Ready For The Next Telecom Boom?

As the technology bubble of the 1990's came crashing down, one of the after effects was a glut of telecommunications capacity, especially unlit fiber optic cables. Speculators had buried thousands upon thousands of miles of multi-fiber cable in the ground and undersea. It was installed under the assumption that demand for bandwidth was going to outstrip supply so fast that any installed capacity would be an instant money maker.

Instead, most of those glass strands lay dark for years. It wasn't just overspeculation in telecommunication facilities that suddenly met its end. The entire technology sector took a deep hit. Venture capital dried up and the new applications that were expected to drive the need for geometric increases in bandwidth never materialized.

The last five or six years have been something of a "dark" ages for the telecom industry in more ways than one. But the buried treasure of unused fiber optic capacity hasn't been forgotten. It's now being rediscovered and put to good use. You might say the treasure is being dug up, optically if not literally.

Municipalities, such as my own home town of Rockford, IL, have realized that the dark fiber rings through their commercial and industrial areas are now needed to support the next generation of business practices and provide wireless Internet access for the community. Hospitals and medical centers are developing an almost insatiable thirst for bandwidth to support electronic medical records and radiology image transmission. Electronic design automation is creating a similar need in engineering and manufacturing. CAD systems that originally took over the job of drafting boards are now dispensing with the printers and plotters in favor of electronically distributing drawings, parts lists, circuit board layouts, logic chip programming and simulations of all types. Products are assembled and tested virtually before any parts are produced physically.

Small businesses are experiencing new needs for digital bandwidth that they never had before. Franchises and field offices are tied together with virtual private networks and point of sale systems that keep the home office appraised of how things are going on a daily, if not real time basis. Ordering and restocking of retail locations is moving to a background activity. Whatever bandwidth a restaurant doesn't need for its own operations is given away to customers in the way of WiFi Internet access.

The end result is that the original glut in telecommunication capacity has been getting used up to the point where new capacity is actually in the works. The research firm Telegeography is reporting that network operators are running out of lit bandwidth capacity on undersea cables and are bringing up additional wavelengths and fiber pairs. At some point those big cable laying ships will be likely be leaving port again, although probably not soon. There is still untapped potential in dark fiber, especially with newer multiplexing electronics.

What does this mean for your business? Right now is actually a good time to be installing or upgrading your telecom capability, be it expanded telephone lines, a move to VoIP telephony, private lines and virtual private networks to interconnect your business locations, or high reliability dedicated Internet connections. The competition among carriers is still strong so you can lock in excellent contractual pricing for the next 1 to 3 years. If you would like to explore options for your business needs, our technical and pricing experts stand ready to assist. Simply enter a brief request for quotes or consultation, or call the toll free number posted at T1 Rex.

We're Looking for Telecom Value Added Resellers

I know that many of you who subscribe to the T1 Rex's Business Telecom Explainer's news feed or find our articles online are actively involved in the telecommunications business as Information Technology professionals, network engineers and technicians and business owners.

Right now I'd like to address the business owners and independent professionals. As telephone system installers or networking consultants, you no doubt interface with T1 lines or other WAN networks. Some key telephone systems and most PBX systems have digital phone line connections as channelized T1 or T1 PRI lines. Dedicated Internet lines are generally comprised of T1 lines or multiple T1 lines.

So what do you do when you've installed a LAN or phone system and your customer needs to hook up with the outside world? Do you simply tell them to call the phone company? Point to the yellow pages and let them find someone who specializes in T1 lines? Why not include this aspect of the system as part of the value added services you provide?

Oh, I know. You're not an expert in telecommunications lines. That's somebody else's territory. Well, what if you had some help? What if all you needed to do is find out what interface the customer needs and then work with a consultant who would take care of screening carriers and getting the paperwork squared away? Wouldn't that give you a competitive advantage over other networking or telecom suppliers who can only do part of the job? You bet it would. Customers don't want to be general contractors of their communication systems. They want somebody to take care of their needs end to end.

Instead of having to become an expert in T1 lines, PRI, DS3, MPLS, Metro Ethernet and all of the other flavors of digital WAN connections, you can be what's called a VAR or Valued Added Reseller. For your trouble, you'll earn a generous commission on your customer's monthly line service usage. Let's face it, your customers are going to order those lines through someone. It might as well be you. As an additional advantage, you'll also get equipment leads from interested parties in your area who need both equipment and lines.

Here's how it works. You'll sign up as a VAR with Shop For T1, arguably the most value adding telecom broker offering these services. There is no cost to do this. You simply register your business. You'll be provided with both a web site that you can direct potential customers to plus a "back office" where you can enter your customer's information yourself. Once you have entered a need into the system, a SFT1 technical consultant will take care of discussing options with you and/or your customer, generating competitive quotes and getting the contractual paperwork taken care of. Once the line is turned up and generating revenue, you'll get a monthly commission check.

Clearly, the more business you generate, the larger your commission checks will be. Contracts for digital lines run 1 to 3 years and most businesses have a continuing need for services. You can be getting commissions on monthly telecom usage years after you were paid off for the installation job.

Here are a couple of other things to consider. You can earn continuing income on all types of digital lines, including T1, bonded T1, T3, DS3, OC3, OC12, OC48, Ethernet WAN, Gigabit Ethernet, SONET, private lines and more. The larger the bandwidth, the higher the monthly charges and the more you make. Also, the size of your business is not important. You can be an independent consultant working out of a home office or a business telephone system supplier with a fleet of trucks. This VAR opportunity will work for you as long as you have contact with businesses that need digital telecommunication circuits.

You may even run into clients who don't need your hardware or networking consulting right now, but have a desire to save money on their T1 line or expand their bandwidth. Enter those leads into the system and you can receive a nice monthly check on business calls that would otherwise have been dead ends.

Does it sound like this is something that would complement your business? If so, learn more and sign up now as a Shop For T1 Value Added Reseller. It only takes a few minutes. At T1 Rex, we have been independent agents representing Shop For T1 for about 3 years and highly recommend this organization.

LG CG300 Cingular Walkie Talkie Phone

The new LG CG300 is a very unusual cell phone in that it supports both regular cellular communications and Cingular's Push to Talk or Walkie Talkie style of communicating. It also has a lot of other technology in a package that weighs less than 3 1/2 ounces.

Open this small flip phone and you'll find a nice color display capable of showing over 65,000 colors. It the perfect complement to the VGA quality digital camera with LED flash and multi-shot mode. You can share your photos via multimedia messaging. You also get standard text messaging, email and mobile Web browsing.

Need to go hands-free for safety or convenience? You have choices. You can turn on the built-in speakerphone, or clip a Bluetooth headset on your ear and put the phone in your pocket. While closed, the monochrome external display shows important information like signal strength and battery life.

The LG CG300 is a great everyday cell phone with the key features you'll use all the time. But what really makes this phone special is the capability to operate in Walkie Talkie mode on the Cingular Wireless network. Walkie Talkie or Push to Talk mode has its origins in two-way radio. You push a button and your voice comes out of the other person's cell phone immediately. No waiting around for the phone to ring. You can also have groups connected together in PTT mode. You take turns talking and everybody else listens. Each person participating in a Walkie Talkie communication needs to have optional Cingular Wireless PTT service and a phone that supports it.

By the way, you can switch back and forth between standard cell phone communications and PTT at will. You can even start a conversation in one mode and switch to the other if you so desire. Unlike standard two-way radios, you can use Cingular's PTT anywhere nationwide that you get coverage on the Cingular ALLOVER network.

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

Health Care Automation Bandwidth

When it comes to automation, health care is the new manufacturing. With health care costs escalating and a Baby Boomer population that is only getting older and more in need of the best our health care industry has to offer, the opportunity for cost savings is almost a given. As health care professionals migrate from prescription pads and paper files to PDAs and electronic data transfer, the need for digital bandwidth is multiplying.

While "best effort" Internet connections such as DSL and Cable broadband are suitable for casual Internet access, they are inappropriate for serious reliable connectivity. The low cost of such services is not so much due to an outdated or unreliable technology as it is due to being shared bandwidth with no guarantees of throughput or availability. Often hundreds or thousands of casual Internet users are multiplexed to the same Internet connection with the assumption that only a certain number of people will be online at once. As more users log-on, the shared service slows down.

The basic professional WAN or Wide Area Network service is the T1 line. It offers a guaranteed and exclusive bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps for both upload and download plus a service level guarantee. T1 is a regulated and tariffed telecommunications service and gets the support you would expect for a high availability connection. A 1.5 Mbps bandwidth is generally enough to support small medical or insurance offices or independent medical professionals. Small clinics who do not have heavy documentation upload or medical imaging requirements may also be serviced by a T1 line.

Another big advantage of T1 service is that it is almost universally available. T1 was engineered to be provisioned on two pair of copper telco cable, so if you have conventional phone lines, you can probably get a T1 line installed. Cost is different for every installation, being based on the distance from your building facilities to the nearest telco office. This is called the local loop. From the local office, a T1 signal by be carried any distance over competitive network facilities.

What happens if you run out of bandwidth? T1 line service is designed to be easily multiplied or "bonded" by combining, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or more T1 lines together so that they act as a single data pipe. Bandwidths of 9 Mbps are often easily obtained even in smaller towns or remote areas.

Hospitals and larger medical offices, especially those heavily involved in teleradiology and centralized medical records storage, will require higher bandwidth circuits. A T3 line or DS3 service provisioned on fiber optic cabling, delivers 45 Mbps. This is enough to support full motion video conferencing and high bandwidth data transfers.

Larger medical operations are finding even DS3 service too limiting for highly computerized facilities. With fiber optic bandwidth, there is practically no limit to the bandwidth available. Metro SONET or Gigabit Ethernet services provide hundreds to thousands of Mbps. DWDM or Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing lights up dedicated fiber optic loops to provide the Giga and even Tera bits per second needed for backup storage and medical campus interconnections.

What WAN bandwidth do you need and what does it cost? Let our bandwidth specialists at Shop for T1 help you choose the optimum service for minimizing costs today with planned growth potential for future use. You'll find a quick online inquiry form and toll free support number at T1 Rex.

Motorola RAZR V3 Magenta for T-Mobile Special

The Motorola RAZR V3 Magenta "razor" phone for T-Mobile service is a stunning vision in glowing pink. As sophisticated as it is beautiful, this slim queen of the airwaves offers such avant garde features as Bluetooth communications, video capture and playback, voice activated dialing, Internet access and several messaging modes.

The magenta razor phone flips open to reveal a large full color main display measuring 2.2 inches. It's just what you need to view the great pictures you'll take with the built-in VGA quality digital camera. Put yourself in the pictures with your friends by using the self-timer feature. Or, make a movie of it. The video capture / camcorder mode lets you record up to 15 seconds of video that you can watch on the screen or share.

Even though the fashionable pink color is a major reason to be holding this phone to your ear, there are clearly times when it is inconvenient or even unsafe to do so. For those times you have two hands-free options. You can activate the built-in speakerphone and set the phone a desk or table and carry on your conversation while you get some other things done. This is also a great option to include companions on the conversation. You can also clip one of those small Bluetooth headsets on your ear and put the phone in your pocket or purse. You'll be able to talk in private without any dangling cords to get in the way.

The Motorola RAZR V3 Magenta has worldwide GSM capability, operating on all four of the GSM bands. It supports the higher speed EDGE data communications or standard GPRS data, giving you access to the Internet for email or Web browsing. AOL Messenger comes pre-loaded. You also have SMS text messaging and MMS and EMS multimedia messaging capability.

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

Audiovox 8912 With Free Printer Special

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

The Audiovox 8912 is a best seller on its own, for good reason. It comes with a VGA quality digital camera that has LED flash for low light conditions. The large high resolution display will show your pictures off nicely. You can send them to family and friends or print them from your own computer using the Canon SELPHY digital printer.

The Canon SELPHY CP400 is a compact digital photo printer that people are buying to print the photos they take with their cell phones and digital cameras. If you have a Canon digital camera you can print directly using the PictBridge feature. Choose from 4 x 8 inch wide size, 4 x 6 inch postcard size, credit card size or mini label size prints. The CP400 will give you all of these popular formats.

Motorola i870 Nextel Video Phone Special

The Motorola i870 is an advanced video phone designed to run on the Nextel wireless network. Nextel users can now get such features as a megapixel digital camera, Bluetooth communications, high speed data downloads, and an MP3 music player.

One of the big attractions of Nextel service has been the "walkie-talkie" style of communications also known as PTT or Push to Talk. In the walkie-talkie mode, you don't have to dial a number wait for it to ring and then get an answer or voice mail. Instead, you select the party you want to talk to and push the PTT button. Your voice instantly comes out of their phone. This is a perfect way to exchange short messages rather than have long conversations. Nextel calls their walkie-talkie mode Nextel Direct Connect.

The Motorola i870 supports Nextel Direct Connect both locally and nationwide. It also supports Group Connect, a walkie-talkie mode that connects up to 20 people at once nationwide. It's like having the World's greatest CB set or Ham Radio.

A third walkie-talkie mode is called Direct Talk. This is an off network service that turns your cell phone into a true walkie-talkie two-way radio in areas where this is no cellular coverage. You choose from 10 channels and 15 codes. Direct Talk will let you connect with another Nextel user who has a Direct Talk compatible phone up to 6 miles away. Typical uses will be hiking, camping and emergency situations when the cellular networks are down. Think Hurricane Katrina.

Of course the Motorola i870 is also a regular cell phone and will make or receive cellular phone calls over the nationwide Nextel network. Nextel's popular Fair & Flexible $39.99 - 2yr plan gives you 400 anytime minutes each month, free nationwide long distance and unlimited night and weekend minutes. All this for $39.99 a month.

Another strong feature of Nextel is its GPS related services. The Motorola i870 comes with built-in support for TeleNav, software that turns your cell phone into a GPS navigation system. There's an extra monthly fee for this service, which gives you visual and audible turn by turn driving directions and can help you find the nearest gas station or restaurant. Why bother buying a stand alone navigation system when you can include this feature in your cell phone?

The digital camera in the Nextel i870 has high picture quality resolution of 1.3 megapixels and includes an LED flash for low light conditions. Those pictures will look great on the large color main display that supports over 262,000 colors. A separate color external display shows important information even while the phone is closed.

The Motorola i870 is Nextel's first phone with a built-in stereo MP3 music player. It has cover mounted controls. It comes with a 32 MB memory card that can be expanded through the microSD/TransFlash memory slot. The camera also stores pictures on the memory card and can capture video clips that are only limited by the amount of memory available.

Want hands-free operation? The Motorola i870 has a speakerphone and Bluetooth communications. Clip a Bluetooth headset on your ear and you can keep the phone in your pocket. The i870 can be dialed by voice also.

Messaging is expanded in the Motorola i870 to include both text and multimedia messaging, plus mobile Web browsing. You'll enjoy near-broadband speed data downloads over the Nextel WiDen network.

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

T-Mobile SDA is One Smart Digital Assistant

T-Mobile is taking the PDA or Personal Digital Assistant to the next level with its SDA or Smart Digital Assistant. In one hand you can hold a mobile device that combines cell phone, portable computer, digital camera and music player in a package no larger than many candy bar style cell phones.

The T-Mobile SDA starts with a quad band GSM cellular phone with speakerphone, voice memo and voice driven menus. It has Bluetooth communications so you can converse without holding up the phone to talk. Just clip a Bluetooth headset on your ear and you're good to go. This phone also provides data connectivity via T-Mobile's EDGE communications on its cellular network. That gives you text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging, mobile Web browsing and email.

Unlike a conventional cell phone, the SDA runs the new Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system on a 200 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP processor, giving it the power of a computer. This computer can connect to the Internet via T-Mobile EDGE or 802.11 WiFi for hotspots or local wireless routers. MS Pocket Outlook email software includes support for MS Excel, Word and PowerPoint documents. The large color display measures 320 x 240 pixels and shows over 262,000 colors.

The T-Mobile SDA features a 1.3 Megapixel digital camera for great photos. Switch to camcorder mode and you can capture video clips. Streaming multimedia support is provided through Windows Media Player 10. Watch videos or download and listen to MP3 music files. A stereo headset is included with your SDA. There is also an expansion memory slot that supports the miniSD card format.

Battery life is good, too. You get up to 240 minutes or 4 hours of talk time. Standby time is 144 hours or 6 days away from the charger.

Got your heart set on a new smart phone or other mobile device? You'll find great deals and many special discounts every day at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

iTuth Technology Puts Music In Your Head

Got a song in your head and can't seem to get it out? Before long, switching the music on and off may be as simple as clicking your teeth together. A marriage of two ubiquitous technologies and a little dentistry promises to make personal entertainment more personal and portable than ever before.

This new advance is iTuth, a combination of iTunes and Bluetooth technologies integrated and miniaturized to fit within a dental implant. It replaces your iPod music player, those white earbuds that keep falling out, and all connecting cords. The electronics is built into an advanced dental polymer that, unlike the flawed iPod packaging, is almost impossible to scratch. The plastic tooth is implanted into the empty socket left by wisdom tooth extractions. It will initially be available in either traditional white or pirate black coloring. Future designs might include gold or silver as an option.

So how does it work? All the electronics is encapsulated within the iTuth. Instead of earphones or a loudspeaker, sound is transferred by bone conduction to your eardrums. Power is provided by an electrolytic reaction of copper and zinc metal terminals on the tooth's surface and normal saliva. If you've ever bitten down on a piece of aluminum foil with your fillings and gotten a shock, you know the principle.

So how does the music get into the iTuth? That's where Bluetooth comes in. You download music from the iTuth music store to your cell phone. Then, holding the phone up to your head, the Bluetooth communications built-into the cell phone and iTuth download the songs you want to your iTuth. Simply bite down to start or pause the music. Double bite to advance to the next song.

The iTuth is expected to gain an enthusiastic following among active teens and young adults who have found the nuisance of carrying music players and tangling headphone cords unsuitable for many sports activities. With iTuth, you can jog, swim, or even play full contact team sports while you enjoy your favorite music. Star athletes will be able to take their performance to the next level by having music that inspires them, such as the "Rocky" theme or their team's fight song, right on the field.

Another application of iTuth will be downloading of podcasts or perhaps tuthcasts. Those voices in your head could include educational, entertainment, sports or news programs. You're not merely dozing during those boring staff meetings. You're learning a new language.

Look for iTuth to become available through early adopter dentists and oral surgeons who enjoy "fooling" with the latest technology.