Business Broadband and Phone Comparison

Small and medium size businesses have a need for both broadband Internet access and business telephone service. Years ago, the answer was easy. Order a broadband service from an Internet Service Provider and then go visit the telephone company and order your business phone lines. These are still viable options, but today you have much more to choose from.

Most smaller businesses have limited bandwidth requirements, a fairly small collection of phones and very limited budgets. What often makes the most sense is a bundled service that includes both telephone and broadband service from the same provider. There are two primary bundled services that both offer a cost savings compared to buying your phone and Internet service separately.

The first is the integrated product known as Integrated T1 service or SIP Trunking. They both use the same technique of line sharing but differ in the connection method. Depending on your location, you may get a T1 line or an Ethernet line service.

Integrated services are based on the principle that one incoming line is cheaper than two. Unlike consumer broadband phone services that combine voice and data packets willy-nilly, Integrated T1 and SIP trunks use integrated access devices at each end to keep the voice and data separate. Both give priority to voice packets. When someone picks up a phone or answers a ringing line, the bandwidth to support that phone call is reserved for the duration of the call. When the phone hangs up, that bandwidth is released to the pool.

What’s is the bandwidth pool? That’s what’s used for your broadband Internet service. Let’s say you have an integrated T1 lines and no phones are in use. The full line bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps is used for broadband access. If nobody is using the Internet, say in the middle of the night, that line just runs idle.

The flip side of the coin is when you have a dozen phones in use. Those consume half the bandwidth of the T1 line. Your broadband speed sags to 750 Kbps, which can be no trouble at all for smaller companies using the Internet for credit card verification, email, Web browsing and online ordering.

SIP trunking works like Integrated T1 in that both manage the line bandwidth and prioritize telephone calls over Internet access. That way your phone quality is maintained and the variations in broadband bandwidth may not even be noticeable. If they are, you are simply trying to do to much with too small a service. T1 lines can be bonded and Ethernet based SIP Trunks offer a wide range of bandwidths to speed things up.

You might think that SIP trunking implies a VoIP phone system. Actually, you can configure the handoff to your internal phones to be analog, SIP based VoIP or ISDN PRI for a PBX telephone system. Similar handoff options are available for Integrated T1 lines.

A competitor to the integrated services of Integrated T1 and SIP trunking is Cable broadband. The Cable systems is organized differently, with everything assigned to channels. That’s because TV stations have always had assigned channels. Now there are channels on the Cable system that carry stations that have no over the air presence. Other channels can be assigned to carry broadband Internet or telephone calls.

The channelization of cable maintains the separation of voice, data and video so that they don’t interfere. You can order telephone and business broadband from your Cable provider. You can also include TV if you have the type of business with a public waiting room, like a auto service center or doctor’s office.

Which option is best for your company? Compare business broadband and phone options for pricing, features and availability to make the best decision for your particular needs.

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.

Dynamic T-1 Offers Business Savings

As a small but growing business, your needs have grown from a single analog phone line to multiple outside lines for local and perhaps long distance calling. You could just keep adding more lines, one at a time, but isn't there a better approach that could be more cost effective? You bet there is. It's called Dynamic T-1.

A dynamic T-1 line is pretty much what it sounds like. This is a T-1 service that adapts itself to your needs on a continuous basis. But how does it do that and why?

First of all, let's consider the traditional T-1 line. T-1 is a digital voice and data line service that can provide you with up to 24 telephone lines or 1.5 Mbps of broadband Internet access on a single line. It actually uses 2 pair of copper telephone wire, so it's a service that's available just about anywhere. Some T-1 lines are set up as private point to point connections between two business locations.

Dynamic T-1 is a newer variation on the T-1 line that gives you both telephone and broadband Internet on the same line. This makes it an ideal choice for the smaller business that needs both telephone lines and Internet broadband. A larger business might need multiple T-1 lines to accommodate their many employees. But as a smaller business, you need something sized for your type of company and priced so that you can afford it.

The way dynamic T-1 service works is that the service provider installs a special piece of equipment often called an IAD or Integrated Access Device at your premises. The T-1 line goes in one side. Your connections for telephone and Internet come out the other side. There's an equivalent piece of equipment at the other end of the line so that the provider can feed both phone service and Internet service to you.

Dynamic T-1 is an advanced form of Integrated T-1 service. The term integrated means that both voice and data are integrated or combined into a single line service. But note that all integrated services are not dynamic. Earlier Integrated T-1 service allocated bandwidth for a given number of phone lines whether they were in use or not. Dynamic T-1 gives priority to phone calls, but re-assigns that bandwidth to speed up your broadband access when the phone is hung up.

Is dynamic T-1 service right for your business? It's certainly more cost effective than buying separate T-1 lines for telephone and Internet access when that's more capacity than you really need. It can also save you money compared to buying a bunch of individual telephone lines and a separate DSL or Cable broadband service that may not be all that reliable. Dynamic T-1 service is highly reliable and an excellent value for the money. Check it out for yourself. Get prices and availability for dynamic T1 service now.

VoIP is For Smaller Companies Too

Enterprise VoIP solutions are generally seen as too sophisticated and way too expensive for small business. For the most part, that's true. In exceptional cases you may find that the feature rich IP PBX systems available today are a productivity booster for your sophisticated, if small, operation. For everyone else who just wants good voice quality telephone calls at a modest cost, SMB (Small and Medium Business) VoIP solutions may well fit the bill.

VoIP ranges from using your computer as a telephone all the way up to systems that are indistinguishable from standard network switched technologies. The home business user may be very happy with a VoIP telephone service that piggy-backs on the Cable or DSL broadband they already have for Internet access. These services don't require you to buy a special telephone. Instead, they provide an adaptor, sometimes called an ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor, that works with the phone you have now. You simply plug your phone into the adaptor, connect the adaptor to your router or broadband modem, and you're set.

When you pick up the phone you get dial tone just like you have now. The phone rings just like it always has. The difference is that the bundled price of local and long distance service is often much less than you pay for traditional analog telephone service. Are you interested in VoIP as a replacement telephone service or for a second phone line? If so, you can use the service finder at Affordable VoIP to compare service offers and pick the one that's right for you.

Businesses that are large enough to have multiple employees and their own business address usually need a multi-line system so that more than one person can be on the phone at a time. Typical of these small businesses are real estate offices, insurance sales, warehouses, restaurants, retail stores and so on. What's also typical these days is that most businesses have a need for both telephone and Internet service. There are two good solutions that will give you both phone and Internet service with the voice quality and reliability you need.

The first solution is called Integrated T1. The integration comes from a combination of telephone and Internet on the same standard T1 line. Usually T1 is set up for either voice or data. But an integrated solution gives you both. A dynamic T1 line goes even further and automatically assigns any bandwidth not being used for telephone calls to broadband Internet. Even a heavily loaded Integrated T1 line with a dozen calls in progress will still give you Internet access similar to may DSL services. Being a combined service, you get a price break by ordering a single T1 line instead of two separate ones for telephone and Internet.

The second solution is call SIP Trunking. This is a fairly new service and works very much like a dynamic T1 line. Both voice and data packets travel on the same SIP Trunk from your business to your service provider, where they are separated into phone calls destined for the public telephone system and Internet access routed to the Internet backbones. The term SIP refers to Session Initiation Protocol, the term used for signaling in a VoIP telephone system.

Would an Integrated T1 or SIP Trunking solution be best for your company? The way to find out is to get pricing for each approach and compare cost and benefits. A simple online query will get the ball rolling and a friendly consultant will help you pick the right service for your business needs.

VoIP Replacement Services

Are you dissatisfied with your current VoIP service provider? Are you getting poor customer service, or even no service if they have gone out of business? Then use this handy VoIP Service Finder to compare offers and find a new provider. There are also some other alternatives you should consider if you are running a business.

VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol zoomed onto the scene and has made quite a splash for residential, small business and enterprise users. What's propelled the growth of VoIP has been the opportunity for cost savings on telephone services.

At the residential level, competitive phone service providers figured out how to use the Internet so they wouldn't have to lease regular lines from the local phone companies. They give you an adaptor so you can connect your phone to your broadband router or modem and then offer attractive bundle pricing for local and long distance service. This type of service is also attractive for very small businesses with only a single phone, including home office businesses. VoIP providers typically include many features, such as Caller ID, that traditional phone companies offer as options with extra charges.

Enterprise VoIP is a bit more sophisticated. There's big capital and expense savings to be had by using phones that connect to the company LAN rather than a separate telephone network. There's also an opportunity to tie computer screens and telephones together in computer-telephone integration to increase productivity in customer service and call center operations.

A big factor in VoIP call voice quality is the quality of the network connection. A good, solid high bandwidth Internet service with low latency and jitter and few lost packets can provide high call quality. A flaky Internet connection is going to sound bad no matter who the service provider is.

Enterprises rarely use the Internet as their telephone network. Instead, they terminate calls to the outside world through traditional digital telephone trunks or contract with a SIP Trunking provider that offers a private network connection.

A VoIP option called Integrated T1 service offers the benefits of lower cost telephone service for businesses using 6 to 12 phone lines and broadband Internet. A special access device connects to the service provider over a private dynamic T1 line. That line carries both telephone calls and Internet service. The quality of the phone calls is protected by the equipment, which assigns priority to any phone conversations and uses the remaining bandwidth for broadband Internet. The dynamic aspect is that any bandwidth not needed for telephone service is automatically reassigned to boost Internet speed.

T-1 Digital Telephone Lines

If your business has multiple telephone lines, you may already be familiar with T-1 digital telephone lines. If not, you may be missing an opportunity to save money on every monthly phone bill. Even if you have T1 service installed now, you may not be aware of all the currently available options and the cost savings that could be yours.

Digital telephony traces its roots back to the 1950's, when the telephone companies were looking for ways to efficiently transport dozens, even hundreds or thousands of phone calls. Basic analog phone lines carry only one conversation per pair of copper wires. An analog multiplexing scheme, called carrier telephony, treated the phone lines like radio bands to transport multiple calls per pair of wires between phone company offices. Multiplexed analog trunks cut down of the number of wires needed, but suffered from noise and crosstalk problems that lowered long distance call quality.

The T-carrier system, which offered T1 and T3 digital trunk lines, has been the solution of choice for both telephone companies and larger businesses for decades. T1 lines are divided into 24 time multiplexed channels, each carrying one digitized telephone conversation. Only two pair of common telephone wire are needed for T1 telephone line. One pair is for transmit and one for receive. T1 lines start making economic sense when you have 10 or 12 outgoing phone lines. That threshold is shrinking as T1 line prices are steadily reduced, while analog phone line prices remain relatively constant.

An improved T-1 digital telephone line is called ISDN PRI, short for Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate Interface. It's called PRI or T1 PRI for short. PRI uses a channelized T1 line but reserves 1 of the 24 channels for signaling and digital information. The other 23 channels are available to support telephone calls. This technology has the advantage that all of the bits in each channel are used for digitized voice signals. The signaling channel serves the other 23 and makes calls connect and disconnect faster. It also provides Caller ID information, which standard T1 phone lines cannot support. T1 PRI is now the standard for business PBX systems and call centers, where multiple phone lines are in simultaneous use.

But what if you only need 4 to 6 outgoing phone lines? There is another solution called Integrated T1 service that combines telephone and Internet service on a single T1 line. You get up to 12 channels for telephone service. The rest are used to bring in broadband Internet access. A version called a dynamic T1 line automatically reassigns unused telephone channels for Internet bandwidth until they are needed. This way you can get up to 1.5 Mbps broadband speeds for upload and download but be sure that phone service is always given priority as needed. The cost of Integrated T1 service is attractive because most companies need both telephone and Internet service.

An even newer T1 line service is called SIP Trunking. SIP is the signaling protocol used by VoIP telephone systems. A SIP Trunking provider offers both VoIP telephone service and Internet access over a single T1 line. If you need more capacity on this or any of the other T1 services, you can add additional T1 lines as needed.

Are you interested in exploring the cost savings opportunities offered by T-1 digital telephone lines, or looking to see if you can save money on your current digital services, then use our Shop For T1 GeoQuote (tm) search tool to get instant online quotes so you can compare prices.

Integrated T1 Gives You Phone and Internet

As a small business owner, you want the best quality and performance you can get from your telecom services. But you can't just go out and buy what the major corporation down the street has. Well maybe not exactly the same, but pretty close.

What I mean by that is that you can have clear sounding, reliable phone service and reliable, dependable Internet service scaled for the size of your operation. That big company needs more capacity than you do because they have so many more people trying to use it. They also pay 10x to 100x more than you will.

What you don't have to compromise on is quality of service. To achieve it, you'll be using a T1 line. T1's are the industry standard for voice and data. A medium size company will likely have at least one T1 line for telephone service and one or more for dedicated Internet access. But you don't need all that. You'll do just fine with a single T1 that provides you with both telephone and Internet access.

But, wait. Aren't T1 lines set up to be telephone trunks or data lines as needed? Yes that's the usual setup. But there is another type of service called Integrated T1 that transports both phone and Internet at the same time.

How does it do that? A channelized T1 telephone line has capacity for up to 24 outside phone lines. Do you really need that many? Hardly. Half a dozen to a dozen are plenty for most smaller businesses. If that's all you need, what happens to the unused capacity? In standard T1 telephone service, those extra channels go to waste. Wouldn't it be nice if that unused capacity could be put to good use.

That's what Integrated T1 service does. You assign a certain amount of capacity, say enough for 6 to 12 outside lines, to be used for phone service. The rest is assigned for Internet service. Unlike broadband phone services, you never have to worry about your computer knocking out your phone conversations. Neither function interferes with the other.

How much Internet bandwidth do you get with this arrangement? It's very similar to DSL speeds. A T1 line runs at 1.5 Mbps, so if you use half of it for 12 outside phone lines, there is 750 Kbps available for data. If you only need 6 outside lines, you'll have over 1 Mbps for Internet access. That's more than enough for point of sale transactions, WiFi hotspots, business data transfers, Web browsing and email service.

Even better, some Integrated T1 services use what's called dynamic T1 lines. The dynamic line gives telephone calls priority, but is smart enough to know that any capacity not used for phone calls can be temporarily added to the Internet bandwidth. If no one is on the phone, the entire 1.5 Mbps is assigned to Internet speed.

Is Integrated T1 service right for your business? The cost of the service replaces both your current phone lines and Internet service, so it can be more affordable than you think. Plus you'll enjoy the benefit of having professional grade digital telecommunications service instead of some collection of services that may not work as well. Find out more about Integrated T1 and other voice and data options that are available for your business location with a simple phone or online inquiry at T1 Rex.

MegaPath Duet Combines Voice and Data

Small and medium size businesses have a need for both telephone and broadband Internet services. Most often, the telephone side started small with a few phones and outside lines for local and long distance calling. It may still be just a few phones or may have grown over the years to dozens of handsets and half a dozen or more analog phone lines. New ones get added as more capacity is needed.

Internet service may have started as dial-up and moved to DSL for broadband. Then, perhaps, a move to fractional or full T1 dedicated Internet service to improve reliability.

The result of this piecemeal growth is that many local businesses are paying too much for their telecommunication services, compared to what they can get today. You might be paying as much as 50% more than you need to if your systems were optimized.

The secret to the cost savings is in bundling services. Usually when we think of bundling, it's about bundling local and long distance phone service on one or two lines. That a popular option for residential, home office users and very small professional offices. A bundling option with more capacity combines voice and data service on a single T1 line.

Many businesses have T1 lines as telephone trunks for their PBX phone systems or for dedicated business broadband service. Some companies have both. But they are completely separate services with different line configurations. A T1 line can handle up to 24 telephone lines or 1.5 Mbps of data service. Larger companies may have multiple T1 lines and use them to full capacity. Small companies may find that they really don't need all those phone lines or all that bandwidth. If only there was a way to combine voice and data on a single T1 line.

That's exactly what MegaPath has done with its Duet Phone and Internet service. Duet is what is called Integrated T1 service, another way to say bundled. But aren't standard telephone and Internet signals incompatible? They are in their native forms. What you have to do to bundle them is to convert everything to a common protocol. In this case, IP or Internet Protocol. The data connection is already IP. The telephones have to be converted to IP by using VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol.

That's how Duet works. An interface device at your location connects to the telephones you already have and performs the conversion from analog to VoIP. It also connects to your router to provide the broadband Internet service. The connection to the outside world is a T1 line that goes to MegaPath. Note, I didn't say it connects directly to the Internet. Before it goes anywhere else, it connects you to the MegaPath office.

That's significant because even though Duet uses VoIP, an Internet Protocol, your telephone service travels over a private network. That's done so that MegaPath can assure you of crystal clear voice quality, also known as "toll quality" telephony. The public Internet lacks the controls necessary to ensure high quality voice signals at all times, an absolute necessity for business users. If you've tried Internet based VoIP and been disappointed by garbled voices, echoes, clipped conversations and dropouts, you'll find Integrated T1 service to be far superior.

With MegaPath's Duet, you can have from 2 to 16 telephone lines plus dedicated broadband Internet service. All of this is managed with MegaPath provided customer premises equipment, so you don't have to pay for expensive specialized interface gear or develop the technical expertise to make it work. All that's taken care of for you as long as you have the service.

I should mention that Duet has been rolled out to thousands of locations already but may or may not be available in your area. If it is, you have the option to bundle your telephone and business broadband service on a single T1 line at a price that will likely surprise you. Want to find out? Simply call the toll free number or enter a quick online request for quote at T1 Rex. Our friendly consultants will be happy to help you find the best voice and data service options at the lowest price for your business needs.