Call Overseas For Pennies From Your Cell Phone

Once your cell phone became your one personal and business phone, the idea of getting a better deal on landline long distance calls became moot. What good is a landline if you are never near one? What you really want is the ability to get great service on your mobile phone. You’ve got domestic telephone and broadband already. What you need is cheap international calling.

TEL3 knew this was coming and created their TEL3Advantage service to meet the need of mobile users in the US and Canada. Most of us have at least some occasions to call friends, family or business contacts in other countries. What we haven’t had until now was an affordable way to do that on a cell phone.

TEL3Advantage is an international long distance service that you access from your mobile phone. You are not changing cellular providers or adding any other contractual services. This is strictly a pay as you go add-on calling service. That means it works from any make or model cell phone and on any wireless service. In fact, you can even use it from a landline on those occasions when you are at your desk phone or at home.

What kind of rates are we talking about? Pennies per minute, literally. For instance, calls to China are 1.32 cents per minute. Want an even better deal? You can call China right now for a penny a minute with the special promotional rate. It’s good for your first 30 days of service. Call Asia and chat all you want. It’s cheap. Rates to Europe are dirt cheap, too. How about 3 cents a minute to Germany? That’s low, alright.

As if the deal wasn’t good enough already, you get free minutes upon signup. How many depends on how much you plunk down. How it works is that you prepay an amount from $10 to $100 from your major credit card or PayPal . The cost of your calls is paid out of that initial purchase. When you get low, you simply recharge your account to make more calls. If you decide you don’t need or want the service anymore, just don’t add any more money. There’s no contract cancellation fee because there is no contract to begin with. There’s even a 30 day money back guarantee. If you don’t like the service within the first 30 days, you’ll get a refund of the balance you haven’t used for calls. Truly, there is much to gain and nothing to lose.

Call quality is high, connections are fast and don’t require a PIN number, you can manage your account easily online, and the service works from any phone in the USA or Canada. But, wait, there’s more!

Do you have an iPhone? Get the TEL3Dialer APP from the iPhone App Store and you can dial from your address book or dial directly without entering any access numbers or PINs. The rates are the same as if you had dialed a local access number.

But what about other cell phone users who don’t have iPhones? You are also in luck. There are TEL3 Apps for Blackberry and over 400 cell phone models. Simply access your online account once you sign up and then download the “Smartplug Software” that is appropriate for your phone. Once installed, you’ll see a TEL3 logo added to your applications and you are good to call.

Ready to enable your cell phone for low cost international calls? It takes just a few minutes to order TEL3Advantage international prepaid long distance service. Then, talk all you like. It’s that inexpensive.

MPLS Service Providers Link Your Business Locations

It’s common for businesses to have multiple locations that need to be tied together with voice, data and sometimes video services. These can be branch offices, remote data centers, warehouses, franchises, factories and other business locations. What’s needed is a simple, cost effective way to link geographically diverse locations. MPLS service providers are ready to do just that.

Why MPLS? After all, there have been telecommunications services available for decades that can link one site to another. T1 point to point lines are readily available just about anywhere you need service. The public telephone network connects any phone to any other phone in the world. So what is it that MPLS networks have to offer that is new and different?

What MPLS is all about is privately owned and operated networks that serve large regions of the United States, some with national and even international footprints. These are what are also called “cloud networks.” The beauty of the cloud is that you don’t personally have to worry about the intricacies of wiring up and operating the many, many connections linking sites within the cloud. That’s all taken care of by the MPLS service providers. All you need is a link to the MPLS network from each of your locations. The network operator takes care of setting up the connections among your sites per your specification.

You might think that MPLS networks sound a bit like the Internet, and you’d be right. The similarity is in the way they make connections from anywhere to anywhere else. But that’s where the similarity ends. The Internet is a public resource with no quality of service mechanisms. If particular nodes get congested, packets wait or get lost. The Internet automatically sets up routing on the fly, so you never really know how your packets are getting from point A to point B. They just do somehow.

MPLS networks are engineered around predictable and dependable performance. Routing is done by a proprietary tagging protocol unique to MPLS networks. That makes them far more secure to outside intruders than the Internet. The tag switches have determinate paths that don’t change unless there is an equipment failure that needs to be worked around. Bandwidth, jitter, latency and packet loss are carefully controlled for each customer of the network.

What this all means is that MPLS networks work well for business users that set high standards for the quality, reliability and security of their telephone conversations and data transfers between locations. What MPLS providers can do is offer you a substantial cost savings over building your own private network to link multiple business locations. This is especially true if you have many locations scattered across a wide geographical area, including international offices.

How much of a cost difference is there between an MPLS network solution and what you are doing now for connectivity or have under consideration? Find out quickly and easily with a short inquiry to our knowledgeable Telarus consultants. They’ll get you competitive quotes from MPLS service providers that will clearly show how much you can save.

Ethernet Ports In a Data Storm

You may have noticed that your WAN network requirements are getting hard to predict. In times of economic instability, it’s hard to know whether you have the right amount of bandwidth for your business activities next year or even next quarter. What makes this especially unnerving is the historically long provisioning times for telecom service upgrades. What you need is a way to pay for just the bandwidth you need today while ensuring that you can rapidly increase network speed if the need suddenly arises.

That capability is yours with an Ethernet service port. You have such a port installed by a service provider at your location. Often, this is in the form of an RJ45 jack or a fiber optic connector on the back of a managed router. You simply plug your LAN network into this WAN port and you have connectivity to the outside world. Because it’s a managed connection, you can have nearly any bandwidth level up to the capacity of that installed port.

Let’s contrast that with what’s standard practice for other telecommunication services. The popular T1 line is generally provisioned on what’s known as a “smart jack” This is a RJ48 socket mounted on a small electronics box. You connect from the smart jack to the T1 card in your router that contains special CSU/DSU circuitry to decode the T1 signals. What’s important to note about this setup is that it has a fixed bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps. It’s possible to get what’s known as fractional T1 at less than 1.5 Mbps, but this is rarely cost effective anymore.

What happens when you have a T1 line and run out of bandwidth? You call up your service provider and order another T1 line. These lines can be bonded to produce a 3 Mbps data line. The entire process involves ordering and installing another telecom service, however long that takes in your area.

Now, let’s see what happens when you have 10 Mbps Ethernet delivered on a 50 Mbps port. Like the situation with a congested T1 line, you run out of bandwidth on your 10 Mbps service. Unlike the previous scenario, however, you call up your service provider and tell them you want to increase your bandwidth to 20 Mbps. They say “fine” and simply turn up your service to 20 Mbps. You can often do this with nothing more than a phone call. Nobody needs to come and drill holes or string more wires. It’s all done with software commands to your Ethernet CPE or Customer Premises Equipment.

The thing to remember about Ethernet ports is that the speed of the port is the maximum speed that it can handle. If you top out at the max port speed, you will likely need an equipment change to get more bandwidth. For that reason, be sure you order a port that has some growth potential even though you don’t need it right now. Some bandwidth headroom gives you an agility to ramp up WAN network speed incrementally as business increases.

Are you ready for a bandwidth increase, but feeling stifled by the limitations or cost of the telecom options you have now? Check prices and availability of Ethernet ports and bandwidth for your business location. Save money now and be ready for when you need a service upgrade quickly.

Level 3 Shows How The Converged Business Network Saves Money

Network convergence has been an initiative for larger organizations since IP became accepted as the default network protocol. But smaller companies, with smaller or non-existant IT staffs, have paid little attention. That’s all changed recently. Now, convergence is for everyone.

Why the big change? The primary driver is cost savings, as it has always been. Cost savings has become an ongoing business process in this era of continuing austerity. But the real enabler is the availability of managed convergence. The carrier becomes your partner rather than simply a vendor. This relieves you of the burden of network management, especially WAN network management.

Level 3 has entered this space with its Converged Business Network solution. The idea is to use one bandwidth pipe for voice, Internet and VPN instead of three separate pipes. In one example, Level 3 replaces three separate T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps each with a single 3 Mbps connection that handles everything. That 3 Mbps link could be bonded T1 lines, or it could be one of the newer Ethernet services. They show stand alone services at $ + $ + $ being reduced to converged services for $.

A 3 to 1 reduction? That’s not unreasonable. After all, 3 Mbps Ethernet over Copper services are often priced about the same as a single T1 line.

How can you get a 3:1 line cost reduction without destroying quality of service? The answer is in two pieces. First of all, the bandwidth reduction isn’t that dramatic. You are going from 4.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. Cost is going down faster than bandwidth. Second, the question assumes fully loaded line services. That’s seldom the case. Many companies have T1 lines because that’s the smallest commercial grade line service available to them. They wind up ordering 3 lines in order to keep voice, Internet and VPN applications separate so they won’t interfere. In reality, only a fraction of that available 4.5 Mbps is needed at any given time.

This is how a converged 3 Mbps WAN network can do the same job cheaper. QoS or quality of service controls are maintained on that connection so that time sensitive voice packets have priority over less time-sensitive data packets. At times when there are fewer telephone conversations in progress, that bandwidth is released for use by the broadband Internet or VPN services. This is called dynamic bandwidth allocation. In a situation with separate lines, any unused capacity simply goes to waste. It is not available for any other use.

A converged voice and Internet service called Integrated T1 has been on the market for years. However, its availability has been spotty and its focus has been on traditional analog and PBX telephony rather than the more advanced features of enterprise VoIP systems. Level 3’s service goes way beyond Integrated T1 with Ethernet connection speeds up to 100 Mbps as a standard package. That makes it an attractive service for medium and larger companies that long ago outgrew their T1 lines.

Is your company on the lookout for ways to save money while preserving quality of services? If so, you should inquire about the cost and benefits of network convergence. You could be missing out on a major advantage for your business.

Increasing Bandwidth By Pair Bonding

If you have a bandwidth service, say a T1 line, and are starting to run out of bandwidth, then what is your next logical move? You could bring in a higher level service such as DS3, but that could prove tricky. Your T1 line is delivered over twisted pair copper. DS3 is generally brought in using fiber optic cable. Also, there is a tremendous jump in bandwidth and expense from a T1 line at 1.5 Mbps to a DS3 connection at 45 Mbps. Are there other options?

Perhaps the easiest move up is to simply add another T1 line if all you need is incrementally larger bandwidth. If you get both your lines from one carrier, they can do what is called “pair bonding” to make the two lines act like they are one larger line. For instance, two bonded T1 lines give you 3 Mbps. That goes to 4.5 Mbps with 3 lines and 6 Mbps with 4 lines. A practical limit to bonding for T1 is somewhere around 10 to 12 Mbps.

There is also another form of pair bonding you should be aware of. Instead of bonding T1 lines with their DS1 signals, dry copper pair can be leased with no signals of any type. They’re just plain copper wires running from a central office to a business location. Using multiple copper pair with special terminal equipment installed at each end, Ethernet over Copper or EoC can be provided by competitive carriers.

Ethernet over Copper uses a completely different form of modulation to transport the digital signals from provider to customer. Advanced techniques such as MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) may be employed to reduce interference between signals on pairs bundled in the same cable. This allows more bandwidth to be transmitted using fewer wires than would otherwise be required.

The result is that Ethernet over Copper can transport higher bandwidth services using pair bonding. You can typically get 3 Mbps to 10 Mbps from EoC services. In some cases, that can be increased to as much as 50 Mbps. The higher the bandwidth, the closer you have to be located to the telco office. That’s because the techniques used to increase bandwidth are affected by distance. The signal fades as you get farther away from the source.

T1 lines don’t have this distance restriction, as the technology was designed to incorporate regenerators every mile or so to boost the signal. If you are located too far from the carrier’s point of presence to get Ethernet over Copper, you may qualify for Ethernet over DS1. That’s a technique that uses the T1 line protocol to transport Ethernet. You are essentially getting an Ethernet signal delivered using one or more T1 lines. In this case T1 pair bonding can be used to increase bandwidth.

Will some form of pair bonding get you the business bandwidth you need at a reasonable price? Find out what business bandwidth services are available for your location now.

Pink Android Intercept Means Business

Remember the movie “Pretty in Pink” with Molly Ringwald? Gotta love the '80's. Anyway, the same title might be applied to the Samsung Intercept in its stunning satin pink case. This is not just a pretty phone, its a pretty hot business machine.

The pink Android's beauty starts with a large three inch touch screen display that gives you access to all your apps. There are thousands available through the Android Market. But unlike lesser touchscreen phones, this one also sports a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard for high speed email, instant messaging and texting to family, friends and colleagues. The email client is equipped to handle Microsoft Direct Push as well as mobile email like Gmail and Yahoo! You’ll be able to view document attachments in Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint to take care of business.

Yes, you have full access to the Internet. The browser is a full HTML Web browser. You’ll be connected at 3G speeds wherever possible through the Sprint 3G network. If you want more download speed or just want to save your 3G Mbytes for on-the-go usage, you also have WiFi capability.

The Intercept is a multimedia phone that lest you send and receive picture and video messages. You’ll always have a high resolution digital camera with you. The included camera offers 3.2 Megapixel pictures good enough to print as well as send. It also works as a camcorder for capturing video at a moment’s notice. Catch the latest news, sports, weather and entertainment with Sprint TV. You can even control your home’s FrontPoint security system.

Will you be sociable using this phone? Yes, you will. Access to Facebook is built-in, as well as access to Twitter. With the real buttons on that full slide-out QWERTY keyboard, you’ll find it effortless to keep up with your social networks. Of course, you can always use the voice network, a.k.a. telephone, when you want to communicate old school.

Speaking of telephone, the Intercept allows you to “intercept” your voicemail using Visual Voicemail. Listen to your voicemail messages in any order and easily manage your inbox without actually calling in.

Another nice feature is integrated GPS that provides support for location-based services like Google Maps. There’s no excuse now for getting “lost” at lunch time and coming back late. Oh, well.

Have you been looking for a high performance smartphone that also has a flair for fashion? This may be the Android phone that you’ve been wanting. If so, you can get it FREE for a limited time when you order online with new service. Learn more and get your Samsung Intercept Satin Pink for Sprint right now.

Of course, there are many other free and low cost smartphone and cell phone models available to you. Visit Cell Phone Plans Finder and check out today’s cell phone specials.

Why Ethernet Broadband For Business?

When we think of broadband, what generally comes to mind is DSL, Cable Internet or cellular wireless services. But these are light duty or consumer-grade bandwidth services. Why might you become frustrated with such broadband services in business and is there an attractive alternative?

First, let’s take cellular wireless. It goes by the name 3G and, increasingly, 4G. The problem with both 3G and 4G coming from cell towers is that there is a very limited amount of bandwidth available and it has to be fairly apportioned to all the users who want it.

Smartphones gobble up bandwidth at an eye-popping rate. Get enough smartphones or netbook aircards in a particular area and the whole network can be brought to its knees. That’s why most carriers now have monthly bandwidth limits with steep overage penalties. Satellite and some 4G carriers take a different approach. Instead of charging for overage, they throttle down bandwidth for heavy users. If you use too much in a given period, they slow down your access to give others a chance.

While out and about, cellular broadband may be your best bet simply because service is so readily available compared to everything else. If the cells are too congested, you can find a WiFi hotspot and likely get better throughput there.

If you want or need wireless broadband service for an office with multiple users, consider a fixed wireless option designed for business. They’re mostly available in large metropolitan areas. If you can get this service, you’ll be hooked up quickly and have generous amounts of bandwidth at your disposal. An outdoor antenna is installed on your building to a strong signal for reliable service.

DSL and Cable broadband were designed for consumers. The carriers bend over backwards to keep the price low so that most consumers can afford the service. But they achieve that by having everyone share the available bandwidth. Your service might offer “up to 10 Mbps” of download bandwidth. Whether or not you get anywhere near that depends on what your neighbors are doing online. When everybody starts heavily accessing the Internet, the line speed for each user slows and sometimes slows to a crawl.

Businesses that need reliable, dependable and fast Internet service often find themselves frustrated at keeping up productivity on services that cater to people downloading music and videos at home. The classic solution is the T1 line. T1 lines are dedicated, in the sense that you have full use of the available 1.5 Mbps bandwidth. T1 is highly reliable, gets fast repair service if anything ever does go wrong and is “unlimited” in that you can run it full speed 24/7 all month. If you need more bandwidth, you can “bond” more T1 lines up to about 10 Mbps both upload and download.

The one thing that makes businesses sometimes hesitate at installing one or more T1 lines is that the cost is several times what you pay for those consumer services. Even though the cost is well worth it when you consider the lost business or productivity that results from flaky Internet service, there is now an even better option for business use. That service is Ethernet broadband.

Ethernet broadband is a high speed dedicated wireline service that can be provided to your business location on either copper wiring or fiber optic cable, depending on bandwidth. Popular speed options are 3 and 10 Mbps for smaller businesses, 100 to 1000 Mbps for medium size operations, and 1 Gbps and up for large corporations. Your line speed is scalable, so you can generally have it increased up to the full capacity of the installed port with only a phone call to your provider.

Best of all, Ethernet is often the best value for your broadband dollar. A 3 Mbps Ethernet connection is often about the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. A 10 Mbps Ethernet service is easily affordable by most businesses.

Would you be interested in switching to highly reliable, high speed Ethernet services if the price were attractive? Why not check out Ethernet broadband service prices right now? See how much bandwidth you can get for your budget.

What XO’s 1,000,000 VoIP Customers Predicts

XO Communications, a major competitive telecom carrier, recently achieved the milestone of reaching 1,000,000 business VoIP end users.



What should be noted is that it came as a surprise, even to XO, that the millionth customer would arrive in only 5 years. You may have raised an eyebrow, too, if you’ve been struggling with the decision on whether or not to embrace enterprise VoIP technology. We’ve all been on calls with someone using a poorly implemented VoIP solution and have been repelled by the distortion, voice clipping, noise modulation and even dropped calls of VoIP done badly. Well, it doesn’t have to be that way. After all, a million business customers must know something, right?

What they know is that professional grade communications solutions are carefully engineered to accommodate the needs of the technology. For instance, XO’s IP Flex service is implemented over a T1 line or similar commercial bandwidth connection. Terminal equipment on both ends ensures that voice packets have the bandwidth, latency, and jitter characteristics they need to travel unscathed from user to service provider. They are protected from interference by data transfers by giving voice priority over data. The circuit is engineered to ensure that you can have all the telephone calls you need in progress simultaneously and still have adequate bandwidth for high speed Internet service on the same line.

The secret to enterprise VoIP is in careful control of the network. That network must include your converged LAN plus the link to your telephone and Internet service provider. SIP Trunking, a larger scale version of integrated voice and data lines, even allows you to include multiple business locations on the same outgoing phone lines. Internal calls stay on your network and avoid telco toll charges completely.

There is a future to telecommunications services, and the million XO VoIP customers shows that we are moving to an IP-centric business environment faster than most of us realize. Those who have made the switch are now enjoying the twin benefits of added services and lower costs.

Is your business, large or small, looking at ways to save on your monthly telecom expenses while maintaining quality of service? If so, then get competitive quotes on Enterprise VoIP Voice and Data Services.

1.5 and 3.0 Gbps Uncompressed HD Video Transport

It’s been over a year since analog television broadcasting with its SD video signals went off the air. What 4:3 sets are still in use are relics of an obsolete technology. They’re hanging on for the time being, thanks to Cable and Satellite receivers that feed their RF inputs. But look closer and you can see that HD channels are multiplying and SD channels are being abandoned by viewers with flat-screen HD TVs. What’s coming up fast is IPTV in high definition. Next year it will be 3D with and without glasses.

For broadcasters, show distributors and content providers, yesterday’s video transport techniques are just as obsolete as those old tube sets. What’s needed now is high definition digital transmission. The highest quality requires uncompressed transport, which, unfortunately, consumes bandwidth at a prodigious rate. No problem. Level 3 Vyvx service is set up to meet the need. Now, level 3 is offering uncompressed high definition video transport services between Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and New York City at 1.5 and 3.0 Gigabits per second.

Live video feeds are delivered in their native, pristine form by sending them with zero compression. Think of it as one very long connection between the studio and the control room. Or, more likely, between the scene of an event and the network control center.

Level 3 has been a major player in video transport services worldwide. Their Emmy Award winning Vyvx resources include fiber connectivity to 125 cities in the United States and Europe. They have direct connectivity to most professional sports venues in the United States and Canada. They offer Managed Video Network Services (MVNS), teleports in Atlanta, Denver, L.A. and Berlin, standards conversion, encryption and HD encoding.

The heart of the system is Level 3’s IP/MPLS worldwide fiber network. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching networks offer high capacity bandwidth with quality of service controls, deterministic pre-allocated paths with rapid switching to redundant paths if needed. This makes for a highly reliable, secure and high performance core network ideal for high bandwidth data and video transmission.

This is really the leading edge of what will become a much more extensive high bandwidth video transport system. Level 3 has stated that other cities will be added to the 1.5 and 3.0 Gbps service as demand increases. Even as this happens, the demand for compressed HD and even SD video transport is increasing world wide. There is more video content, live feeds and specialized programming being produced every day. Every one of these sources needs high quality and highly reliable transport services.

Are you involved in video production, content distribution, high quality teleconferencing, video streaming or coverage of breaking news? If so, learn more about the range of options available to you for metropolitan and long haul video transport.

MiFi Points The Way to Wireless Transition

Verizon Wireless just made an amazing announcement. They will be selling the Apple iPad in their stores. But aren’t Apple and AT&T exclusive partners? Indeed. So, why is Verizon selling a product that won’t work on their network? ...Or will it?

Yes, it will. How Verizon accomplished this clever feat of engineering points the way to the future of wireless broadband. Actually, not the future future. Just the immediate future. Call it the era of wireless transition.

Wireless technology has pretty much developed along two lines. One is the telecom carriers, including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. There are other players in the cellular wireless game, but they are simply private branded versions of the big four within the US. What characterizes the major carriers is that their offerings are proprietary. What works on AT&T won’t work on Verizon Wireless, and vice versa.

The other wireless path is an industry standard known a WiFi. It comes in flavors such as a, b, g, and n. But unlike telecom carrier services there is enough commonality and backwards compatibility that pretty much any WiFi device will work on pretty much any wireless router, hotspot or access point.

What Verizon has cleverly done is marry the two lines. They can’t get into the iPad through the front door, so the come in the back door. How? Very simple. They use an interface device to convert cellular to WiFi. That device is the MiFi. The Verizon MiFi is a little box about the size of a pack of cards. Inside is a cellular radio, a WiFi radio, a battery and some circuitry to make it all work. All you do is push a button to turn it on and the converter works automatically. It allows up to 5 wireless devices to gain access to the Verizon 3G wireless network as if they were Verizon-enabled to begin with.

The Verizon iPad will consist of an Apple iPad and a Verizon MiFi bundled together. They are separate pieces of equipment, but the MiFi will slip into your pocket or bag so it isn’t intrusive. At first blush, it may seem like having to carry around two pieces of equipment instead of just one is a big disadvantage for Verizon compared to AT&T. But Verizon may get the last laugh after all. The MiFi provides 3G connectivity for your iPad, but it also provides 3G connectivity for your other devices that don’t have their own 3G service built-in. That includes your laptop computer, netbook, games, and even your Apple iPod. If you had to buy separate 3G service for each device, you’d go broke. But one MiFi can serve whatever gadgets need connectivity, as long as they are WiFi enabled.

Verizon isn’t the only one with a MiFi. Novatel, maker of the MiFi, offers an unlocked version for GSM carriers AT&T and T-Mobile. There’s a MiFi specifically for Virgin Mobile. Sprint goes one further with their Sierra Wireless Overdrive 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot. It works on both the Sprint 3G Mobile Broadband network and its 4G WiMAX network. CLEAR offers a similar 3G/4G converter called Clear Spot.

Even these converters are transitional technology. Smartphones, starting with the Droid X by Motorola and Samsung Epic, have the cellular to WiFi hotspot capability built-in. This is likely to become a standard feature on smartphone designs, as WiFi and Bluetooth are the industry standard wireless technologies. WiFi has the greater transmission range.

Down the road a few years, the tide of wireless seems to be going in the direction of standardizing on LTE as a 4G standard. Cellular phone may give way to VoIP over LTE. At that point it will be hard to tell the difference between a mobile phone, a smartphone and a digital device like a tablet computer. Perhaps a single smart radio chip will provide universal wireless connectivity. Just pick your carrier and sign up for a service plan after you buy the device. The wireless transition era will be complete.

Gaining Ethernet Internet Access

You’ve no doubt heard by now that access to the Internet for business locations offers cost and bandwidth advantages over traditional telecom connections. So, how do you gain Ethernet Internet access? That’s easy. Just use this handy Ethernet Internet Finder.



You’ll likely find that there are a number of options for Ethernet Internet service, although not all of them are available at every business address. Note that this is a business service only. If you need residential or home office broadband, try “Can I Get DSL?” for DSL, cable, satellite, wireless 4G, and fiber to the home.

Your least expensive option for Ethernet Internet access is probably Ethernet over Copper, where available. That’s generally in metropolitan and suburban areas with dense populations. EoC, as it is called, offers bandwidths typically from 3 to 20 Mbps. You’ll pay about as much for a 3 Mbps Ethernet connection as you’d pay for a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. A very popular service is 10 Mbps Ethernet access, which is the standard Ethernet network speed.

Of course, local area network bandwidth has increased dramatically since Ethernet was first introduced. Most LANs are now operating at the Fast Ethernet speed of 100 Mbps or Gigabit Ethernet at 1000 Mbps. Would you be surprised to know that Ethernet WAN connections are also available at 100 and 1000 Mbps? That includes dedicated broadband Internet access with Ethernet in the first mile. These services require a fiber optic connection over SONET or native IP network.

Even if your business is located a bit beyond the service footprint for EoC or fiber optic delivery, it may still be possible for you to get Ethernet over DS1. Bonding T1 lines together may give you the Ethernet bandwidth you need at a reasonable price.

Does Ethernet Internet Access offer advantages for your business? Use the Ethernet Internet Finder to run a quick check and see.

How T1 and E1 Lines Compare

Two of the most popular digital line services for voice and data are T1 and E1. Depending on where you are located, you are probably familiar with one of these services but not the other. That’s because they are geographical standards. If your business crosses international borders, you’ll want to be familiar with both telecom standards.

T1 service is found in the United States, Canada, Japan and South Korea. E1 is used in Europe and most other areas of the world. I mention Europe, because that’s where the “E” in E1 comes from. The “T” in T1 means T-Carrier. It is a standard developed by Bell Labs right after WWII and used to provide trunking of multiple telephone calls between switching centers. Later, both T1 and E1 moved beyond their telephony heritage and became popular for digital data service to businesses and other organizations. Both are still highly popular today.

The reason to discuss T1 and E1 at the same time is that they are more alike than different. Both were based on digitizing telephone calls and transmitting them in channels of a time division multiplexed bitstream. Each channel is called a DS0 and is 64 Kbps in size. The physical interface is two pair of twisted pair copper telephone lines, the same type of lines that are used for home and business phone service. One pair is used for transmit and the other pair is for the receive channel. By keeping transmit and receive separate, you can talk and listen at the same time - a requirement for phone calls. This is often referred to as full duplex operation.

It’s no accident that T1 and E1 are so similar. The United States developed its standard first. Europe copied most aspects of T1, but added some improvements for their standard. The biggest difference is in the line speed or bandwidth. T1 lines run at 1.544 Mbps. Of that, 1.536 Mbps is used to transmit information called payload. The other 8 Kbps is for synchronization and maintenance functions. T1 lines have 24 time slots that carry 24 DS0 channels. Each channel can be one telephone call or all 24 time slots can be used to carry data at a bandwidth of 1.536 Mbps. This BW is often referred to as 1.5 Mbps.

E1 lines run at 2.048 Mbps. That bandwidth transports 32 time slots. Unlike T1 lines, E1 lines assign one time slot or channel specifically for synchronization and maintenance. Another time slot is generally reserved for signaling. Thus, an E1 line supports a user payload of 1.920 Mbps in 30 time slots or 1.984 Mbps in 31 time slots. This is often referred to as a bandwidth of 2 Mbps.

It should also be mentioned that while Japan uses the T1 line standard of 1.544 Mbps, there are differences in the use of the synchronization and maintenance bits. A T1 line in Japan is called a J1 line.

While there are numerous subtle differences between T1, E1 and J1, these are accommodated by the specific circuit design of the appropriate interface cards. At the switching centers, it is relatively simple to interface these lines due to their common heritage. You should have no problem connecting telephone calls or data transfers between any of your worldwide locations. It’s worth noting, however, that E1 lines accommodate more phone lines or data bandwidth per line than T1 lines.

Does your organization have a need for voice and data connectivity at any line speed required? It’s easy to have our expert Telarus consultants check bandwidth prices and availability for all of your locations worldwide and make recommendations to save you the most money on your telecom needs.

Our New Name and Look

You may have noticed something different on our blog today. Both the name and the look have changed. T1 Rex’s Business Telecom Explainer is now Telexplainer. It's shorter, easier to remember and more representative of the content and services we present. Six years ago, T1 lines were the mainstay of business telecommunications. Now it’s all about Ethernet, MPLS networks and cloud services.

Similarly, we felt it was time to update the look of the blog to something more contemporary. Templates and coding standards have changed during the decade. CSS, widgets and gadgets are taking over from plain text and hard-coded HTML. You can get presentations today that were all but impossible back when.

Another big change has been the rise of social networking. In addition to RSS feeds, you can now follow us on Twitter. Feel free to share what you discover here with links to your favorite social network or email to your friends and colleagues. We’ve made that easy with a “Share This” widget on every post.

Business technology, including anything Internet, continues to evolve. We intend to evolve with it, while still bringing you easy to understand articles about telecommunication and networking technology. We’re also proud to be partnered with Telarus, Inc. They are arguably the pre-eminent telecom broker, representing dozens of competitive carriers with voice and data services worldwide.

Thank you for reading these articles and coming back, day after day. Your comments are always welcome. Please send them to John (at) Telexplainer.com

Bandwidth To Support Branch Offices

Many companies have more than one location in a given area. These branch offices are especially important for businesses that want to have a presence as near their customers as possible. So, how do you seamlessly connect those branch offices to the main office without spending a fortune?

There are two high performance networking technologies available now that didn’t exist a generation ago, perhaps not even a decade ago in many locations. These are Metro Ethernet and MPLS Networks. Both are proving to offer high performance and attractive pricing compared to traditional telecom solutions.

Ethernet has always been though of as a local networking technology. Once it was adapted for long haul transmission, Carrier Ethernet technology made it possible to take Ethernet out of the office and run it all across town.

What does Metropolitan Ethernet have to offer? Ease of connection and efficiency of transmission are obvious advantages. With Metro Ethernet, there are no protocol conversions necessary in the network. Ethernet formatted packets flow from source to destination as generated.

Another advantage of keeping everything as Ethernet is that the entire network, LAN and WAN, can be set up for level 2 switching. This is ideal for business communications. The main and branch offices can all be on the same network, with the same access to resources regardless of where the user is located.

What might not be expected is that Ethernet services are generally much less expensive that traditional telco solutions of the same bandwidth. The increase in competition due to new carriers focusing on Ethernet connections has a lot to do with that.

The other technology you’ll be interested in is called MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching. It’s a way to create a secure high performance multi-point network that can transport nearly any protocol.

Competitive carriers as well as traditional telecom providers are turning to MPLS technology for their core networks. These networks can be carefully controlled for jitter, latency, bandwidth and packet loss. That makes them ideally suited for converged voice and data networks. You can have your telephone and computers on the same network and ensure that one service doesn’t interfere with the other.

Ethernet and MPLS networks are highly compatible. In fact, it’s not unusual for companies to connect nationwide or around the world with Ethernet in the last mile and MPLS “cloud” networks providing the long distance connectivity.

Do you have branch offices to support? If so, get price and availability quotes for Ethernet and MPLS services. You may be surprised at the options available for your business locations.

How Voice over MPLS Expands Enterprise VoIP

Medium and large enterprises have been converting from traditional telephone and computer connections to VoIP over converged networks. The reasons are higher productivity and lower costs. But what happens when you connect your phones and computer network to the outside world? Do you lose the advantage of your enterprise VoIP technology?

Sadly, for some businesses, this is the case. Everything is efficiently connected over a high performance local area network. That network stops at the edge of the premises. In order to connect with other business locations, both voice and data must be transmitted over common carrier telecom services. This is true for each location. There is one architecture for the internal network and quite a different one for the transport service.

Typical interfaces include a PBX telephone system that connects to multiple outside telephone lines. These may be individual analog business lines or a digital ISDN PRI trunk line. In either case, the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network is used to make calls to both outside phones and the phone systems of the other company locations.

Computer networking is handled with point to point dedicated lines, often set up in a star network with headquarters doing the routing for all locations. This works well, but can be quite expensive when locations are on different coasts or in nearly every state. Add international locations and costs skyrocket.

What’s a better solution? The latest technology is MPLS networking. An MPLS network is a privately operated “cloud” network that uses a special tag switching system instead of IP routers to manage traffic. MPLS networks offer quality of service mechanisms so that real-time traffic, like voice and video, are unaffected by simultaneous data file transfers. That makes MPLS networks ideally suited to extending converged networks among as many locations as needed.

How can this benefit your organization? By interconnecting all of your locations through an MPLS network, you can create a seamless internal voice and data network for telephones and computer connections. Using an MPLS network to carry telephone traffic is known as VoMPLS or Voice over MPLS.

With VoMPLS, all of your internal telephone calls stay off the public phone network and you avoid toll charges. Only when you need to make an outside call do you need to connect to the PSTN. This can be an enormous cost savings compared to your monthly phone bill now. Similarly, the cost of using an MPLS network for file transfers can be considerably less than the cost of all those dedicated lines and the effort it takes to maintain a proprietary network. Plus, any productivity enhancements you’ve achieved by converging your voice and data networks can be shared among your other business locations.

Can Voice over MPLS technology offer you a significant cost reduction? Why now get cost quotes for a VoMPLS networking solution to links all of your business locations? The savings and performance can be impressive.

What Makes High Frequency Trading Work

You’ve heard about computerized securities trading and what’s called high frequency trading. There was a lot of talk about this related to the “flash crash” last spring. But like it or not, we are in the era of automated stock trades. Some are initiated by human traders. Others are triggered by algorithms pre-programed to wait for certain conditions and then place the buy or sell orders automatically. Now, CBS News has gotten an inside looks at the machinery that makes this all possible. Watch “Robot Traders of the NYSE” and see if your jaw doesn’t drop.



Did you catch the part about how they had to equalize timing for all traders to keep the system fair? Once they started up this 3 football fields size data center, it turned out that where your servers were located physically in the infrastructure determined how fast you could get your trades to market. Yes, just the length of the cabling and whatever routing equipment was involved gave near-end locations an edge over far-end locations. How much can this really be? It was only microseconds, but in high frequency trading microseconds count.

The NYSE leveled the playing field by equalizing the access time to 65 microseconds for all players. Now, no one has an advantage... or do they?

Not all trading is executed on the New York Stock Exchange or on computers collocated within the NYSE facility. You could be trading other exchanges in New York, New Jersey or Chicago. You may need to access an overseas market from the US or vice-versa. What many broker dealers, investment management firms and hedge funds have done is collocate to a commercial facility, such as the ones that Telx operates close to major financial districts. Telx focuses on ultra-low latency connections to speed transactions to market. Through a partnership with Tata Communications, Telx offers colocation facilities in Canada, South Africa, Europe, UK and Asia. Telx and other carriers also now offer line services designed specifically for the lowest latency possible.

Do you have a requirement for unusually low latency facilities or connections? Find out what’s available in International International Low Latency Data Networks now.

T-Mobile G2 With Google is 4G

T-Mobile has upped the ante on smartphone performance with the introduction of the G2. The “G” in G2 stands for Google. That means integrated access to Google Voice, which can automatically transcribe voice mails to text so you can read them like an email or text message.

The G2 is also an Android phone, running Android 2.2. It has a 3.7 inch full touch screen with 7 customizable home panels. You can download thousands of apps and widgets from the Android Market to customize your smartphone. It’s just one click away.

Here are some more interesting features about the T-Mobile G2. Unlike a certain other smartphone that will remain nameless (think: it keeps the doctor away), the G2 is enabled with an Adobe Flash Player. It also comes with a slide out full QWERTY keyboard that opens and closes using unique “z-hindge”. That means real keys for fast and sure text entry rather than tapping on the glass to write your messages.

But what about the 4G? Is that WiMAX or LTE? Neither one. T-Mobile is leapfrogging the other 4G players by rolling out HSPA+ (High Speed Packet Access). It’s a GSM technology that has been evolving for years rather than something completely new. As such, T-Mobile expects to have it available in 100 major markets serving 200 million people by the end of the year.

But is it fast? It screams. Theoretical peak download speeds are up to 21 Mbps, with peak upload speeds up to 5.7 Mbps. In actual service, you probably won’t see that much bandwidth, perhaps a third of those peak values, but it is enough of an advance from 3G to deserve the 4G designation.

What else does the T-Mobile G2 have that’s eye-opening? The digital camera is a 5.0 Megapixel model that includes auto-focus and HD video capability. You can record HD videos in 720 resolution. Send and receive picture and video messages using multimedia messaging. Or, stay with SMS text messaging, IM, or email, as your fingers fly on that QWERTY keyboard.

There are, of course, the usual multimedia niceties that we’ve come to expect in smartphones. The MP3 player supports MP3, AAC, eAAC+, WMA, MPEG4, WAV and MIDI formats. There’s an FM radio on-board in case you tire of your tunes collection or want to catch the latest news and sports scores. Social networks are easily accessible. You can get to Twitter, Facebook and MySpace quickly. After all, quick is the name of the game in social networking. If you must work, then you’ll have attachment viewing of Word, Excel and PowerPoint files with Word and Excel editing possible with apps from the Android Market.

Is G2 the one for you? If so, learn more and order your T-Mobile G2 Android phone with service at a terrific online discount.

Of course, you can shop to your heart’s content for Android and other smartphones plus standard cell phone models. They’re all available discounted or even free at Cell Phone Plans Finder now.

Still Your Best Toll Free Option

Could your business benefit from having a toll free number? Perhaps you already have toll free service, but are looking at getting a better deal or upgrading to more numbers. What service makes the most business sense these days?

If you’ve never had a toll free number and aren’t positive that it will make a significant impact on your business, the best thing to do is get in cheap without making any long term commitments. That way you can test the waters and see what happens. So, how do you do that?

Kall8 offers an outstanding package of toll free services that has been popular for years. It's had staying power because you get a lot for a little with no contractual commitments.

Here’s how it works. Your lowest cost option is to pick one of the 866, 877, or 888 toll free numbers that are all set up and ready to go. It’s like visiting the toll free supermarket. Just take a number that looks good to you off the shelf and put it in your shopping cart. When you check out, you’ll fork over all of $2. That’s right, two bucks.

What do you get for your toll free $2? You get to have calls to that number ring to a phone of your choice as soon as your order is complete. That can be your office phone, home phone or cell phone. Change that option to a different phone whenever you like, even in the middle of the night. You have an online portal that gives you complete control of your toll free number 24/7.

This is huge for mobile professionals, like consultants or real estate agents. Give everybody your toll free number, set it to the phone you are at, and you’ll never miss a call. If you do happen to be busy, calls will go to your toll free voicemail. You can call in and get messages at your leisure, listen to them online, or... get this... have the sound file sent to your email. Wait! It gets better. If anyone sends a FAX message to your toll free number, you can read that message online or also have it sent to your email.

How much does this really cost? It’s $2 to get the number. Then $2 a month to maintain service plus the cost of incoming calls. Most calls, originating in the 48 contiguous US states, are 6.9 cents a minute. There’s a modest surcharge for Alaska and Hawaii. If you decide you don’t want service anymore, then cancel it. All you owe is for what you’ve been using.

How can Kall8 make an offer like this? It’s because once you have the service you’ll want to keep it forever. Since you are only paying a couple of bucks a month plus the cost of calls, the bill for your toll free service only goes up when you get more calls. More calls mean more business, so you can easily afford the calling cost. It’s one sweet deal.

Your Point to Point Ethernet Connection

Any company with two or more locations that need to be interconnected to share data have a need for point to point line service. The traditional solution is a T1 data line with 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth. Today, you have more options.

If it’s just a matter of increasing bandwidth on a T1 service that works just fine, you do have the option to bind in additional T1 lines. An extra T1 gives you 3 Mbps, 4 T1s are good for 6 Mbps, and 7 T1’s will get you up to 10 Mbps. Outside of metro areas, this may be your best bet. But if you are located within a large metropolitan area, point to point Ethernet might be a better choice.

Why? It’s a matter of cost and service options. Bonding T1 lines incrementally increases bandwidth and cost by about the same amount. Ethernet, however, is generally lower on a per Mbps basis, especially as bandwidth increases. That 10 Mbps connection might cost you half or less than you’ll pay for bonded T1.

Ethernet sounds like a perfect fit for linking two LANs, and it is. Your data starts off as Ethernet, continues through the WAN service as Ethernet, and is back on your far end LAN as Ethernet. Not only is that inherently efficient, but you also get the option to make that connection at layer 2 rather than layer 3. In short, you can treat your two locations as being on the same bridged Ethernet LAN rather than completely separate networks that happen to have a telecom link.

What you are looking for is called E-Line service. It’s a direct replacement for TDM private lines, such as T1. It is implemented as a single EVC or Ethernet Virtual Connection between two UNIs or User Network Interfaces. Think of it is a very long Ethernet cable between Location A and Location B.

While E-Line service is the most popular Ethernet bandwidth connection, there are some other Ethernet services that you may also want to know about. One is EVPL or Ethernet Virtual Private Line. Why would you want a virtual rather than an actual Ethernet line? The difference is that multiple Ethernet services can be carried on the EVPL. You’ll have one physical connection to your building, but you may be bringing in a dozen or so Ethernet virtual private lines.

If you have multiple locations that all want to communicate with each other, you need more of a meshed network that simple point to point lines. That’s where E-LAN or Ethernet LAN service shines. Each location connects to the “cloud” network via an Ethernet line service. All locations can then communicate as if they were on the same LAN.

A third service is called E-Tree. This is a point to multipoint connection that is useful for content delivery to multiple users. The users have no interaction with each other and simply get their content from the “root” organization.

Is one or more of these Ethernet services right for your organization? Why not price out the options and then decide. Get your inquiry in now and see how much you can save over your other networking choices.

Why You Want A GigE Port

Are your bandwidth needs uncertain? By that, I mean that you know what level of traffic you have right now. It’s what you’ll need tomorrow, next week or during the holiday shopping season that’s in question. So, what do you do about it?

The problem with being wrong about your bandwidth needs is that you either pay way too much, or run the risk of losing a lot of business if you run out of capacity. Neither situation is acceptable. Let’s see how you can make better arrangements.

Traditional telecom services take a long time to install and upgrade. They’re not very scalable. A scalable service makes it easy to adjust bandwidth. Generally all you have to do is call your service provider and say, “crank it up.” They’ll do just that, usually without sending anyone to your business locations, and simply adjust your bill accordingly. The beauty of scalable services is that you can hedge your bets. Order the bandwidth you need today with a little margin for bursts of traffic. Then scale up your service as business operations require. This way the added business activity pays for the additional bandwidth and you don’t take a hit to your profits.

What kind of bandwidth is scalable? Ethernet services meet that definition. They are available in the industry standard speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1,0000 Mbps and 10 Gbps. But you can generally order levels in-between. Service typically starts at 3 Mbps, which is twice the speed of a T1 line at about the same cost. The exact increment between service levels varies among providers, but 5 or 10 Mbps steps are common.

Compare that to scaling up from T1 at 1.5 Mbps to DS3 at 45 Mbps or OC3 at 155 Mbps. Each jump requires different termination equipment and considerable time and effort to install. With Ethernet, you can select any incremental speed up to the limit of the installed port.

This is why you want a Gigabit Ethernet port if that option is available. The speed of the port is the maximum speed of the service that can be provisioned without changing out equipment and perhaps having to bring in new lines. With a GigE port, you can commit to 100 Mbps service while knowing that you can easily upgrade that to 200 Mbps, 500 Mbps, 750 Mbps or even a full 1,000 Mbps. That “future proofs” your service without having to commit to massive levels of bandwidth that you can’t possibly use right now.

Of course, the proper port size is related to the nature of your business. Not every business will need Gigabit Ethernet service in the foreseeable future. Smaller business may be quite comfortable with Ethernet over Copper at a maximum of 50 Mbps. Others only need one to two hundred bits per second. What is right for your company? Why not get a set of price quotes for Ethernet services available at your location and then decide. You’ll likely be surprised by how much you can get for your bandwidth dollar.

You’ll Believe This MAN Can Fly

Metropolitan Area Networks are becoming more important in connecting business sites within the same city or city and suburbs. That’s especially important for franchise operations or businesses with many nearby branch offices, such as banks, insurance sales, gas stations and so on. What’s been limiting so far is the speed of the network connections available. Not any more. Metro networks are ready to fly.

The MAN or Metro Area Network is the networking solution between LANs or Local Area Networks and the much larger WAN or Wide Area Network. The MAN serves an important function in transporting voice, data and video traffic within a limited geographical area. Without the MAN, you are left to concocting your own solution by piecing together a collection of individual point to point telecom lines. Many companies have done this over the years with T1 lines and their own central router. But the MAN offers more bandwidth options and a significant cost savings.

Where does the cost savings come from? It’s a function of amortizing the cost of operating the network among the customers who subscribe to it. The MAN service provider installs a protected SONET fiber optic ring or IP core network and enough access points to reach business locations within the metropolitan area. Fiber optic networks are well suited to this application. They have nearly unlimited bandwidth when you install multiple core cables and use wavelength division multiplexing. An add-drop multiplexer a key points of presence makes it easy to get traffic on and off the network. All you need then is access connections from each location to the MAN.

SONET metropolitan area networks were the first to be installed using proven technology from the telephone industry and operated by the incumbent local telephone companies. OC3 connections at 155 Mbps have been popular with enterprise companies. Those needing higher bandwidth levels can upgrade to OC12 at 622 Mbps and even OC48 at 2.5 Gbps.

The Ethernet MAN is newer and offers some advantages over SONET based networks. First, Ethernet is scalable in small increments, so you can generally get whatever level of service you need from 10 Mbps standard Ethernet on the low end through 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and now even 10 GigE running at 10 Gigabits/second. Need more than that? Lease wavelength services or a dark fiber and install as much bandwidth as you require.

Ethernet services include Ethernet line service for point to point connections between two locations or Ethernet LAN service to interconnect as many locations as you require. These are level 2 switched services to that you can treat your entire operations in the metro area as a single bridged LAN.

Finally, Ethernet MAN services generally have a significant cost advantage over traditional telecom services. Bandwidth cost per Mbps is sometimes a fraction of what you would otherwise pay. This is due to a high degree of competition in metropolitan areas among independent carriers that have installed their own metropolitan and long haul fiber optic networks.

Do you have a need for MAN connections to support your business or organization? If so, check Metropolitan Area Network prices and availability now.

Xperience the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10

The Xperia X10 could be the smartphone experience you’ve been wanting. Consider the 8.1 Megapixel digital camera and 4 inch touchscreen. Do you really need to be carrying another camera? Do you?

Before you answer, note that the Xperia camera has flash, 16x zoom, touch focus, geo-tagging, smile detection and a send to Web feature. Optimize for landscape, portrait, night shooting, beach scenes and more. You can edit your photos right in the phone using apps from the Android Market. Capture video wherever you happen to be and share it with whomever you please via multimedia messaging. Here’s something else unique. The face detection software recognizes up to 5 faces in a photo and stores them in your contacts.

Yes, this is an Android smartphone. It runs version 1.6 of the Google Android operating system on a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Combine that processing power with AT&T’s 3G/UMTS HSPA network and download at up to 7.2 Mbps. You can choose to connect to personal and corporate WiFi networks and have free access to AT&T hotspots nationwide.

This is also a world phone running on the GSM bands. You’ll be compatible with nearly every cellular tower worldwide on the 800, 850, 1800 and 1900 voice bands and the UMTS/HSPA 800, 850, 1900 and 2100 data bands. This phone is already a success overseas and now available for users in the US.

The Xperia X10 has been designed with social networking in mind. Sony Ericsson Timescape puts all of your status updates from your social networking sites in one place. The equally impressive Mediascape brings all of your music, videos and photos together. You can surf the Web, check email and chat using instant messaging with the full HTML browser. Enjoy streaming multimedia with real-time video streaming support for YouTube and AT&T Radio.

Could this be the new smartphone you’ve been waiting for? If so, you can get it at a terrific online discount right now. Learn more and order your Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 for AT&T.

Of course, there are many more smartphones you can choose from, including a number of Android models. All are available at deep discounts, with many free. Check out today’s specials at Cell Phone Plans Finder.