Cloud Recovery Mirrors Your Servers and Data

Redundancy is a time honored way to protect what is valuable, especially what you need to run a business. That’s why we do periodic backups. You just never know when those flying heads are going to crash into the disk platter and destroy thousands, even millions of dollars worth of valuable data. But how about the entire operation of your business? Do you have that protected?

Just having a backup disk in the company safe won’t be much help if your servers smoke or a tornado comes along and leaves nothing but a concrete pad where your building once stood. With so much of most businesses depending on computer automation, it makes sense to replicate everything. All you need is a completely duplicate IT infrastructure.

Sounds good, but where do you come up with the capital to replicate your server rooms, applications, complete data set in real time, and the glue that ties all this together? Relax, you don’t really have to. Qwest will take now take care of that for you.

What’s new is Qwest Real-Time Application Recovery. It’s a partnership with Geminare, a company that has pioneered RaaS or Recovery as a Service. Qwest has the WAN network structure and robust data centers to host a copy of your business. Geminare has the technology to make the process seamless to the user.

One thing you don’t need is a big capital budget. In fact, you don’t need any additional hardware on-site at all. This is a cloud based service that’s fully managed by Qwest. They replicate your servers, applications and data on a real-time basis. When disaster strikes, availability to access your data and applications continues uninterrupted. Your office building can be blown away, flooded or burned down. The business goes on as if nothing ever happened. Thus is the magic of the cloud.

How do you pay for this? There’s a monthly fee for the service. For that you get automatic failover, continued access to applications and data, immediate remote operational capability, complete data protection, platform and application support, real-time disaster recovery tests and 24/7 support. There’s near-zero down time, no capital expense, no technological lock-in and no administrative costs. Qwest takes care of all those details. It’s like they are a duplicate IT center that you rent by the month.

Is cloud recovery something that could mean the difference between staying in business or going under in the event of a major disaster? Is it worth what it costs when you consider the implication of lost business or the capital and operating expense of doing this yourself? Why not find out quickly and easily. Get competitive quotes on cloud recovery, networking and other services now. Don’t wait until you are in real trouble. It would be too late then.

Enterprise SIP Trunking Consolidates Phone Lines

How long has it been since you took a good hard look at your telephone network? No, not just reviewing the bills for outrageous long distance usage or lines that are no longer in use. Have you taken a look recently at the map of where your phones are and how they connect to each other and the outside world?

If your organization has more than a single location, you may well have developed a spider’s web of connections that are costing you a pretty penny every month. This is especially true if your company has grown by acquisition. Whatever you have set up at headquarters is no doubt completely different from the configuration at other sites. What you have in front of you is a terrific opportunity to save money and perhaps even improve service.

I’ll suggest starting with a clean piece of paper. Draw a little circle for each of your sites, assuming there are only a few to a few dozen. This will work for any number of locations, but no need to burn through pencils trying to map them. What you want to do is draw a line that goes from location to location and back to headquarters in something resembling a circle. This will be your converged network for voice, data and even video. From there you make redundant connections to your service providers. You’ll need a couple of connections even if you have a single provider, just for a safety failover. What are you staring at now? A big cost savings, that’s what.

What I’m describing is a networking system that makes sense for medium and large scale organizations. XO communications, a highly rated competitive carrier, calls this “Enterprise SIP Trunking.” They lay out the details in their white paper on “SIP Trunking for the Enterprise”.

So what’s special about a SIP trunk and why are you missing out if you don’t have one? The idea is simple. SIP or Session Initiation Protocol is the switching language for VoIP telephone system. In small systems it is so integrated into the product that you may not even know it’s there. But for enterprise level users, what you want to do is integrate the technology of SIP trunking into your local and wide area networks. That gives you the ability to use a single network for both telephone and data transfer. One network instead of two is where the cost savings start.

The other opportunity for cost savings is to consolidate your phone connections to the outside world and stop using the public telephone network to make calls between locations. Every time you go off your network and onto the public phone system you pay a toll. It may only amount to pennies at a time, but all those internal calls will wind up generating a considerable phone bill at the end of the month.

You are also paying a pretty penny to have separate phone lines at each location. You need enough lines for each site to ensure that calls always get through. That means that most of the time you have lines sitting idle that you pay for anyway. Meanwhile, another site just got a huge burst of traffic and customers are hearing busy signals because all of those lines are in use. Wouldn’t it make more sense to create a pool of outside lines and share them among locations? That way the sites that have bursts of traffic will get the lines they need and the sites not needing those lines won’t be hoarding them just in case they’re needed.

What XO recommends is creating a MPLS-VPN network that securely connects all of your locations for voice, data and video. All phone calls within offices and between locations stay on your own network, so you don’t pay per-minute toll charges. Calls to and from outside parties go through an IP-PBX system at headquarters or a hosted PBX system at your service provider. This system assigns all of the outside lines as needed.

Does SIP Trunking make sense as a cost saver for your business or organization? Regardless of size or number of locations, there are probably ways you can save on your telecommunications costs while maintaining quality of service. Discuss your situation with one of our friendly Enterprise VoIP consultants at no charge and see what other opportunities are available to you. You’re likely to be pleasantly surprised by the results.

Are You A Sentio Being?

You are a perceptive individual, the kind who senses when technology is on the move. You always want to be in the game. You know when the price point is right to get the greatest value from your purchase. That time is now. Enter the LG Sentio, a high-value free smartphone.

How can high value and free go together? It’s partly a matter of jumping into a technical advance at the right time and partly knowing where to shop. Shop online and you’ll be surprised at how much technology you can get for your dollar.

Let’s take a look at the slim and stylish LG Sentio for T-Mobile. This is a 3G touchscreen phone with a 3 Megapixel digital camera that can capture and send video as well as stills. It has integrated GPS support for location-based services like TeleNav and Google Maps. Social networking is also built-in so you can track Facebook, MySpace and Twitter while you are on the move.

What’s different about this smartphone, compared to touchscreen models in the same class, is that the Sentio comes preloaded with fun widgets. You’ll get Need For Speed, Guitar Hero 5, Bubble Bash 2, Millionaire, and Pac-Man ready to use. When you get tired of those, download other games, ringtones and graphics from the mobile Web.

Something else that comes with your Sentio is an international charger. Why would they include on of those? Well, you might just be traveling internationally and need to top off your battery from time to time. Many phone are useless overseas because they don’t work on the international cellular networks. This one is set up for T-Mobile and is compatible with the GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 and UMTS 1700 and 2100 bands. It has HSDPA and EDGE data download speeds, depending on just what is available where you happen to be.

As one who must stay connected, you’ll be happy to know that the included email client supports POP, IMAP, SMTP and Web-based email services like AOL, Yahoo, Windows Live and Gmail. You can instant message with AIM, MSN Live and Yahoo services. Of course, standard SMS messaging is also available. So is multimedia messaging for sending pictures and video messages.

Need to kick back with some tunes? The built-in MP3 player will oblige. It handles MP2, AAC, AAC+ eAAC+, WMA and MPEG4 formats. You also have the option to stream stereo music to and from compatible A2DP Bluetooth devices.

Do you sense a high value opportunity here? If so, learn more and order your LG Sentio for T-Mobile Wireless now. If you wish to keep on shopping, you can browse by carrier or check out today’s specials for free and low cost cell phones at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

Telephony In The Cloud

Thinking about cloud networking, what normally comes to mind is meshed data networks transferring packets from location to location. But some companies are also moving their telephone services to the cloud. What advantages and challenges does this present?

In a way, the original public switched telephone network is the oldest existing example of a cloud network. It is a managed system, carefully engineered to assure availability and quality of service, that serves a vast number of users simultaneously. Each customer connects to the cloud via a direct line to the nearest cloud port at the local central office. Users don’t really care to know what goes on in those vast switching offices. They just want to be able to make a call from one location to another at will.

Some companies engineer their own telephone cloud networks using ISDN PRI digital lines to connect PBX systems at multiple offices. The advantage of doing this compared to using the public network is that you don’t have to pay for each call. Only those calls to and from the outside world are subject to a fee.

The more modern approach is to set up converged voice and data networks between business locations so that only one network need be maintained. MPLS networks are often used to implement this cloud network, as they are capable of maintaining quality of service at reasonable cost. On a large scale, this is known as enterprise VoIP. There may be only one IP PBX system at headquarters that coordinates all calls, or each location may have a smaller system. ISDN PRI trunk lines connect to the public telephone network for off-net calls.

SIP Trunking offers an alternative to the ISDN PRI trunk lines for transporting voice traffic. A SIP trunk is part of the VoIP system and acts as the network connection to a remote service provider. That service provider handles termination of calls to the public phone system as needed. Since they terminate calls for many customers, per minute costs can be lower than ordering phone lines locally.

Some companies go even further and get all their telephone services from the cloud. All they have is individual SIP telephones or analog phones with adaptors connected to their company LAN. A private line connection or SIP trunk connects to what is called a virtual PBX system at the service provider. It handles all telephone switching, on-net and off. This system is ideally suited to “virtual” companies that don’t have a bricks and mortar presence. The employees are scattered over a wide geographical area. Thanks to the virtual PBX, they are interconnected just like they would be within a physical office building. Even the receptionist is virtual, routing incoming calls by voice or keypad requests.

Would a cloud networking approach help your company improve productivity while reducing costs? You can find out with a simple inquiry to an expert consultant regarding enterprise VoIP telephone services.

Insatiable Demand For Ethernet Bandwidth

Not so long ago, 10 Gbps was considered an enormous amount of bandwidth. So enormous that it only made sense for carrier backbone networks. Not anymore. Now enterprises are gobbling up that much WAN bandwidth and looking for more.

Who could possibly require 10 Gbps, short of an Internet service provider or MPLS network operator? Financial services, streaming entertainment media and medical campus connectivity are three applications on the cutting edge of high bandwidth demand, as reported in Carrier Ethernet News. How much more would they like? Some are licking their chops at 40 Gbps and even 100 Gbps.

How can a carrier keep up? Make no mistake about it, competitive service providers are in a scramble to make sure they have enough capacity to supply this burgeoning demand for higher and higher bandwidths. The once impressive T1 line is now considered a small business service. DS3 still hangs on for medium size business applications. OCx SONET, recently the darling of large enterprises, is starting to see its flame flicker on the way out. What’s happening is more than a simple escalation of bandwidth requirements. It’s a wholesale move from legacy telecom services to Ethernet connectivity.

Why Ethernet? There are a couple of strong forces at work nudging WAN bandwidth suppliers in the direction of offering Ethernet rather than some other type of connection. The first is a realization that analog telephony, the impetus behind the buildout of the massive PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network), is now the smallest piece of the bandwidth pie. It’s the PSTN standards of T-Carrier & SONET that created the digital WAN services that have been pressed into service for data packet transport. The big piece of the pie is digital data and biggest piece of that pie is video.

No only are data packets the predominant information that needs to be moved from one place to another, but the networks generating those data packets are nearly all based on Ethernet. Why switch to something else just to get from one Ethernet network to another?

That’s what many carriers have concluded. Their new state of the art national and international networks are all designed to transport Ethernet packets. Those packets may represent voice from enterprise VoIP telephone systems, video conferencing or video streaming, medical images, or data file transfers. Interfacing and management of Ethernet bandwidth is more compatible with local area networks running Ethernet, but that’s not all. In most cases, Ethernet bandwidth is cheaper on a Mbps or Gbps basis than any other service.

How much cheaper? That depends on what facilities are available in your location more than anything. If you have competitive Ethernet services available, it’s not uncommon to get twice the bandwidth for the same money or keep the bandwidth you have now and get a big cost savings.

Can you ignore the Ethernet revolution? Only at the peril of your budget! It’s quick and easy to see what Ethernet bandwidth services are available for your business location. Why not take just a minute and put in a request for services and pricing now?

MPLS VPN Access Solutions

You’re convinced that an MPLS networking solution is the answer to connecting your geographically diverse business locations. But just how are you going to connect to the MPLS cloud from all those locations?

What you need is individual access networks for each location that will connect to the ingress tag router serving that geographical area. Right now the most popular connection technology is the venerable T1 line. Why? Because T1 lines are almost universally available, highly reliable, private, symmetrical, and relatively high bandwidth. Relatively means 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. For many businesses that exchange data files and even some voice traffic, this may be enough line speed. That’s especially true for branch offices and retail locations that simply need to connect to headquarters. But some applications may be limited by a 1.5 Mbps ceiling.

The next thing you can do is take advantage of T1 bonding to increase access line speed. T1 lines are readily combined, or bonded, to double, triple or otherwise expand bandwidth. There’s a practical limit of around 10 or 12 Mbps for this approach, but that can be more than adequate for many needs. Even video and medical image transmission can get by with this level of bandwidth as long as demands aren’t too high.

What if you need higher bandwidth levels to access your MPLS network? DS3 is still a good intermediate level solution at 45 Mbps. It’s a mature technology and available in many areas, no not nearly as prolific as T1 when you get beyond the metropolitan and suburban cores.

How about Ethernet as an access solution? Metro and Carrier Ethernet services are highly popular for a number of reasons. First, costs are often lower and sometimes much lower than traditional last mile connections for the amount of bandwidth you are ordering. For instance, it is not uncommon to get 3 Mbps Ethernet service for the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. 10 Mbps Ethernet is probably the most popular choice for new connections. It is priced attractively and available in most metro areas.

Another feature of Ethernet access services are that they are readily scalable up to the capability of the installed port. You may well start out at 3 Mbps but then find you need to double or triple that as business activity picks up at a particular location. No problem. A simple phone call to your service provider may be all you need to get that location upgraded. That can happen rapidly and independently of connection speeds at other locations.

If you are originating and terminating Ethernet packets, it only makes sense to use Ethernet connections to access the MPLS network. The network itself can easily transport Ethernet as well as other protocols. This gives you the option to keep everything in the Ethernet protocol and perhaps even create a multi-location LAN for ease of network management.

Higher bandwidth access connections, such as DS3 or Fast Ethernet, require fiber optic connections. With your building lit for fiber, you may be able to scale your bandwidth up to OC3, OC12, or OC48 SONET levels or GigE and 10 GigE Ethernet.

What type of MPLS VPN access connections do you need to support your multiple locations? Explore the complete range of options available to you now as MPLS VPN Access Solutions.

Cloud Networking Services Extend Business Footprint

If you have a single office in a single city, you may have need for cloud computing or hosted PBX, aka telephony in the cloud. But chances are your communications needs are more about connecting to a service provider’s cloud than requiring a cloud of your own. It’s quite different for companies with multiple business locations. Cloud networking services are just what you need to interconnect two or more locations so they can act as one.

What is cloud networking? It is the use of public or private networks that connect geographically diverse sites on a one to one, one to many or many to many basis. The Internet is a cloud. So are privately run MPLS networks and their Frame Relay predecessors. You can even create your own cloud, if you like. You do this by leasing dedicated lines between locations and setting up your own routing scheme to determine how locations may communicate.

In fact, the ad-hoc private network is how many growing businesses get started with multi-location connections. They start off with a T1 point to point data line that connects their main office to a branch site. As more offices or retail locations are added, more lines are connected. At some point, you are dealing with a spider’s web of private lines that need constant management and are costing a small fortune.

This is where cloud networks shine. The idea behind the cloud is that costs are amortized by users sharing the resources of the cloud. Each user is required to provide a connection from each of their desired locations to the cloud network. The connections between locations and the transport of voice, data or video through the shared portion of the network is the responsibility of the cloud. The name “cloud” comes from the convention of drawing this shared network in the shape of a cumulus cloud. It signifies that you don’t manage what goes on in there. That’s someone else’s job.

Actually, you do need to be concerned about what’s going on in that cloud even though you don’t directly operate or control it. You don’t want your valuable information damaged or intercepted during the transport process. Take the biggest cloud in the world, the Internet. It has the advantages of being near universally available and relatively cheap to use. But the Internet also has the disadvantages of being a “best effort” service with no guaranteed performance parameters and enough security concerns to give you pause. How can anyone use the Internet for serious business applications?

In some cases you can’t. Two-way real-time applications have a tough time with the unpredictable performance that is inherent in the design of the Internet cloud. But it still works just fine for Web access, email, small scale data backup to remote servers, and one-way video that is properly buffered. In fact, your business probably needs access to the Internet just to communicate with customers, place orders or do research. If you are going to send sensitive business data between locations using the Internet cloud, however, you’ll need to protect yourself by encrypting those packets so they can’t be read by unintended parties. That process is called tunneling. The overall connection is called IP VPN. VPN, meaning Virtual Private Network.

If the internet is too flakey or scary to support your business, the cloud you’ll be most interested in is called MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. This is a privately run network with a regional or nationwide footprint. The combination of private ownership and proprietary technology means that performance can be guaranteed and security is inherently better than the public Internet. That’s why MPLS networks are also called MPLS VPN networks, even without packet encryption. Of course you can still encrypt your data to add even more security... something of a belt and suspenders approach.

A specialized type of cloud networking is telephone service. Instead of hooking all your phones with individual lines to the local phone company or managing an in-house PBX system, you connect your phones to the cloud using SIP trunks. This is also called hosted PBX. Users that all connect to the same cloud may communicate over this private network. When you need to make or receive calls with the general public, those calls are connected to the public telephone network by the service provider.

Can your company benefit from cloud networking or better cloud services? It’s fast and easy to find out. Just take a second and put in an inquiry for availability and pricing of competitive cloud networking services.

Samsung Intercept Brings Free Android Smartphone to Sprint

There’s a new design that’s becoming a standard in the smartphone market. It’s the combination of a 3 inch touch screen display with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the Android operating system. Sprint gets this package in the Samsung Intercept. Would you like to intercept one online? What if you knew it was available free? Would that make a difference?

It’s truly amazing that you can get a phone with these capabilities free of charge when you order it online with new Sprint PCS service. Even the shipping is free. You don’t pay a premium for the service, either. The plans are priced the same as they are in stores.

Here are some of the highlights that emphasize what a deal the Samsung Intercept M910 really is. It starts with the large 3 inch touch screen display. This gives you the ability to select from a wealth of Android apps and run your application on a space large enough to make it usable and enjoyable. You’ll enjoy streaming multimedia on the go. Watch live TV and video on demand with full motion video and vivid sound.

What kind of connectivity can you expect to make that streaming video a pleasant experience? You’ll connect at 3G data speeds where available on the Sprint PCS network. You also have the option of connecting to wireless hotspot networks with the WiFi connectivity in this phone. No all smartphones give you WiFi connectivity, so be sure to look for it if you want to use this capability.

Messaging is obviously a high point of this design. The slide-out QWERTY keyboard lets you enter your messages efficiently by pressing actual physical keys and getting that tactile feedback you don’t enjoy when tapping your fingers on glass. In addition to standard text messaging, you can send and receive picture and video messages with multimedia messaging. The built-in camera offers 3.2 Megapixels to give you photos good enough to print as well as share via messaging. You can also capture video with this camera.

Other features of note for the Samsung Intercept include integrated GPS support for location-based services like Google Maps. Bluetooth for hands free conversation is included, as well as stereo Bluetooth so you can stream to your music to A2DP compatible devices, like wireless stereo headphones. Visual voicemail is a new feature. You can listen to your voicemail messages in any order and easily manage your inbox without calling-in.

The Intercept is a great work phone as well as a personal cellphone. It supports viewing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that come in as email attachments. The included Web browser offers full HTML capability. Email capability includes Microsoft Direct Push as well as mobile email like Gmail and Yahoo!

Does this make your current cell phone seem like something from a generation ago? You needn’t suffer with inadequate functionality when you can get a high performance Android smartphone like this for free. Note: This phone is also available in a satin pink finish. Learn more and get your Samsung Intercept for Sprint or other high performance smartphone. There are many models available and most are free or offered at a tremendous discount through Cell Phone Plans Finder.

Voice And Data On One Line

Nearly all businesses today have a need for both telephone and broadband Internet service. Most businesses installed telephone first and Internet later. That’s led to a mix of line services to meet specific needs. Is there a better solution?

Today’s digital technology allows you to have both telephone service and broadband Internet access coming in on a single line. That often offers considerable cost savings over two separate services. But what about quality of service?

You might cringe at the thought of combined telephone and Internet if you’ve had a bad experience with VoIP over residential broadband. Usually it’s the phone service that suffers. Voices get garbled, you may hear an echo on the line, people start talking over each other with a delay in the speech, and calls can even be dropped. That’s what can happen when you just plug a VoIP phone or adaptor into a shared broadband service with uncontrolled bandwidth.

There are much better solutions available for business users. VoIP telephony can sound excellent and be as stable as traditional analog telephony. The trick is to carefully engineer the line to ensure adequate bandwidth, jitter, latency and voice packet priority.

A service called Integrated T1 does just this. A single T1 line with 1.5 Mbps dedicated bandwidth in both directions connects the business location to the service provider. There are no other users sharing this line. A specialized router called an Integrated Access Device converts analog telephony signals to digital packets. Those voice packets are assigned a portion of the line bandwidth to ensure they don’t get overwhelmed by data packets from Web sites and other Internet services. This bandwidth is assigned dynamically. As more phones are in use, more bandwidth is reserved for phone calls. When calls hang up, that bandwidth is reassigned for broadband Internet access.

Integrated T1 service works best for smaller businesses that need 6 to 12 phone lines plus modest broadband Internet service. It is possible to add more bandwidth as the business grows by bonding additional T1 lines.

Another service that combines voice and data on a single line service is called SIP Trunking. SIP is the signaling protocol used by enterprise VoIP telephone systems. You may already have a VoIP telephone system in your office. If so, you can get both voice and broadband Internet service over a SIP trunk. Like Integrated T1, SIP trunking manages quality of service to ensure that data and voice packets don’t interfere. SIP trunks, however, can have much higher bandwidth that T1 lines. Large SIP trunks can carry hundreds or even thousands of telephone calls.

Are Integrated T1 or SIP Trunking the right solution to give your company a substantial cost savings? Find out with a competitive service quote from Enterprise VoIP. You may be paying far more than you need to with your existing mix of telephone and broadband services.

Why Look For Fiber Lit Buildings?

Are you familiar with the term “fiber lit building?” It’s a fairly new concept. A fiber lit building is one where fiber optic service is already installed? How do you find them? Just use this handy resource...



The Ethernet Buildings Lit Building Locator is something of a mapping service. Think of it as a treasure map. The treasure itself is the availability of large bandwidth services without the need for expensive construction costs. If you have a need for higher levels of bandwidth, the lit building is where you want to be.

What kind of bandwidth are we talking about? With fiber optic connections, there really isn’t much of an upper limit. You’ll run out of money before you tap out all the bandwidth that can be brought in on fiber. A fiber strand can easily support Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE. With wavelength multiplexing, dozens of 10 Gigabit services can be multiplexed onto a single fiber. Most cables have many strands, even dozens or a hundred individual glass fibers bundled together.

Now, in a practical sense terabits per second of bandwidth probably won’t be provisioned to buildings where you would rent space. Even so, it’s nice to know that you can get DS3, OC3, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth to support your organization. Those are typical services running over fiber optic connections. Which ones are available will depend on what has been installed in a particular building. If you need a different service, even if it isn’t current installed, you may well be able to request that protocol and bandwidth level with minimal or no construction costs assessed.

How do you find out where the lit buildings are and what type of services are available at them? Simply run a quick inquiry using the Lit Building Locator for a location map. You can then request pricing for particular services of interest.

The Importance Of Buying Ernest

If you are a company with dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations, what you’d really like to deal with is a national local phone company for your telecom needs. But national local is an oxymoron, right? Can there even be such a company?

There is and it’s called Ernest Communications. This organization is unlike no telephone company you’ve dealt with. It’s focus is large nationwide multi-location accounts needing telephone lines, data lines, wireless mobile, or all of these.

What type of businesses fall into this category? National or regional chain stores come to mind immediately. Also, hotels, motels, gas stations, financial services, healthcare, real estate offices, insurance companies, entertainment venues such as theaters, and quick service restaurants. You can probably think of more categories, including the business you are in.

Any company depending on franchises, branch offices or service centers is in the business of supporting a multitude of small local operations. Every one of them has communications needs. Now, would you like to deal with a hundred or thousand separate local service providers or one larger company that has the staffing, expertise and products to handle all your business. Not only does this make your life easier by having a single point of contact, but you’ll likely save money due to the economy of scale.

Ernest Communications has taken advantage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to gain access to the nearly 200 million local lines that make up the Public Switched Telephone Network. Ernest provides your local telephone service plus they include most of the common custom calling features such as Call Waiting and Caller ID. Directory Assistance and IntraLATA toll charges are included in flat rate and blended rate plans. They’ll block all 3rd party and casual billing charges. Long distance rates are competitive.

Nearly all locations now require reliable broadband as well as telephone services. Ernest can provide high speed Internet access with speeds from 1.5 Mbps to 45 Mbps with performance governed by Service Level Agreements (SLA). You’ll get professional installation and 24/7/365 monitoring, which is not always the case with other providers.

Does your company have enough employees at one or more locations that you use a key telephone system or in-house PBX? Ernest can provide you with the ISDN PRI digital telephone lines that you need.

Many companies also now depend on wireless communications as well as line services to get the job done. Think about field service and sales people. Ernest has perhaps the only nationwide wireless solution designed specifically for business use. You’ll be able to choose from a variety of handsets, smartphones and mobile data devices, including BlackBerry devices. You also have your choice of shared, pooled, bundled and pay-per-use plans.

Getting your telecom services from a single provider has the advantage of giving you a single bill that combines all your voice, mobility and data services. Plus you have the ease of management that comes from having a single point of contact for moves, adds, changes and deletes that are part of normal business activity.

Could your regional or national multi-location business simplify operations and save money by working with a nationwide communications company? Why not get a competitive quote for your voice, data and mobility services and see for yourself. Our Telarus consultants can help you with this, plus any of your higher bandwidth or international communications needs.

Low Latency Connections Bridge The Atlantic

Nothing says that we are part of a global marketplace like the terabytes of data that zip back and forth constantly through the world’s fiber optic trunk lines. Intercontinental cables have been in place for decades. But now there’s a new service gaining importance. It’s low latency networks.

What’s driving the demand for low latency right now is high speed financial trading. Increased use of automated trading programs has created a competition for getting trades placed first. First may mean milliseconds or even microseconds ahead of other traders. Certainly this is beyond the capability of the fastest human traders manually entering data. But it’s also so fast that path between traders and exchanges influences performance. The time delay in that path is called latency.

What’s needed for low latency connections is minimizing the distance between source and destination and minimizing the processing time of the electronics in the network. When microseconds make a difference, the speed of light comes into play. The fastest a signal can go is about 186 miles per millisecond. That’s the speed of light in a vacuum. In a physical wire or fiber optic strand, that speed is even less.

In the United States, low latency network services have taken two forms. One is a fiber optic cable running in as straight a line as possible between trading centers, say Chicago and New York. The amount of equipment on that line is minimized and engineered to pass signals as fast as possible.

Another approach is colocation. Companies move into a colocation facility, such as the ones offered by Telx, to be as close to the electronic trading floors as possible. It’s possible to save tens of milliseconds by just being physically next door.

Level 3 Communications has now established low latency connections that span the Atlantic from Europe to North America. They’ve also established direct connectivity with BATS Europe, a European Multilateral Trading Facility.

Financial services are a leading application driving the construction of low latency networks worldwide. There are other applications that are latency sensitive as well. It’s well known that VoIP telephony works best if latency is minimized. Long delays in voice packets cause “clipping” of conversations and may even result in dropped calls. Two-way video conferencing is also affected by high latencies. In fact, any interactive application requires some limitations on latency to function properly. As companies commit more of their business processes to cloud computing, latency issues that were once non-existant will become painfully apparent.

Has your company or organization developed a need for low latency communications linking locations in North or South America, Europe, Asia, Australia or Africa? Find out what services are available to meet your requirements for international high bandwidth low latency network connections. With multiple providers, prices are competitive.

Samsung Intercept Android Phone Goes NASCAR

What’s exciting, compelling, and goes so fast you can hardly keep up with it?

How about NASCAR? Certainly true. But that also applies to the Samsung Intercept Android phone. Oddly enough, both are connected.

The Samsung Intercept M910 for Sprint is a dual phone. It has the large 3 inch touch screen display you expect in a smartphone. But it also has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that gives you real keys large enough for efficient texting and other typing.

Yes, this is an Android phone. It runs Android 2.1. You can choose from thousands of apps from the Android market to customize this phone as your own.

What other goodies are included? How about a 3.2 Megapixel digital camera that takes high resolution still photos but also doubles as a video camera? It has that plus support for streaming media so you can watch live TV and video on demand with full motion video and vivid sound. Catch the latest news, sports, weather and entertainment while you are on the go with Sprint TV. Who wants a TV that’s tied to the wall anymore?

You can connect with colleagues, friends and family via text, email or instant message. You can listen to your voicemail in any order and manage your inbox without calling-in by using visual voicemail. You’ll also be connected to work with the ability to view Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents. Or just ignore them and face the wrath of your boss later. What you really want to do is tweet, and access to Twitter is built-in. So is Facebook access. I guess you really don’t have time to look at those Excel spreadsheets after all.

The Samsung Intercept has GPS services support for location-based services like Google Maps. It also sports a full HTML Web browser so you can surf the Web at will. But will you have enough speed to do so? You’ll will with Sprint’s 3G EV-DO data network. You can also save your minutes by using WiFi access when you are in a WiFi hotspot.

This all sounds great, but what’s the connection with NASCAR? Oh, that’s easy. NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile instantly connects you to the world of NASCAR. Once you have that, other cell phones seem so.... s-l-o-w.

If this sounds like the smartphone you’ve been waiting for, learn more and order your Samsung Intercept for Sprint online, where it is free after instant discount with free shipping via FedEx included. You were going to stand in line at a cell phone store, why?

Of course, there are many other excellent cell phones available free and at deep discount. Check out Today’s Special Deals at Cell Phone Plans Finder now.

E-NNI Helps Ethernet Go Global

Metro Ethernet service has been growing by leaps and bounds. That’s not surprising, considering that Metro Ethernet services generally offer higher bandwidths at lower prices than traditional telecom services. They also offer features such as virtual private line and LAN service that weren’t previously available. As business appetite for Ethernet in the WAN grows, it’s only natural that businesses look to connect everywhere through their Metro Ethernet connections.

Metro Ethernet was intended to be just that. The "metro" in Metro Ethernet means metropolitan. It’s a service that is perfect for connecting two or more business locations within the same city or greater metropolitan area. The geographical range of coverage is set by the service footprint of the carrier providing the service.

Many competitive carriers now base their core networks on IP packet switching technology, not the traditional circuit switching architecture. They’ve embraced Carrier Ethernet to offer Ethernet services that span metropolitan areas so that companies can interconnect branches in cities across the country.

What’s been more difficult is getting the same type of universal access that companies have enjoyed with the Public Switched Telephone Network. After all, the days of monopoly in telecommunications are long gone. What’s needed is a standardized way for all those competing carriers to exchange traffic so that their customers can have a much wider geographical presence. Thats what E-NNI is all about.

The Ethernet External Network-to-Network Interface (E-NNI) is an industry standard ratified this year by the Metro Ethernet Forum. It provides a way for carriers to exchange traffic without having to worry about losing service features or having to create ad-hoc interfaces carrier by carrier. A separate UNI or User Network Interface connects each customer to its respective carrier.

The E-NNI specification makes it easy for carriers to exchange voice, data and video traffic at Ethernet layer-2. This make switched networks that span multiple carriers possible. To the user, the Ethernet WAN may look like one large cloud. To the service providers, it is a collection of clouds interconnected by peering through E-NNI connections.

The ratification of the E-NNI standard is giving rise to Ethernet Exchanges, such as Telx, that provide worldwide interconnection services for service providers at a carrier-neutral facility. Rather than having to build-out their service footprints to everywhere customers want connections or going through the laborious process of negotiating Private Ethernet NNI agreements, carriers can simply connect with each other through an Ethernet Exchange so that each participant has access to a much larger geographical footprint.

Can you company benefit from the growth of Carrier Ethernet and the many services it offers? The best way to find out is to get a competitive quote for your connection needs, be they across town or to the other side of the globe.

Making The Move For Higher Bandwidth

Is your organization bandwidth frustrated? With online technology moving as fast as it has been, many organizations find that the bandwidth they need exceeds the bandwidth they have. Ok, no problem. Just call up your service provider and tell them to crank up the line speed. Oh, no. They say you have all the speed you can get. Now what?

Have you considered moving? The sad truth is that bandwidth availability and pricing are highly location dependent. Some locations offer a wealth of options and low prices. Others may not even be able to support your basic needs no matter how much you are willing to spend.

There are two ways to move. You can relocate physically or you can relocate virtually. Between the two, you should find an acceptable solution.

Physical relocation is what it says. You pack up and move to another building. If you’ve been thinking of doing this anyway because you’ve run out of space or the rent has gotten to high, or you’d like to be closer to your customer base or suppliers, then lack of bandwidth could be the impetus that gets you going.

Don’t just blindly pick a spot based without checking out broadband availability first. You may be in for a rude shock. Sometimes service is available across the street, but not where you are. It’s hard to tell by looking, at least from the outside. You might talk to other tenants if you’ll have neighbors in the facility. See what they have for telephone and connectivity. Tenants of the buildings next to your pick should also be close enough to give you an idea if the bandwidth you want is available.

The best way to know for sure is to get competitive quotes from a telecom broker. Generally you need an address and telephone number for that address to get accurate quotes. Your consultants can work with you on getting something close enough to ensure you won’t be disappointed when you actually order service.

What if you can’t move or really don’t want to? In that case, a virtual move may be in order. Keep your offices and staff in place. What you’ll be moving is your servers and any appliances that need high bandwidth connections. Where will you be going? To a colocation center, of course. A colo, or carrier hotel, is a facility that provides rack space, power, cooling, and bandwidth for many clients. The cost of bringing bandwidth to your particular equipment is trivial because the service providers are also present in the colo facility. It’s usually just a matter of a wire or fiber line to another room. You can relocate the equipment you have now or sometimes rent servers that the colo technical staff maintain.

Are you ready to make the move for higher bandwidth? Before you make any commitments, be sure to talk with a Telarus expert consultant. You’ll get options, recommendations and prices on what services are available at your candidate destinations.

Metro Fiber Network Bandwidth For Denver

Bandwidth is booming in the Mile High City, or soon will be. AboveNet is installing nearly 100 route miles of dark and lit fiber to meet the mile-high bandwidth needs of Denver’s telecommunications, media, financial services, health care, retail and government users.

This could be a sign of things to come for nearly all metropolitan areas. The fact is that our productivity and economic growth is becoming more and more dependent on high levels of bandwidth to connect businesses, supplier, customers and remotely located employees. Copper can take us just so far. Then it’s time to connect with the nearly unlimited resources of glass fiber cables.

How much bandwidth are we talking about? AboveNet has fiber optic networks in cities nationwide that offer single wavelength service of 40 Gbps, 10 Gbps, 2.5 Gbps or 1 Gbps to extend a corporate LAN/WAN to multiple, metro area locations. You can have 40 Gbps fiber connectivity via an OC-768 handoff at your premises. That’s a level of bandwidth that was available only to carriers themselves not so long ago.

It should also be noted that each fiber strand can support more than one wavelength using a process called WDM or Wavelength Division Multiplexing. Each wavelength, or Lambda, is a slightly different color of laser light. Dozens or hundreds of wavelengths can travel through the same fiber without interfering. Each of those wavelengths can support up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth.

But is even this enough for the demands of major corporate or government users in a city the size of Denver? Well, those fiber cables that AboveNet is installing don’t just have one strand of fiber inside. These cables bundle 432 or 216 separate fibers within a large cable assembly. Multiply all those fiber strands times the number of wavelengths each fiber can support times the Gbps that each wavelength can carry and you’ve got some serious bandwidth. It’s more than is needed right now, so some fibers won’t be activated. These are the dark fiber that’s held in reserve for future needs or sold to organizations that want to have complete control over their communication resources by lighting their own fiber.

Do you have a need for metro or long haul fiber optic services from 40 Mbps to 40 Gbps? There are dark fiber and lit fiber optic services available now in most metropolitan areas from AboveNet and other high bandwidth competitive carriers. Prices are lower than they’ve ever been, thanks to improved technology and increased competition. You may be able to afford more bandwidth than you imagine. Find out with a competitive pricing quote and complementary consulting support from our Telarus bandwidth experts.

Ethernet over DS3 Advantage

Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber are the hot new WAN network connections. They are growing in popularity because of high competition reducing Ethernet prices and services such as layer 2 switching available with direct Ethernet connections. So, why would you want a solution such as Ethernet over DS3?

It sounds like a hybrid arrangement. DS3 is a commonly available telecom service offering 45 Mbps from a T-Carrier standard TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) technology. Most users of DS3 order it for dedicated point to point connections, broadband business access for larger organizations, and high volume telephone trunking in enterprise contact centers and commercial call centers. Why put a new protocol like Ethernet over a legacy protocol like DS3?

The big advantage of Ethernet over DS3 is that it gives you the Ethernet connectivity and services you desire in areas where Metro Ethernet or Carrier Ethernet services are not yet available or too expensive. You may already have DS3 brought into your building. If so, the physical layer already exists to transport any protocol that is compatible with that DS3 service.

Another situation is when SONET fiber runs close to your location and it is quite affordable to demultiplex a DS3 connection and bring a drop to your building. The native Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber networks may not have build-outs anywhere near you. While the range of services and pricing from competitive carriers operating their own IP-core networks can be impressive, they may not have a service footprint in your area. DS3 is a more mature transport technology and may well be available to business locations nearby.

What can you expect from Ethernet over DS3? Bandwidth is limited to DS3’s rate of 45 Mbps, although Ethernet services are often very scalable and can be ordered from a few Mbps right on up to the limit of the port speed. If you need higher bandwidth, say 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet or higher, it may be possible to bond DS3 services the way T1 lines are bonded to multiply bandwidth. Also, If DS3 is available it is likely being carried on a SONET fiber optic service, such as OC3 at 155 Mbps. You may be able to get a higher bandwidth connection if there is extra capacity in the fiber service that delivers your DS3.

Is Ethernet over DS3 the right option for your business? The best way to find out is to get a set of competitive quotes for all bandwidth services available at your business location. There may be more options at lower prices than you expect.

Captivated By Samsung’s Android Phone

Are you ready to move up to the next generation in smartphones? Have a look at the Samsung Captivate for AT&T. It’s fast, it’s bright and it’s Android. In fact, it’s Galaxy Android.

The Samsung Galaxy series is generating a lot of buzz. These phones will go by different names as they are released for each carrier. Captivate is the name of this Galaxy for AT&T’s wireless network. Captivating it is.

Could they make it any thinner? Not with today’s technology. This case measure in at 0.4 inches. Remember when everyone was shocked by the 0.5 inch RAZR? Those razor phones where phenomenal in their day. Today they are as dated as a Commodore PC. Well, maybe technology hasn’t advanced that fast in the last few years, but is sure seems like it. Consider that the Captivate processor is running at 1 GHz, the camera is 5 Megapixels, and the touch screen display measures 4 inches. Does that make your current phone seem dated?

The Samsung Captivate is getting closer to the idea of a computer in the palm of your hand. The Super AMOLED touch display is fast and bright, even outdoors. That makes it able to keep up with the 1 GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird processor and display the clarity of the 5 MP digital camera. Unlike most cell phone cameras, this one records HD videos. It also has face detection and smile detection, features you’ll find on dedicated digital cameras.

Captivate is designed for work and social networking. It comes preloaded with Google apps such as YouTube, Gmail, Gtalk, Google Voice and Picasa. Swype lets you simply slide your finger over letters to draft a text message. At some point you’ll wonder why you needed a physical keyboard at all. Google Maps is preloaded so you’ll have voice-guided turn by turn directions at your disposal. The Social Hub maintains all of your social networking updates and contacts in one place.

Of course, this you also have access to the Google Android Market where you can choose from thousands of Apps to truly customize your smartphone. Like games? You’ll be able to enjoy games with 3D motion gaming, high fidelity sound and surround sound. There’s a 6-axis motion sensor to give you motion control beyond what you are use to on a phone or even some gaming systems.

How about connectivity. Data download speed is up to 7.2 Mbps on the AT&T 3G network running HSPA. This is also quad band GSM phone that will work with worldwide standards. Network compatibility is 850/900/1800/1900 for GSM and 850/1900/2100 for UMTS. WiFi is also included, so save your minutes when you are in a WiFi hotspot.

Do you feel the need to step up to the latest generation in smartphone technology? Does this sound like the phone you’ve been waiting for? Then wait no more. Learn more and order your Samsung Captivate for AT&T right now at an incredible discounted price online.

Or, check out a huge variety of free and heavily discounted cell phones at Cell Phone Plan Finder. There’s something for every wireless user.

The Case For Telecom Copper

There is a move afoot by some of the largest telephone companies to decommission or get rid of their copper wire assets. Some of this is an attempt to foil competition. Some is simply a technology upgrade as fiber optic cables move in to replace century-old twisted pair copper bundles. Should the FCC embrace the retirement of the copper assets already in the ground and strung on poles, or is this copper a national treasure that needs to be preserved?

It may seem odd to think of copper as a national treasure. We tend to think of gold and silver when it comes to treasure. But this copper has very high value. You might say it is worth its weight in gold. That value, above the intrinsic value of the metal, is the from the time, effort and cost of stringing the copper wire from user to provider. The telephone companies, protected by a mandated monopoly for nearly a century, are the ones that made this investment and reaped the rewards. But that government monopoly was, in a sense, an investment by all of us to get that copper installed.

Now, in the 21st century, there are copper wire telecom cables running into nearly every home and business. They range from a couple of twisted pair for residences to dozens of pairs in large binder cables running into the back rooms of businesses. The fact that all this copper is in place and all conforms to a set of standards offers the opportunity to press it into service for more than just plain old analog telephony.

Indeed, the telephone companies themselves were first to use two copper pair to deliver T1 line and ISDN PRI services. T1 is most often used to provided dedicated broadband Internet access or point to point connections between two business locations. ISDN PRI carries 23 separate telephone conversations plus Caller ID and is popular for PBX telephone systems.

In recent years, competitive service providers have entered the telecom marketplace to compete with the incumbent local phone companies. The incumbents have an advantage in that they are the legal owners of the copper that runs from their offices to the residence or building being serviced. That’s called the local loop or last mile connection. Competitors have to lease the local loop from the incumbent telco. Of course, they could choose to bring in their own copper cables, but that would be cost prohibitive.

Savvy competitors have also figured out how to just lease the copper wires themselves, with no signals at all from the phone company. They then use newer terminal equipment to send non-traditonal format digital signals down the line. The most popular of these is Ethernet over Copper service. EoC offers higher bandwidths at lower costs than traditional telco services such as T1 or DS3.

Perhaps this is what’s stuck in the incumbent telephone company’s craw. Some meet the competition head to head and offer their own Ethernet over Copper services. Others figure the way to get rid of the competition is to get rid of the copper.

That’s just plain wrong. Until the government has enough stimulus money to fund universal fiber optic service the way that universal telephone service was mandated, taking copper options off the market only hurts the business community. It’s an especially bad move during a time of economic recession when most companies need the highest bandwidth they can get at the lowest cost. In another hundred years, hopefully a fraction of that, the entire interconnection infrastructure will have been upgraded to fiber optics or perhaps something even more advanced. But until that time there is no justification for retiring perfectly good copper wiring that has already been bought and paid for. Better to list it in a register of historic technologies and make sure that it is protected from degradation until no longer needed.

Could your company benefit from lower cost copper or fiber bandwidth options? Check prices and availability for your location. You may be surprised by how much you can save.