OK. How about if the cost were a fraction of what you imagine and the wiring was reduced to a single connection or a couple of small cables? Sounds good, right?
I'll bet it really sounds good if you have the kind of business that truly needs 672 phone lines. This includes large corporate centers, customer service organizations, mail order companies, outsourced tech support, universities, national organizations, political phone banks and call centers of all types. Anytime you have a lot of people in a particular location combined with the critical need for voice communications, you can put large numbers of phone lines to good use.
So why 672 phone lines? It so happens that 672 is the magic number for how many individual telephone circuits can be carried by the standard DS3 level of service on a fiber optic carrier or T3 coaxial copper line. Each circuit is a single independent phone line that can be set up to be any combination of incoming, outgoing, local or long distance calling.
But what if your organization needs only 100 lines, not the full 672? That's where fractional DS3 service makes sense. You order only a fraction of the full DS3 service and pay less than the full price.
Smaller companies that need only 10 to 24 lines leaving the building can order another standard digital telephone service called T1 voice. A T1 line running at the DS1 level of service offers you 24 individual phone lines. You can also get 23 lines plus an extra channel for full Caller ID information, called a T1 PRI. An advantage of T1 phone service or T1 PRI service is that it is available just about anywhere you can get a regular analog phone line. You can then upgrade by bonding in additional T1 lines to increase line capacity until you get to the point where DS3 service is more cost effective.
I should point out that the phone lines I've been referring to are the standard switched-circuit traditional telephone lines that are supported by Key Telephone Systems and PBX Phone Systems. Voice quality is assured by giving each phone conversation its own independent channel. This is also called TDM or Time Division Multiplexing.
An alternative phone service popular within organizations and between business locations is called VoIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol. VoIP does away with telephone channels. Instead, voice is digitized into packets that all travel together over a network line. The network needs to have enough bandwidth to accommodate the largest number of expected simultaneous conversations. Computer data may be mixed in with the voice packets on the same network. The voice packets need to be reconverted back to phone "lines" only when connecting to the Public Switched Telephone Network. The limitation of VoIP telephony is that voice quality needs to be carefully engineered into the organization's networks rather than being built-into the TDM telephony lines.
Do you want the most cost effective phone call solution for 10 to 672 lines or even more? You owe it to yourself to take advantage of the free telecommunication consulting services and competitive quotes available through T1 Rex.
