like BlackBerry phones? I see a BlackBerry Bold 9700 Black, a BlackBerry Curve 8520 Black and a BlackBerry Curve 8900 Silver. Take your pick. You can get them free when you order your phone with AT&T wireless service at the same price you’d pay anywhere else. Oh, they won’t give you a free BlackBerry? Then you better come to Cell Phone Plan Finder and check out the Free Phones page.

Here are some more BlackBerry deals. Get the BlackBerry 8530 in black or violet with Verizon Wireless service. Or choose the BlackBerry Storm 9530 Black, the BlackBerry Storm2 9550 Black or BlackBerry Tour 9630 Black. They’re all free when you order them with Verizon Wireless service.

The DROID ERIS by HTC is a popular smartphone. It’s free. So’s the Motorola DEVOUR Silver, the Nokia Nuron 5230, The T-Mobile Sidekick LX Brown, the Motorola Cliq XT with MOTOBLUR and the Motorola BACKFLIP with MOTOBLUR. All free.

Some other favorites include the LG Neon Blue, LG Xenon Red, Samsung Strive in black or purple, LG Rumor 2 in black titanium, vibrant blue or orange. How about a Samsung M330 Silver, Nokia 2720 Black, Samsung M240 Silver or Nokia 2720 Blue. They all have one thing in common. They’re free if you know where to get them. Here’s a hint: Cell Phone Plan Finder.

You’ve been craving a new cell phone. Why pay when you can get it free. Plus by ordering online there’s no standing in line or waiting around while your phone is activated. These phones are shipped free to your door, ready to be used. So what are you waiting for? Shop and compare free cell phones now, because free is soooo much better than paying.