IP Exchange - The Final Piece For VoIP

It’s no secret that the world’s telephone communications are on a fast path from circuit switched to packet switched networks. Large businesses have embraced enterprise VoIP as a way to improve productivity, reduce costs and future-proof their in-house telephone systems. Small and medium businesses are taking a close look at SIP trunking as a way to get high quality telephone and broadband service as a bundle. Consumers have taken matters into their own hands by moving to Cable broadband-telephone bundles or third party VoIP services. Yet, the PSTN persists.

What’s holding up this house of cards? Right now every VoIP system and service is an island unto itself. You’ll more often than not find that on-net calls for any particular VoIP service are free. On-net means on that particular service, unrelated to location. This is because the provider owns the network and doesn’t have to pay anyone else to handle the traffic. They are making money through the monthly fee they charge their customers for the VoIP service itself.

The same is true for large companies with their own enterprise VoIP systems. One of the big cost advantages of VoIP is that you can eliminate the separate telephone network and use your data network to transport voice, data and video. Another savings comes from keeping your voice traffic on your own network, not just within an office but also between locations. Avoid the public telephone network and you avoid the per minute charges to use it.

Therein lies the rub. The only common link between all telephones on Earth is the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network. Its legacy is based on switching analog phone circuits to make the phone to phone connections. Long haul circuits have long since gone digital, but a very special type of digital. The phone conversations are digitized according to an international standard, G.711, and packed into rigidly synchronized channels called DS0s. A DS0 is 64 Kbps and is the same whether being transported on a T1 or PRI trunk line right on up to a fiber optic OC-768 cable. Cellular phones have their own network standards, but are designed to interface with the PSTN to hand-off traffic.

The heart of the PSTN is both its technical specs for connecting analog and digital conversations and its switching systems called SS7. Nowadays the switching signals have their own separate paths between switching offices in a hierarchy consisting of local central offices and tandem offices that connect the local offices into one large universal network. If you want to connect with any phone on the PSTN, you need to send the signals according to the SS7 protocol.

VoIP comes as an outgrowth of the computers networking industry rather than the telephone industry. Its technology is based on IP packets and SIP switching rather than pulse code modulation channels and SS7. As you might expect, you can’t directly connect one system to the other. Analog and VoIP phone systems, including business PBX systems, connect or “terminate” their calls to the PSTN. The PSTN SS7 switches take care of getting the conversations connected from one proprietary network to another. Each time a call has to traverse the PSTN, there is a small but significant per minute access charge.

TW Telecom, a major competitive carrier, is looking to give the telephone system a nudge in the direction of eliminating the SS7 switching step. According to a recent report in Connected Planet, they are asking the FCC to classify voice calls over IP as a telecom service rather than the current status as an information service. That would get incumbent telephone companies, the heart of the old Bell system, to connect phone calls on an IP to IP basis. The benefits would include higher voice quality by eliminating the protocol conversions and lower network compensation costs.

TW’s actions are the first step in a process of creating IP Exchanges, similar to Ethernet Exchanges that share traffic between network providers and extending the reach of all Ethernet networks. It’s a matter of standardizing protocols and fees so that you have a level playing field without technical hiccups. It’s not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end for SS7.

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.