Why Business Needs Unified Communications

By: John Shepler

Time was when there was only one method of electronic communication. It was that heavy black phone on your desk. Now look what we have. Sure, there’s still a black phone on your desk, but it’s a lot lighter thanks to modern plastics and solid state electronics. There’s also a raft of other ways we communicate electronically. How many of these do you use: email, text messages, mobile phone calls and video chats? How about the platforms: desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones and soon… a watch?

One of the biggest communications issues, especially in business, is that all these different platforms and applications don’t necessarily play together well. One solution is to just make sure you have them all with you. That used to mean a pager on the belt, a cell phone in the pocket, a laptop in the briefcase, and somebody to forward you messages from your office when you were in the field. A better solution soon became a crying need.

Let’s Combine Everything into One
The answer that you might expect is to integrate all of these communications systems into one. That won’t really do. There is no one platform that can handle everything equally well. The desk phone is tethered, as is the desktop computer with the nice big screen. The smartphone screen is way too small for a lot of serious work. The tablet makes a ridiculous telephone held up to your ear.

There are forces still pulling in that direction. Enter the “phablet.” It’s a giant cell phone that’s almost, if not really, too big for your pocket. Tablet computers now have clip on keyboards so you can touch type from the coffee house. Laptop computers are shrinking, getting lighter and some have screens that detach from the keyboard and act like tablets. If there was only a way to get a great big screen that you can actually see along with keys that fit your fingers along with a telephone that lets you take calls privately, handles email and text messaging, and all fits neatly in your shirt pocket.

Well, there isn’t. There isn’t even anything on the horizon that fits this description. Someday, the QWERTY typewriter keyboard may become as quaint as the crank telephone. Siri might actually become your best friend and be able to read your mind as well as understand everything you’re mumbling. Something akin to Google Glass may project that big screen in front of your face anywhere. That’s not today, though. Today we need a solution that let’s us communicate anyway we like anywhere we happen to be.

It’s Called Unified Communications
The development that takes what we have and makes it into the closest approximation of what we really want is UC or Unified Communications. The “unified” part means doesn’t mean trying to get one platform to do everything. It recognizes that each device has its strong points and weaknesses. The master solution is to make all of this stuff play together well. In fact, so well that you needn’t be afraid that you are missing out just because you don’t have a particular platform with you at the moment.

A simple example is the lowly telephone call. Every business is still dependent on the telephone simply because it is the only universal medium of voice communications. For a long time, this meant having a business number that you printed on your business cards and a separate home phone number that was printed in “the book.” If you were at home you didn’t get your business calls unless you had a secretary working late to give the caller your home number or forward the call. You came in the next morning and found a raft of pink “while you were out” call sheets on the your desk.

The introduction of the cell phone only made matters worse. Now you’ve got a third phone number that only certain people know. What if they call the office instead of your cell when you are out? Will you miss the sale? Could be.

Unified communications starts with voice mail to replace the secretary and the telephone message sheets. You don’t have to fear missing a call because they’ll leave a voice message you can pick up anywhere. Even better is a “find me follow me” service that routes your calls to wherever you happen to be. With this type of automation you can hand out a single phone number and have it try your office phone, your cell phone or go to voice mail. You can even have it send you an email with the audio file of the call. Toll free number? Just have it routed to your unified business number.

The Technology Behind UC
The most popular platform for implementing unified communications is the cloud. Why? Because the cloud provides a common place to collect and distribute everything with near-infinite resources. All that processing power can easily handle everything from an independent professional up to the largest corporation. You don’t need to make a big capital investment or try to keep up to date on installing the newest features. The cloud provider takes care of that.

Cloud UC is driven by computing power and that computing power understands IP or Internet Protocol. The “Internet” part of IP doesn’t necessarily mean the public Internet. It just means the technical protocol that is also used by the Internet. For security and highest voice quality, you may not want your internal communications on the Internet at all. You will, however, want access to the Internet both in the office and on the road. That can be done carefully so that you use the Internet when you want to but private channels when you don’t.

What UC Can Do For You
Unified communications can be a gateway to both productivity improvement and cost reduction. It augments or replaces your in-house PBX phone system with a more powerful VoIP system that uses a common network with your computers and other digital devices. You can get tools for ease of collaboration among employees as well as the obvious single phone number benefits. Your laptop becomes your desktop with remote desktop access. Voice and video conferences can take place anywhere with a diverse group scattered in offices and hotel rooms around the globe.

Will all this cost a fortune? It’s probably cheaper than you think and may even offer all the new benefits at a lower cost than you are paying now. There’s only one way to find out. Get a set of competitive quotes for unified communications solutions and review the benefits and costs specific to your situation.



Note: The humorous mousepad about unified communications, along with many other items in the same theme, is available from the Gigapacket Zazzle store.

Is Voice Over MPLS The New PSTN?

It’s clear that packet switched networks are taking over from circuit switched networks. So much so, that the FCC is considering pulling the plug on the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) at some point. It’s a clear omen that the end is near for the telephone system that has served us for over a century. But what will take its place? Will it be VoIP? How about cellular?

It’s likely that VoIP is going to be the answer, but not the VoIP that we know today. What VoIP has going for it is established standards for coding & decoding, signaling, and a packet protocol that is compatible with Ethernet data networks. What’s holding it back from taking over virally is a wide variety of incompatible implementations, fear by wireless carriers that it will bring down their networks, and unpredictable voice quality on the Internet.

That hasn’t stopped major organizations from switching to enterprise VoIP solutions. They avoid the problems that consumers face using Voice over the Internet by rigidly controlling the performance of their in-house networks. For calls that need to go outside the organization, enterprise users will terminate outside calls to the PSTN through ISDN PRI digital trunks or have a third party SIP trunking provider terminate the calls.

Clearly, the larger the organization, the higher the percentage of calls that can be kept in-house. When companies have multiple locations, they have a decision to make. Each location can have its own PBX telephone system and connect to the PSTN for calls leaving the building. Or, a corporate PBX telephone system can handle all facilities with private trunk lines running between locations.

Chances are that a multi-location business needs data connectivity between locations anyway. So, adding voice packets to the data stream makes sense. That way call quality can be assured while avoiding the per-minute costs of using the public telephone system. The question is what type of network will work best for this application.

MPLS is increasingly becoming the network architecture of choice for converged voice and data networks. MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching is designed from the ground up to handle whatever protocol you want to transport. But even if everything is IP, MPLS has some big advantages over rolling your own network with private lines.

MPLS are privately operated and available only to customers of the service. That gives the network operators the ability to ensure the availability of enough bandwidth to prevent congestion and the resulting latencies and dropped packets that slow data and destroy voice services. QoS or Quality of Service control ensure that voice packets get the priority treatment they need to maintain high audio quality.

MPLS networks are also mesh networks, which makes them ideal for interconnecting multiple business locations. You can do this yourself with a hub and spoke arrangement with headquarters at the hub and routing traffic among the other locations. But your costs will be higher and the latency between locations greater when everything has to go through a central routing hub on private point to point trunk lines.

MPLS makes so much sense that the large telecom carriers are converting their core networks to MPLS to handle today’s traffic and whatever will be coming through the pipes tomorrow. Data, voice and video are handled equally well and can be transported in traditional TDM channel as well as packet protocols. What we call the PSTN today may well become interconnected MPLS networks in the future.

In the meantime, you can be enjoying the quality, security and cost advantages that MPLS networks have to offer. Learn how MPLS for VoIP networks can work for your organization.

Fractional ISDN PRI For Telephone Savings

For high performance business telephone usage, it’s hard to beat ISDN PRI. You get 23 digitized phone lines, fast out-of-band call switching, and Caller ID for your PBX phone system. It’s all delivered on a single line service that’s a lot cheaper than a collection of individual analog telephone lines. So what could be better?

How about the same quality and performance for smaller phone systems? How about, say, half-a-PRI with a substantial cost savings?

Sure, why not?

Honestly, not every business needs 23 outside lines. In fact, you have to be a fairly large operation or a specialized business like a call center to require that much capacity. But there are lots and lots of businesses that do need a dozen or so phone lines for sales operations or customer service. For those businesses there is Fractional ISDN PRI.

In the United States, ISDN PRI is delivered on a T1 line. Each T1 line has 24 channels. ISDN PRI uses 23 channels for phone conversations, 1 per channel, and the last channel for signaling and information. If you’ve ordered a T1 line for dedicated Internet access or point to point connection to another facility, you know that you don’t always have to take the full line capacity. You can generally order fractional T1 service and pay somewhat less for a smaller bandwidth.

You can do the same thing with an ISDN PRI, also called a T1 PRI. There’s no need to order and configure all 23 phone channels if you don’t need that many. The T1 line will always have this capability available, but you may be able to order 6, 12, 18 or some other number of active lines. Configure them as any combination of incoming, outgoing, local, long distance or toll free. The monthly price you pay will be based on how many lines you set up and how much you use them.

You should also known that there is a related service called Integrated T1 that combines telephone and Internet data on a single line. It has special equipment so that voice and data never interfere. Basically, some of the T1 channels are assigned as telephone lines and the rest are allocated to Internet data service. If all you need is 6 to 12 phone lines plus broadband Internet access, Integrated T1 service may be your best cost solution.

Which telecom service is best for your company: ISDN PRI, Fractional ISDN PRI, or Integrated T1 service? Why not compare costs from multiple providers and then decide? Go ahead, the process is automated and takes just a few minutes. Expert consultants are available free of charge to help you decide or talk over your business requirements.

Local Telephone Service Provider Options

Every home and business needs local telephone service of some sort. Not so long ago, the solution was simple. Just call up the local phone company and make an appointment for them to come and install a telephone set or a dozen. Nowadays there are more options and more decisions to make to ensure that you'll get the best deal possible.

The traditional local phone service or "dial tone" service is the same analog technology that's been around for 100 years. The technology is well established. The required copper pair wiring has been pulled into nearly every building in the United States. You can still walk into a local telephone company office and request service. But you might do better to consider offers from both the incumbent local exchange carrier and competitive carriers that have established themselves since deregulation made this possible.

Analog phone service is a viable option for residential, home office, and small businesses that need only a single line or a few lines. But once a business is large enough to have more than half a dozen outgoing lines, there are digital options that start to look more attractive. Integrated T1 line service gives you telephone and broadband as a bundle with a price that may be better than buying them separately. A full T1 line or ISDN PRI service offers up to two dozen phone lines. These are commonly used with PBX telephone systems connected to phones throughout the company. Check prices on digital phone service options to replace analog lines.

VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is a digital service that is even newer than T1 "digitized analog" phone service. The technology is designed to mimic the format of computer data packets so that it runs on commonly available broadband services such as DSL, Cable Internet, and T1 Dedicated Internet. A regular analog phone plugs into an Analog Telephone Adaptor provided by the VoIP supplier to make the broadband connection.

A popular ultra-low cost residential service is MagicJack. This company provides an ATA that's about the size of a pack of cards and plugs into a USB connection on your broadband connected PC to get access to the Internet. The computer needs to be on to use the phone, although incoming calls will go to voicemail when the computer is switched off.

Other VoIP providers offer a stand alone ATA that connects to a broadband router or modem and doesn't require the use of a PC for phone service. The phone is active as long as there is an active broadband connection. There are many competing services available today. Use this Affordable VoIP Service Finder to compare offers.

Larger companies use enterprise VoIP solutions that are based on private line or network connections that do not use the Internet. An service growing in popularity is SIP trunking, a digital line service based on the Session Initiation Protocol that is common to many VoIP systems, including IP PBX systems that manage multiple phone lines and handsets.

An increasing trend among younger phone users is to make their cell phone their primary telephone, perhaps to the exclusion of a landline service. For those who are on the go a lot, including independent sales professionals, the ability to make and receive calls anywhere has a lot of value.

The latest phone models include a high resolution digital camera, the ability to download and play videos and full HTML Internet browsers, as well as multiple messaging options that include email. It's not inconceivable that some individuals may be able to use their smartphone as a substitute for even a desktop or laptop computer, as well as a traditional fixed location telephone. Compare cell phones and wireless plans to see if any of this makes sense for you.

Virtual Office Hosted Telecommunications at Half Price

If you want to upgrade your business telephone system but wince at the cost of buying a PBX system and trying to make it work for your situation, hosted telecommunications could be your solution. Even better, Packet8 business services is now offering their Virtual Office solution at half price for a limited time.

Half off, a 50% discount, sure sounds good. But just what is hosted telecommunications and what does a Virtual Office do that regular telephone service doesn't?

Basically, there are two ways to run a business phone system that consists of more than a couple phones. You can buy the equipment that operates your phones and hire the people to set it up and make changes as they are needed. Or you can have a company that specializes in this "host" the equipment and services at their location. All you need then is to put telephone handsets wherever you want them.

Packet 8 Virtual Office is a hosted telecommunications solution. They have the PBX (Private Branch Exchange) equipment at their headquarters. In this case, it's an iPBX or Internet protocol PBX system because they are leveraging the connectivity of the Internet to make the connections. This is a VoIP telephone system, but without the need to buy and manage network voice equipment at your location.

The Virtual Office is more than just a brand name. It also hints at the difference between this arrangement and a typical business phone system. You can locate your handsets wherever you need them and they don't even have to be in the same building, town or even country. That's right, you can set up a virtual company where your colleagues are all over the world. Yet to outside callers it appears that you are all in one big office.

In fact, to people within your organization it will seem like you are all on the same phone system in one location. You can dial by extension number and not worry where those extensions are physically located. You'll park calls, forward and transfer them at will. There's even a conference bridge included so you can host your own conference calls beyond 3 way calling. Virtual Office integrates with Salesforce and Microsoft Outlook to support your sales and CRM activities.

There's a lot more to this system, so you'll want to learn more about Packet 8 Virtual Office. If you choose to order Virtual Office Unlimited VoIP service with a new IP phone (model 53i, 55i or 57i) and you're a new Packet8 customer, you'll need to enter promo code UEIP25 when going through the checkout process to get the limited time special offer of $24.95 per month instead of the standard subscription rate of $49.99 a month for a full 12 months on a one-year contract. Yes it's really half price, but only from now until December 31, 2008.