SIP vs PRI Pros and Cons for Business PBX

Business telephone lines have gone through several transformations. What started out as analog landlines evolved into digital T1 CAS trunks, then ISDN PRI, and finally SIP packet based network connections. Amazingly, all of these technologies are still available. We’ll take a closer look into the two most popular configurations used in multi-line PBX business phone systems.

The Primary Rate Interface
ISDN PRI is short for the mouthful of an expression that is Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate Interface. Often the shorthand PRI or ISDN PRI is used for obvious reasons.

ISDN PRI is a standard telecom service that is based on the earlier T1 line specification. T1 got its start as a means of consolidating 24 pairs of twisted wire phone lines into 2 pair to save the expense of long distance cabling and overloading of telephone poles. This was accomplished by digitally multiplexing the 24 separate channels so that they were all transported together on a single 1.5 Mbps digital signal. An additional advantage of going digital was the reduction of noise and crosstalk on long distance phone calls.

A major benefit of the T1 specification is that existing phone company infrastructure can be reused, including wire landlines and microwave relays. High frequency digital signals degrade over distance fairly quickly, so regenerative repeaters were added to the lines to build the signal back up. With this arrangement, T1 could be offered over long distances to serve virtually all of the customers who were using the old analog phone lines.

One issue with T1 was that if each of the 24 channels carried only the audio telephone conversations, other wiring would have to be provided for signaling. A better solution was to multiplex signal bits into the data stream by robbing a bit here and a bit there in each of the channels. This degraded the audio very slightly and allowed the T1 CAS (Channel Associated Signaling) system to be self-contained.

Additional features, such as caller ID, were introduced by the phone companies and desired for business phones and especially call centers. This is where PRI comes in. The same basic T1 line organization was kept, except that only 23 channels were assigned as individual telephone lines. One complete channel was assigned to handle all of the signaling, data and other background services.

Most PBX systems today have interface cards where you directly plug-in a ISDN PRI cable and have 23 phone lines (or as many as you have ordered) at your command. If you need more than 23 lines, you plug in additional PRIs to add more channels.

Is there a Secondary Rate Interface?
No, but there is a related standard called BRI or Basic Rate Interface. The phone companies thought this would catch on as a two phone line system or higher speed dial-up modem service. By the time it was heavily deployed, computer communications had moved on to broadband and BRI never caught on. It has been popular for radio station broadcasts and remote announcing, such as voice over artists, because it can carry high quality audio signals. Recently, this service has been replaced by broadband Internet and is very difficult to find anymore.

What is SIP and How Does It Compare to PRI?
SIP is Session Initiation Protocol. It is a technology competitor to PRI. SIP is really a standard for transmitting VoIP or Voice or Internet Protocol phone calls over networks typically shared with other computing devices.

As you probably suspect, SIP is a packet based protocol versus the channel based protocol used by ISDN and T1. In channelized systems, a complete voice channel is assigned to a phone call for as long as the call is in progress. If no one is talking, the line just sits there idle. There is no sharing of facilities. In VoIP telephony, the conversation is broken up into small packets that are routed on the network to their destination. Many conversations can be on a network at the same time along with file transfers, print jobs and everything else digital. If there is a pause in one conversation, no packets are sent to the network for that channel only.

As you can see, VoIP is more efficient at sharing the network facilities. It comes at a cost though. Sometimes everybody wants to talk or send data at the same time. Unless the network is carefully designed, it can become flooded with too many packets to handle and things back up. This network congestion causes delays in transfer that breaks up phone conversations. Any packets lost will also distort the conversation.

Network Considerations for SIP
Careful network engineering is necessary to ensure that the sensitive voice packets are transferred without delay or corruption. Usually, these data streams are given a priority using Class of Service mechanisms within the network.

A network line dedicated to SIP is called a SIP trunk. This is the equivalent of an ISDN PRI line. Any digital line capable of carrying Ethernet packets can be a dedicated SIP trunk, although T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth and Carrier Ethernet services are often used for SIP. By giving the SIP phone conversations their own line, there is no interference from other data packets. SIP trunks are most often used to connect business and call center PBX systems directly to phone service providers. Like PRI, most PBX systems have network interface cards that plug directly into a SIP trunk.

SIP vs PRI
One protocol isn’t necessarily more appropriate than the other. It depends on the application. Most PBX systems can be set up to connect to SIP trunks or PRI trunks regardless of whether the phone sets themselves are analog handsets or VoIP phones. SIP trunks are particularly useful with newer Unified Communications or Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) systems that integrate computers, desk sets video conferencing and mobile phones into a single interoperable system. In these systems everything is in packet format and running on a single network.

Which is Right For You?
The best choice in telephone trunks is the one that works best with the system you have or the system you desire, and at the lowest cost for the performance you need. Prices of both PRI and SIP have fallen dramatically over the last few years, so you owe it to yourself to see what telephone trunk line options are available for your business needs.

You Pay Too Much For Your Business Phone

While we’ve been busily gathering and servicing new customers, the telephone industry has been changing behind our backs. If you are still using the same phone and provider that you had a decade ago, it’s seriously time for a review. You not only could be, but probably are, paying way more than you would have to and be missing out on some newer productivity features.

What’s so different now? After all, a phone is a phone, right?

Ah, not so anymore. All phones used to be pretty much the same. That’s because they all came from the same supplier, the local telephone company. The phone was a big dumb peripheral to the large scale switching system at the central office. Most single line phones were built from passive components and got their power through the phone line. Multi line business phones were also built from passive components but supplied from a power supply and line card rack in the back room. That was necessary to create such features as flashing a line button when it was on hold.

Some of business phones you can buy today are not much more sophisticated that the one’s that Ma Bell supplied. One difference is that they may have a plug-in power supply or batteries to power the electronics inside. The one to four line key telephone systems that you can buy from office supply stores have replaced the old electromagnetic switching with smaller electronic boxes. Still, they all work on the same old telephone lines called POTS.

POTS stands for Plain Old Telephone Service. It consists of independent analog business lines that run from your office to the phone company over twisted pairs of copper wires. Power and switching signals are provided by the telco switching system. The in-house key system lets you have more than one line on a phone with LEDs to show what’s in use or on hold.

Did you know that you can get POTS service from companies other than your local phone company? The telephone industry has been deregulated so that other providers can lease the bare copper wires that run to your office and supply you with local and long distance service. There can be a cost savings in doing nothing more than switching providers. Your phone system will work exactly the same as it does now only you’ll get a lower monthly phone bill.

If your system has grown to more than a half dozen lines, especially if you have upgraded to an in-house PBX switching system, you could benefit from bringing in a digital trunk line instead of all those separate analog lines. A digital trunk called T1 CAS or ISDN PRI bundles up to 23 or 24 separate lines into a single line that still keeps the phone conversations independent. Why do this? You could realize a big cost savings from consolidating your lines. Chances are that your PBX system already has a T1 or PRI connection or you can upgrade with a adaptor card.

You may be wondering if VoIP telephony is for you. The consumer grade services that run on the Internet may not give you the call quality consistency that you need for good customer support or other business communications. What can work very well and save you considerable money is something called a SIP Trunk. This is a digital line that transports both telephone calls and broadband Internet access but keeps them completely separate so they don’t interfere. It’s a way to take advantage of VoIP technology without losing call quality or reliability.

The latest innovation is cloud based communications, also called Hosted VoIP or Hosted PBX. This is sort of like going back to just having phones in-house connected to the phone company’s switching center. The difference is that you aren’t stuck with the local phone company as your only choice. Using SIP Trunks, you can connect to many different providers, all competing for your business. Not only can you save money on your monthly bill, but you’ll avoid investing in expensive PBX or Key telephone systems and get advanced features like being able to include your smartphones in the system.

Does this whet your appetite to investigate what is available for your business telephone needs? Get prices and features for a variety of business phone service options so you can be fully informed before making any new commitments.

Business Phone Goes Hosted

Business telephone service has expanded over the years, from the single line analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) to multi-line PBX systems that handle hundreds and thousands of phone sets. What’s the next logical development? Could it be even larger and more sophisticated in-house PBX systems? No, just the opposite. The PBX is moving out as business phone service goes hosted.

Hosted business phone is another term for telephone switching in the cloud. Hosted means that a service provider hosts your telephone service on their equipment. The responsibility for running the PBX system and providing the lines to the public telephone system are effectively transferred from your company to your service provider’s.

Why would you want to go the hosted route? It generally boils down to finances and flexibility. The first financial advantage is that you no longer have to buy expensive capital equipment and provide a space for it in your building. This is seldom a one time allocation. Every so many years you find that your equipment has become obsolete and too expensive to maintain or it can no longer keep up with the demands placed on it. You need a newer and likely larger system to replace it. That process is called a “fork lift upgrade” because it you can’t often salvage any of the existing equipment. A fork lift truck drives in and hauls out the old PBX system. It then drives back in to deliver the new replacement.

Granted, smaller PBX systems that support branch offices or retail locations may be something you can pick up and carry yourself. Even so, the “fork lift” metaphor applies. It’s out with the old and in with the new. Hopefully you can pay off the old system before it’s time to replace it.

With a hosted PBX system, there are phones but there is no PBX or telephone switching system in-house. That lets you avoid a major capital expense and also the guessing game of trying to predict how much capacity you’ll need during the lifetime of that system. If you guess low, you’ll be replacing it while it still works just fine. If you guess high, you’ll pay for capacity that you never use. Either way, it’s hard to know the future well enough to pick just the right size PBX.

The other financial advantage is that PBX phone systems cost more than just the purchase price. Every time to you to do a “move, add or change” with your telephones, somebody has to do some rewiring and change some programming in the system. That could be a dedicated staff member who is the telephone manager full or part time. Otherwise it is a contractor known as a VAR for Value Added Reseller. Either way, there’s ongoing expense to run the system and keep up with the changes.

How do hosted business phone systems save you all that grief and expense? The service provider has a much larger shared PBX system and the staff to run it 24/7. They keep up with day to day maintenance and upgrades. Because this system is so large, it can accommodate many customers and easily expand to meet your changing needs. That’s the principle behind the cloud. You don’t have to worry about all the hardware, software and personnel needed to keep the phone system running. The service provider specializes in this and handles it for you.

What’s available in the way of hosted phone services? There are a number of cloud communications providers who offer this capability. They generally provide the service on a “per seat” per month basis. Each phone has internal, local and long distance switching capability included. Most of the time its a single price for all calling other than international and for all the features. Some providers can include your mobile phones so that they are part of the PBX capabilities. Some providers even include the physical phones. These are IP Telephones than plug right into your company LAN. You connect to the provider with a network connection called a SIP Trunk.

Can hosted business phone make sense for your company? There are solutions for every business from the smallest retailer to the largest corporation. Get prices and features for competing hosted PBX service providers now and see if you can save both money and effort.

SIP over MPLS for Enterprise VoIP

SIP Trunking is widely popular for smaller businesses who can save on their monthly telecom bill by getting both their telephone and Internet broadband services on a single integrated line. SIP Trunking is also a cost saver for large corporate headquarters or call centers that need many outside phone lines and already have converged voice and data LANs. But what about the organization with multiple locations?

The answer may well be SIP over MPLS. You may already have an MPLS network in place for sharing data files between branch offices and headquarters. Cost tradeoffs almost always give the advantage to an MPLS network over a suite of point to point data lines of equivalent bandwidth. With MPLS, you only need a last mile connection to each of your locations. As the name implies, these are point to point pipes measuring just thousands of feet to the nearest central office. The major distance spans are handled by the fiber optic core of the MPLS network.

There are also security advantages with MPLS versus IP networking, such as the Internet. MPLS uses proprietary labels to direct traffic, not the IP header information that is often the target of malicious activity. The network is privately operated and not accessible by the general public. You need to be a contracted customer with defined locations and connections between them that are managed by the network operator.

What you may not realize is that MPLS networks can handle voice traffic as well as data. The name MPLS actually stands for Multi-Protocol Label Switching. The network can handle nearly any protocol and is perfect for packet switched services of all types. For larger organizations, MPLS provides the WAN connections you need to link a few or many converged voice and data networks.

Do you currently have data connections between your sites but stand-alone analog or PRI telephone lines at each? That works, but you are probably paying toll charges to call between offices. There’s no economy of scale if each facility is relatively small and in a different city or state than the others. By consolidating your telephony, data lines and perhaps broadband connectivity with a single provider you can likely realize a considerable cost savings while maintaining call quality and network speed.

The MPLS labels or tags do their magic by not only specifying packet destinations, but also class of service. This keeps data file transfers from damaging the much more fragile real-time demands of voice and video. If you have company wide VoIP now and conversations get distorted or calls drop when the network gets congested, traffic engineering is what you need. MPLS networks are engineered with committed rates for your services, as well as those of other network customers. That ensures that you have the bandwidth you purchase regardless of what anyone else is doing. Contrast that commitment with the best-effort information services, such as the Internet, where performance is all over the map.

With SIP over MPLS, your telephone calls within the company stay on-net and off the public switched telephone network. You don’t pay toll charges for office calls that stay on your network regardless of whether they are from desks twenty feet apart or branch offices thousands of miles apart. It’s even possible to include international locations on the same MPLS network to truly integrate your company communications. When calls go off-net to outside landlines or mobile phones, those terminations are handled by your SIP Trunking service provider. Since the network is converged, there is no need for a separate telephone network and your support needs may also be reduced.

Does your organization have multiple locations that could be more efficiently run by a voice and data MPLS network? Get pricing for MPLS Network Services quickly and easily to compare with your current bills.

Get a Toll Free Number Instantly

You’re starting a new business or breathing new life into an existing one. You’ve come to the conclusion that a toll free number will help you get more sales prospects and orders. It will also improve your reputation for fast and easy customer service. Now that you’ve made the decision you’d love to get started right away. But you have to wait at least a week to establish a toll free number, right?

Wrong! You can have your toll free number up and running in less time that it takes you to read this article. If you don’t want to wait even that long,order and activate your toll free number now. Yes, you can have an 800, 855, 866, 877 or 888 toll free number for your business or personal use as close to instantly as possible.

How does this work. It’s all thanks to the highly efficient online provisioning process from Kall8. They have gone to the trouble of setting up a large collection of toll free numbers, so all you have to do is select one you like the look or sound of and place your order. You pay for these with a credit card that is also billed monthly for your service, so there is no long approval process involved.

How much will a toll free number set you back? Hold on to your chair so you fall off. The cost is just $2 each for 888, 877, 866 or 855 prefixes. That’s what you pay to get your number assigned and set up for use. Then the cost is just $2 a month to maintain service plus the cost of incoming calls on a per minute basis.

Note that the older 800 toll free numbers are slightly more expensive. Those are $5 each and $5 per month plus the cost of calls.

There are even more expensive vanity numbers that spell out specific words on the telephone keyboard to make them easier to remember. Examples of numbers now on the vanity list are 1-877-9-Alimony (1-888-925-4666) and 1-877-5-BIGMONEY (1-877-524-4666). The prices on these vary from $15 to over $100 for setup and monthly fee. What’s an example of an expensive one? How about 1-877-5-MESOTHELIOMA (1-877-563-7684).

What do you get with your Kall8 toll free service? First, you get your number ready to use as soon as you complete the order process that takes only a few minutes. You specify which phone you want incoming calls to go to. These numbers don’t have their own phone line. Instead, you program them to ring to your office phone, home phone, cell phone or other phone that you’ll be near. You can change this ring-to number any time as your location changes so that you’ll never miss a call.

Do you get voice mail? Yes, it’s included. You can call in to get messages from the system or have them sent to you as attachments to your email. That way you can hear your messages on your computer without having to pick up a phone. You’ll also be able to get FAX messages sent to your email as attachments. No need for a separate fax machine to get messages. Just tell clients to send them to your toll free number.

Other features include call blocking, maximum call length setting, Caller ID, and even conference calling with up to 25 participants. These features are included as part of your monthly service fee, starting at just $2 per month.

How much will you pay for calls? The cost to the caller is free, of course. You pay 6.9 center per minute for calls from the 48 US states and Canada. There is a surcharge for calls that come in from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Saipan. Payphone callers will cost you an extra 60 cents per call, per FCC tariff.

With toll free numbers as cheap as $2 each and $2 a month, plus 6.9 cents a minute for most incoming calls, it’s hard to go wrong getting a toll free number for your business. There are no contacts involved, so if you don’t want the service anymore, you can simply cancel and only pay for the usage to date.

How To Reduce Your Business Wireless Costs

Are you suspicious that you may be spending a lot more on business mobile wireless services than you should be? It’s for a good reason. You most likely are. How much? Somewhere between 25 and 35%. Now, how would you like to capture that savings for your company?

I thought you would, so here’s the secret to doing just that. What you need to do is gather up all your wireless bills, go through them with a fine tooth comb to identify which plans are being used optimally and which have services going to waste, look for billing errors, find devices without any use and eliminate them, identify voice and data overages and figure out how to adjust those plans, consolidate vendors, and make sure you identify all unpublished plans and discount programs that are available for your business.

What? Do all that and still get your job done? Why, you’d need to hire a wireless expert for all that analysis and change activity. Oh, you could assign each employee the job of managing their smartphone and other wireless devices, but that’s pretty much hit and miss. They won’t spend much time on it and probably don’t know what to do next. Plus, how can you get economy of scale with everybody going in a different direction?

Obviously, you can’t make much progress without the sufficient expertise, time, and knowledge of all the products and services and their pricing that you could be taking advantage of. Fortunately, you don’t need to be an expert or hire an expert employee. You just need to bring in some expert help.

The service you are looking for is Advantix. Their specialty is telecom analysis and management, both for wireline and wireless services. Analyzing wireline phone bills is something many consulting firms do. But how many are up to speed on wireless to the point where they can expect to cut your expenses by up to a third or more?

The wireless monster has sneaked up on most businesses. They think of it as having a few cell phones around for key employees. In reality, they are spending thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars a year... one phone at a time.

Avantix takes a comprehensive approach to optimizing your wireless business services. They’ll collect and analyze all your wireless expenses for billing errors, unused and underused services, overage situations, missed opportunities for business plan discounts, and opportunities to consolidate carriers for major savings. They’ll even go to bat for you to prepare the RFPs, evaluate competing proposals, and negotiate the contracts.

Do you really think that you are up enough on the wireless industry to know how to find every discount or opportunity for savings? Probably not, unless that’s your main business. Why not get a risk-free, no-obligation wireless analysis from Advantix and see what they can do without increasing your workload? The savings can be substantial, even eye-popping.

SIP Trunks vs ISDN PRI

Enterprise telephony long ago advanced beyond analog business lines in favor of PBX telephone systems and ISDN PRI trunking. Now there’s another option that may offer cost and performance advantages for companies that want to improve their voice services. It’s called SIP Trunking. Let’s compare and contrast SIP Trunks with ISDN PRI to see how to choose between them.

You should know that we are still talking exclusively about digital telephony. There is no analog transport in either a SIP Trunk or PRI. What differentiates the two is that ISDN PRI is based on a switched circuit model and SIP Trunking is based on packet switching.

For many companies it could be six of one and a half-dozen of the other. That’s because either trunking service can be made to work with your in-house phone system. The idea behind digital trunking is to carry a half-dozen or more outside phone lines on a single digital line. Usually that’s one or more T1 lines, although DS3, OC3 fiber or Ethernet can also be used.

ISDN PRI uses a T1 line configured into 23 separate voice channels plus one data and control channel. Most PBX systems and the newer IP PBX phone systems make it easy to connect to ISDN PRI. They either offer one or more PRI ports built-in or accommodate a plug-in adaptor card.

If you need more than 23 lines, you simply add more ISDN PRI lines incrementally. Each additional line can bring in up to 23 more business phone lines. You’ll have to check what’s available for your phone system, but it is not uncommon to have 2 to 4 PRI lines plugged into a PBX system.

The technology used for ISDN PRI is defined by the Integrated Systems Digital Network specification. PRI is the Primary Rate Interface. There is also a lower performance BRI or Basic Rate Interface that isn’t seen much anymore. This is a legacy telephone technology designed to support the idea of separate digitized telephone lines, one per channel. There’s no chance of interference between calls because the channels are strictly defined and timed using Time Division Multiplexing.

SIP Trunking is more of a network than a telephone based technology. It is a packet switched network line, much like you would use to connect two business locations. What SIP Trunking can do is directly support a converged voice and data network. You can run SIP Trunks between business locations to expand your voice and data network geographically.

The SIP in SIP Trunking stands for Session Initiation Protocol. That’s the switching technology used in VoIP telephone systems. In SIP trunking the control signals for the phone system are transported in packets that travel down the same network pipe as the voice packets.

ISDN PRI isn’t so much about convergence. It’s really about having separate telephone and data lines leave the premises, although you are free to converge your in-house network and let an IP PBX system on the network handle call routing, including outside calls on the ISDN PRI trunk line.

SIP Trunking doesn’t have to be about convergence, either. You can simply use a SIP Trunk to connect your PBX system to a telephone service provider rather than using an ISDN PRI. Depending on which CODEC or coding scheme you use, you may be able to handle more than 23 lines on a SIP Trunk. If you are using an Ethernet connection to your provider, you may be able to support dozens of phone lines depending on the bandwidth available.

For small businesses, SIP Trunks can be configured to transport both voice and data to your service provider. Most often this is used to bring in telephone lines and broadband Internet service on the same SIP Trunk. There’s a cost advantage, even if you are not running a converged voice and data in-house.

Since either ISDN PRI or SIP Trunking might be able to support your needs, how do you choose? That depends on the features you desire and what’s available to serve your particular business location. You may have several options to choose from. To find out, check out SIP Trunks and ISDN PRI availability and pricing now.

Pick Unlimited Toll Free Numbers

You know that having a toll free number is good for business. In fact, it’s so good for business that customer calls can start flooding in once you’ve gotten the word out that people can call you for free. Now, if you could just protect yourself against the cost of that onslaught. Wait! You can.

The service you want is unlimited toll free numbers. By unlimited, I mean you pay one small price per month for the complete sophisticated toll free service. No ugly surprises on your credit card. Within the limits of fair use, your toll free service is one flat rate and that’s that.

Well, you actually get a lot more than simply the peace of mind that comes from knowing what your toll free bill will be each month. This unlimited toll free service has over 30 features that you might think would cost extra. Not with iTeleCenter unlimited toll free numbers. Their toll free service offers an auto attendant or main greeting feature so you don’t need to hire a receptionist to screen your calls. You not only get voicemail, but voicemail messages sent to email or text to your cell phone. You also get online faxing and follow me call forwarding. Plus there are 30 other calling features, too.

Don’t these features sound like something you’d expect to pay big bucks for with a sophisticated business phone system? Yes they do. What’s more, with most phone services you have to pay extra for a toll free number and then pay extra per minute for every call you receive. Outrageous! That’s yesterday’s telecom service. Today’s service is one flat monthly rate that includes all phone services plus the toll free number of your choice.

Yes, you get to select your toll free number from an inventory of 800, 866, 877 and 888 numbers that are all set up and ready to use. Other companies expect you to wait for days or weeks while they do their job of preparing a toll free number of their choice for your use. Forget that. You pick the number using the handy number search box (like the screen shot shown on this page) and then proceed to grab it for your exclusive use. How long does that take? Just a few minutes. The entire process is automated online and available 24/7. If you want toll free service at 3 in the morning, go right ahead and get it. They’re always open for business.

What you get with this unlimited toll free number service is pretty amazing. What you don’t have to deal with is equally impressive. You don’t get stuck paying per minute charges for your incoming toll free calls. They’re all included in the low monthly rate. You don’t pay any activation fees. Those can be substantial with other services and you may not even find out about them until you are ready to check out. There are no extra fees for any of the calling features - they are all included. There are no surcharges or hidden fees, either.

Sounds pretty good, but you’re still not sure? What would you say if I told you that there are no contracts involved. What if it were so completely risk free that you can try it for free? That’s right. You can start your 14 day free trial right now. Give it a good shakedown and then decide if this unlimited toll free number service is right for your business. Chances are that you’ll like it so much that you’ll never shop around again.

I’ve saved the best for last. This impressive service is just $49 per month for unlimited calls. Yes, that low rate plus NO contracts to sign and a 14 day FREE trial just to make sure you’re happy.

Plain Old Telephone Service For Business

What’s the modern way to get business phone service? How about POTS? That’s Plain Old Telephone Service.

Wait a second. Who wants something that’s considered “plain” and even “old”?

You do. That’s who. Why? Because POTS can be the highest quality most cost effective phone service you can get, that’s why. How can that be? Let’s see.

POTS is actually an industry term for analog telephone service over twisted pair copper wiring. It’s the direct descendent of the very telephone that Alexander Graham Bell invented. The Bell name lived on in the form of the Bell Telephone System, which had a monopoly on residential and business telephone service for about 100 years.

Why does that matter in this high technology age? Simply because 100 years is a lot of time to get it right. That’s what the telephone industry did. They got very, very efficient at building, installing and maintaining standardized telephony equipment to meet a strict set of specifications. By the time POTS technology was starting to feel competition, there were standard copper phone cables run to every home and business.

One advantage of analog phone service is that you have a dedicated pair of phone wires from your location right back to the telephone company’s central office. There’s no sharing of capacity the way there is on the Internet, for instance. Thus, phone calls have a predictable sound quality to them. As long as your lines aren’t defective, you have clear understandable voice conversations across town or across the country, even the world. Being a full duplex system, both parties can talk at the same time and be heard. You won’t cut off the start of the other conversation if you respond too quickly. Their voice won’t morph into the sound of Darth Vader or a deep sea diver because the transmission lines are congested.

You have your private space and that’s that. This is why the standard phone system is also called the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network. There are actual physical switches in place to create a unique private circuit between you and anyone you care to speak with, regardless of where they are located.

That’s landline phone service for you. Cellular wireless phones may often be more convenient, but they depend on radio transmissions that can vary in strength from location to location. VoIP can sound as good as analog, but often doesn’t because the underlying data network is trying to send too many voice, data and video packets down the line at the same time. The Internet is a particular example of where you get strange and varying results when you use it to carry telephone conversations.

What type of companies does POTS work best for? Small and medium size businesses who need anywhere from a single phone line up to a dozen lines. You can order your lines one at a time as your business grows to need more. With more than 4 lines, you probably have a Key telephone system or small PBX telephone system to share the outside lines among all your employees.

At somewhere around 10 or 12 analog lines, it makes sense to move up to ISDN PRI, also called T1 PRI, digital telephone service. Strict telephone standards multiplex up to 23 phone lines plus Caller ID and switching signals onto a private T1 line. You get the same quality and features you enjoy with your analog service, but the pricing is often lower for ISDN PRI.

What phone service is best for your business? That depends on whether you are an independent sales professional, a high volume call center, a grocery store, an engineering firm or any of thousands of other businesses that depend on reliable telephone service. Our Telarus business consultants can help you get the most cost effective solution that gives you the quality, reliability and features you need. Get Lower Cost Business Phone Service Quotes today.

ISDN PRI Offers Caller ID

Your business office or call center uses lots of telephone minutes each month. You've got a dozen or more phones, perhaps many dozens, all managed by an in-house PBX or Private Branch eXchange telephone system. You want the best price possible on your telecom services, but you also want Caller ID. What you want is ISDN PRI.

Those letters are a mouthful when you say Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate Interface. What it boils down to is a digital telephone line for businesses that offers high voice quality, fast call switching, and data services such as Caller ID.

Is ISDN PRI the same as a T1 telephone line? ISDN PRI is actually an improved version of the original T1 digital telephone service. It's still delivered on a T1 line, which makes it a readily available service for most business locations. The difference lies in the way the channels are organized.

A traditional T1 line, which dates to telephone company research in the 1950's, is organized as 24 individual channels. Each channel carries a separate telephone conversation. Since all 24 channels are identical, each one is responsible for transmitting the dialing tones and switching signals along with the digitized voice signal. This is called in-band signaling.

The newer ISDN PRI is also organized as 24 channels on a T1 line. For that reason, it is also called T1 PRI. With PRI, one channel is set aside to handling the signaling for the other 23. That data channel also has the capacity to transmit Caller ID information, something a traditional T1 phone line doesn't have room for. By using out of band or clear channel signaling, call processing is also faster with an ISDN PRI line. That can be important in busy call centers.

So, which should you order? In most cases, ISDN PRI is the telephone service that will most closely meet today's business needs, including telemarketing and customer service contact centers. If you currently are using multiple analog phone lines or a long established T1 service, you might also realize a significant cost savings with new ISDN PRI telephone service.

Does this pique your interest? If so, find out how much you can save by switching to ISDN PRI telephone service.

Sales Lead Generation in a Recession

Are you getting sucked into the recessionary vortex along with most businesses? Are old customers buying less and prospects few and far between? Sure would be nice if you had an cheap and easy way to generate more sales leads wouldn't it? Well, you can with a virtual assistant from iTeleCenter. This is more than an automated attendant or voicemail system. It is a lead generating machine.

The iTeleCenter virtual phone system for business is a communications service that acts as a sales system. Consider it a force multiplier for your sales team. It allows a small staff to appear to be a much larger staff. That's the power of technology.

So how does it work? First, you should know that the magic is all on high power telecommunications servers remotely hosted at a central location. It's so powerful that your customers will never hear a busy signal no matter how many calls are coming in simultaneously. You don't need to buy a new system or even any more phones. iTeleCenter uses what you have now. It just makes a regular phone system into a really powerful phone system designed to maximize sales performance.

It starts with your own toll free number that prospects and customers call to access your sales team. Hide your regular phone number. This is the one number you'll publish. It's toll free, so clients won't hesitate to call regardless of where they happen to be. That's not just important for nationwide businesses, but any business that has prospective customers beyond a few mile radius of the business location.

You tell iTeleCenter what phone number to call to reach you from that toll free number. That can be your regular office phone, your home phone, or your cell phone. It will forward your calls up to 5 different phone numbers if that's what it takes to reach you. How does it know which sales agent or functional area to call? Everyone has their own extension number. The main greeting helps your callers get to the right extension.

Yes, there's voicemail if someone just plain isn't available. But it's unlimited voicemail. It never gets full. You can tell the system to send you a text message whenever a voicemail arrives. Or whenever someone sends you a FAX message. Those are graciously accepted too. Both your voice messages and FAX messages can be accessed by email from wherever you happen to be. Plus if you want to return a call, you can do that with the press of a button. The system knows the caller's phone number even if they didn't leave it in their message.

In full sales mode, the iTeleCenter offers 24/7 informational mailboxes. It's a recorded message hotline that offers callers a review of your products or information about your location and hours. If callers like what they hear, they can press a button and be connected to you immediately. Your system is bringing in prospects while you're working other leads.

There's much more to the iTeleCenter system that will help your business gather and convert more prospective customers. But you're probably wondering what sort of giant cost is involved. It starts at $9.95 a month. You don't even have to spend that to try the system. There's a iTeleCenter 7 day free trial so you can see for yourself. It has a 30 day money back guarantee so you can be sure it's right for your business. There's even a special version for real estate agents called TeleCenter Real Estate Pro.

Add a Toll Free Number For Next to Nothing

You'd like to expand your business phone features, but upgrades can be expensive. Here's a way you can add an inbound toll free number to whatever telephone service you have now, including your cell phone, for just a couple of bucks a month.

Toll free numbers offer a big advantage for nearly any business that publishes a phone number. Within a very localized calling area, customers can call your local number without getting charged. But even a few miles away, that call will be considered local long distance and they'll get dinged a higher rate. Across the border in the next state, prospective customers may really hesitate to make that long distance call.

But give them a toll free number and they'll gladly call you from wherever they happen to be. After all, with an inbound toll free number you pay the cost of the call. It's free to the caller. So much do callers hate to pay long distance charges that toll free numbers are expected for sales and customer service lines. Otherwise, your business may not be taken seriously.

What they don't know is that you're paying next to nothing to have that number available and a very small per minute fee for the calls that come in. Toll free numbers start at just $2 to register and $2 a month to maintain. That's within the budget of any size business and even contract professionals. If and only if you receive a call on your toll free number, you pay just 6.9 cents per minute for calls that originate within the contiguous 48 states and slightly more elsewhere. The only people who will call this number are serious customers and prospects, so it's the most cost effective 6.9 cents a minute you can possibly spend.

But there's a lot more. With Kall8 Toll Free Service your toll free number comes bundled with a wealth of handy features. You get voice mail, call blocking, caller ID, call forwarding and conference calling. Those are typical phone service features. But Kall8 also gives you the ability to program the number you want your toll free calls to ring to. Set it to your office phone, home phone or cell phone. The caller has no idea where you are. They are just calling the toll free number. Mobile professionals will change the ring-to number during the course of the day, so they never miss a call.

Speaking of mobile professionals, Kall8 includes a couple of service that make it easy to maintain an office from your laptop computer. Your toll free number doubles as a fax number. Someone can simply send a fax to your toll free number and it will be sent to you as an email attachment. The same is true for voice mail. You can have your voice mails sent as sound files attached to emails so you can listen to them on your computer wherever you happen to be.

Pretty fancy for $2 a month, right? There's more too, including detailed call reports that you can view in your online control panel. This service is so versatile that marketing companies will buy up a bunch of toll free numbers so they can track the response from each ad they run separately. After all, at this price toll free numbers are one cheap business tool.

Cell Phone Family Plans for Professionals

When you think of family plans, it's probably in terms of adding cell phones for the kids. But these economic times, a family plan might mean the difference between two professionals each having their own cell phone and having to share a phone. Share a phone? That doesn't work so well for business. Let's take a closer look at those family plans.

The name "family plan" is probably why you haven't considered this option for professional use. These service arrangements should more properly be called shared minutes plans. But family plan is the name that has stuck, so we'll use that.

The first thing you should know is that sharing a plan does not mean sharing a handset or sharing a line. It's only the minutes that are being shared. You each have your own phone and phone number. But you get only one bill per month and it can be a lot less expensive than two completely separate cell phone bills.

Some people use all the minutes they can get. But what if 900 minutes a month are more than you actually use. In fact, what if 900 minutes is more than you and your significant other both need in a month? That is a likely case if one of you is a light duty user while the other is a heavy user of wireless minutes.

Of course, if you need more minutes you can always upgrade to a larger service plan. The price you'll pay will be less than having two identical service plans and two cellular bills each month. With a rollover plan you may find that even if you have a heavy usage month you'll still have plenty of minutes available on a shared basis.

There are family service plans available for all the major carriers and many, many cell phones available free or at a big discount. Some even offer cash back rebates even though don't pay for the phone in the first place. You don't have to get two identical phones. Each of you can select the model phone you want. You just need to be on the same family plan with the same carrier. Check out the special offers and variety of plans available at Cell Phone Plans Finder now.

Here's another way to save on your monthly phone expenses. Do you make calls to other countries? The extra charges from your cellular carrier for this may be considerable. But by using a pre-paid international calling service you can call anywhere in the world from your cell phone at rates from just a couple of cents per minute.

Also, consider a toll free number if you have clients calling you from outside your area code. They're pretty cheap and offer their own voice mail to email and fax to email reception. That's very handy for professionals on the go.

Low Cost 800 Numbers Are Here

Are you becoming convinced that an 800 number would really help your business? That is, if you could only afford one. Just put a toll free number on your business card or advertising and customers near and far won't hesitate to call. Not as long as you're the one paying for the call. But can you really afford the cost of acquiring an available 800 number and then paying for all those calls? You sure can when you go with the right toll free service.

I say toll free service because 800 numbers are only one of several number types that don't charge the caller, even for long distance calls from the other side of the country. To be precise, they are called in-bound toll free numbers and include 800, 866, 877, and 888. Why so many? Demand, that's why. The original toll free service was only phone numbers that started with the 800 code. It remained that way for many years, so "800 number" is what people think of when they want to call a business but not pay for the call. Customer service departments are huge users of toll free numbers.

But 866, 877 and 888 work the same way as 800. Why pick one over the other? Cost and availability of the number you want is the reason. Yes, you can still get 800 numbers. They're $5 each to set up and $5 each to maintain. That's your only cost to own and publish the number. You only pay more when people call. For that you pay 6.9 cents per minute for calls from the 48 states. There's a surcharge of 7 cents a minute for calls that come in from Alaska and Hawaii.

How about those other numbers? An 866, 877 or 888 number will run you $2 to set up and $2 a month, plus the same 6.9 cents a minute for incoming calls. It doesn't matter if your choice is just a random collection of numbers or if it is one of those easier to remember repeater numbers that end in something like 1111 or 1212. The price is the same. You only pay extra if you want a vanity number that spells out the name of your business or something else, or one of the limited number of premium 800 numbers that are really easy to remember.

Unless it's really important to have a particular number, you'll probably find something that will work just fine for you from the list of currently available numbers that are ready to go. You look through the list, pick the one you want and order it immediately online. By the time you're done inputting your credit card information and completing the order, you're number is ready to use.

The beauty of this particular service, called Kall8, is that you get an online control panel along with your number. You can set parameters for how many rings before callers are transferred to voicemail (included) and which phone number you want your toll free number to ring to. Many sales professionals and small business owners routinely change their ring-to number from their home phone to their office phone to their cell phone, depending on where they happen to be. The caller only knows that they can easily reach you anytime and not pay for the call. There's also an advantage that the only number you need to print on your business card is your toll free number.

Kall8 includes a wealth of features with your toll free service, including FAX to email that lets callers just send a fax to your toll free number. You get an email with the fax attached. Pretty handy, right? Caller ID can simply pass the caller's number or display your toll free number. That's handy when you have multiple numbers for different purposes, such as different offers, different ads, or multiple businesses.

Would a low cost 800 or other toll free number enhance your business for very little money? If you think it might, learn more and order your Kall8 toll free service now.

Why, Oh Why, PRI?

You may be familiar with the terms PRI, T1 PRI, Telephone PRI, PRI Trunk or ISDN PRI. But what do they mean and why would you select this type of service?

PRI stands for Primary Rate Interface. It's a part of the ISDN or Integrated Services Digital Network and the big brother of BRI or Basic Rate Interface. In simple terms, PRI is a digital trunk line that connects to your PBX telephone system. It combines multiple phone lines into a single digital line. More importantly, it can save you money on your monthly phone expenses.

All these terms: PRI, T1 PRI, Telephone PRI, PRI Trunk and ISDN PRI really mean the same thing. You'll most often hear of T1 PRI and ISDN PRI. The T1 part refers to a T1 line, which is a digital communications line that can carry voice, data, or video. T1 lines can be organized differently to support different applications. The ISDN PRI service is one of those. It has a very specific protocol.

PRI is organized in a format called 23 B + D. Looks a little like a math problem, doesn't it. Actually, it's just shorthand for 23 B or bearer channels and 1 D for delta or data channel. The T1 line is split into 24 equal size channels of 64 Kbps each for a total of about 1.5 Mbps total bandwidth. It's full duplex, so you get the same bandwidth in both directions.

Why carve up the line capacity into 64 Kbps chunks? That happens to be exactly the size required to transport one digitized telephone call using PCM or Pulse Code Modulation, the telephone company standard. It actually breaks down into and 8 bit digitized sample x 8,000 bits per second. The entire switched telephone network is organized around these channels, designated as DS0. They are carefully synchronized so that one call will not bleed into another.

Now, with 23 bearer channels, each "bearing" a single telephone call, you can get the equivalent of 23 separate telephone lines on one T1 PRI line. The remaining channel, the D channel, is used for call control and data. This is how the PBX system and the telephone service provider exchange information know when a call is coming in, when a line is being requested, what number is dialed, and the extent of any auxiliary information such as Caller ID.

Fortunately, you don't need to dig in any deeper than this to be able to put PRI to work in your business. You order your PRI service with so many incoming and outgoing phone lines, local and/or long distance. There a lot of customization you can do with this. Then it's a matter of plugging your T1 PRI line from the telco demarcation point (usually in a back room) into the socket on the PBX circuit card designed to accept PRI service. There can be more than one PRI interface on larger systems. Each line will deliver 23 outside phone lines.

Who uses PRI? Medium and larger size businesses, or even smaller businesses that are telephone-intensive. Sales offices, customer support, call centers of all sizes, and corporate headquarters all use PRI phone service. Why do they use it? Because it connects and disconnects telephone calls faster than the older T1 phone line service, it consolidates many analog lines into one or a few digital lines, it offers exceptional voice quality and reliability, and it's cheaper. Any business that uses 10 or more analog phone lines can potentially save money by switching to PRI service. The more lines you have, the larger the savings.

Is PRI right for your business situation? There's an easy way to find out. Use our real-time quote engine to get instant online pricing for your business location. No cost or obligation for this service.

Smoothstone IP Communications offers Polished VoIP

Smaller businesses don't generally spend a lot of time designing and managing their telecommunications systems. It's often takes just a few desk phones, a broadband Internet service, and perhaps a low-end VoIP service to get rolling. It's something the owner or office manager can handle as needed. But smaller businesses have a way of becoming bigger businesses. One day it suddenly becomes apparent that communications is getting to be a challenge among the dozens of employees and multiple locations. It's hard to get through to anybody, and employees often find themselves apologizing to clients for the poor connection quality. It's time for what's politely called a "fork lift upgrade."

You might be scratching your head right now if you haven't heard this term before, especially if your company doesn't even own a fork lift. What it means is ripping out the old system and bringing in a new one. In larger companies, the obsolete PBX equipment is truly so large and heavy that only a fork lift will get it out the door. That's where the term originated.

But do you really want to go renting a fork lift truck and trying to figure out what to buy and where to put it? I'll guess not. By the time most companies get 50 to 100 phones on the premises, they're pretty much forced into finding a Value Added Reseller who will subcontract the phone and data systems and/or establishing a dedicated position of business phone manager. This position expands into one or two departments as the company continues to grow.

Is there any way to avoid the spiraling cost and staffing levels that come with a successful business operation? There didn't used to be, but there is now. A managed services company will take on the complexity of your voice & data needs and provide a total solution, rather than a piecemeal collection of various equipment and telecom connections.

Smoothstone IP Communications is a provider who has taken the concept of managed telecom services to a higher level. What sets this company apart if that they handle voice and data, single location and multi-site operations, hardware and services.

The real core of their operation is their core network. This is a nationwide MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) private network. The beauty of an MPLS network is that it supports both the newer IP and the traditional TDM technologies. Unlike trying to transport your important business calls across the free-for-all that is the public Internet, Smoothstone operates a private MPLS network that implements the QoS or Quality of Service controls to ensure consistently high performance.

Smoothstone also takes care of the equipment, using Cisco gear exclusively, to actively manage everything from the desk phones to routers, firewalls, secure encryption, PC-based messaging, Web collaboration, and conference calling. Tying all this together in a system scaled for the size of your business is what's meant by a "managed solution." Very polished, indeed.

If you company is starting to suffer growing pains, relief is nearby. Let our team of expert consultants introduce you to Smoothstone's and other high quality voice and data solutions by submitting a quick request at Enterprise VoIP.

Ignore That PBX Behind the Curtain

You work in a two person office but you know that you're better than that big firm down the street. You just don't sound like it. Especially since you haven't quite got the cash flow to hire a full time receptionist and your one partner answers the phone, "hello there." The other partner works from a home office 500 miles away and is on the road most of the time anyway. Isn't there some techno magic that can make bankers, suppliers and customers think they're talking to a Fortune 500 Corporation?

Of course. Don't you know that in the virtual world all things are possible? In this case the magic you need is a solution called "virtual PBX", but not just any virtual PBX system. You want iTeleCenter.

Here's why. If you really worked at that big firm down the street you'd be using a real PBX or Private Branch Exchange telephone system. That's the technology that puts a phone on every desktop, gives you an extension or directly dialable phone number, lets you transfer calls at will and get an outside line by pressing the number 9. PBX phone systems are de rigueur (French for you're behind the curve if you don't have one) for big business. The one thing they are not is cheap.

So you've got a couple multi-line phones you bought at the office supply store and hope you can grab the incoming calls before your genius but oh-too-casual partner can answer. What iTeleCenter can do is to transform your existing phone or phones into a professional grade PBX telephone system. Take note. This is really important for anyone who has nightmares about the bottom line turning red. iTeleCenter uses your existing phones regardless of whether they are gigantic executive desk phones, cordless handsets, cellphones, or candlestick phones like the ones Al Capone used in the Roaring 20's. OK, not the last type unless you buy a modern replica.

Most virtual PBX systems are based on VoIP. You have to buy all new phones of a particular type enabled for the service and connect them to your broadband Internet service. But if you can't afford a PBX system, chances are you've got the cheapest DSL or Cable Broadband you can get just for Internet access. Those connections are problematic for decent voice quality. Problematic in that just as you're closing a major new client, some kid gets home from school and starts downloading videos that hog all the bandwidth assigned to your area. Your voice gets distorted, you start to cut off each other's speech, and the call dumps mid-sentence. Bye, bye big contract.

iTeleCenter is so virtual that it stealthily enables all your regular phones to be big business phones. You keep the same phones and phone lines. They just have more functions. What functions? How about a customizable main greeting, also called an auto-attendant? This is the first thing that callers hear and will direct them to the proper extension. Don't let your partners record this. Have it professionally done by iTeleCenter.

Extensions? Sure. They're numbered from 1 to 999. You can have an extension ring to yourself, your partners and employees at their desks or wherever they may roam, even sub-contractors and third party support vendors. Each extension has its own login with call forwarding, mailbox and message notification settings. Go ahead and give yourself 3 or 4 extensions called "departments." Major sales prospects will think your company has gotten huge overnight. Those extensions, by the way, can also be configured for FAX on demand, message taking voicemail, question and answer, greeting only or automatic call distribution.

There's a lot more to iTeleCenter including toll free numbers, call screening, integration with Microsoft Outlook, dial-by-name directory and music on hold. But rather than spend hours reading about it, why not take a 7 day free trial? If you like the way it works, and how could you not, plans start at under ten bucks a month. Don't stay small-time a minute more, when you could be sounding big, big, BIG. Learn more and start your iTeleCenter 7 day free trial right now.

How T1 Lines Support VoIP Telephony

T1 lines have long been the preferred trunking option for traditional PBX business telephone systems. But how do T1 lines support enterprise level VoIP phone systems?

Many medium and large companies are augmenting their legacy PBX phone systems with VoIP, wiring new installations as converged voice and data or even going so far as "fork lift upgrades" when the older system just isn't economical to upgrade anymore. The well-documented reasons for this trend are enhanced features that improve employee productivity, cost savings by converging both computer and voice networks into a single LAN, and ease of moves and upgrades. But one thing hasn't changed. That is the need to connect to the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network.

The PSTN, the common denominator in universal telephone service, is still a largely analog and TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) based system. Smaller organizations with need for only a few outgoing lines will likely find that standard analog business lines make the most sense for their limited key telephone systems and small PBX or IP PBX systems.

An opportunity develops when the business grows to the point where it needs 6 to 12 outgoing lines and a broadband Internet connection. At that point, T1 Integrated service starts to be more cost effective than multiple analog lines and a separate broadband service. A device called an IAD or Integrated Access Device connects to both the phone system and the network router to provide voice and data service. The Integrated T1 line feeds the IAD and may even dynamically assign bandwidth so that broadband speed is maximized when there are few or no phone calls in progress.

Enterprise VoIP systems use IP phones or ATA analog telephone adapters to connect the phones to the corporate LAN. All internal calls are handled by the system and incur no telephone company charges. Point to point T1 lines extend the LAN to connect other business sites into a single large network. VoIP calls transverse this WAN (Wide Area Network) connection, as do site to site data transfers.

T1 trunk lines are needed for the inevitable calls outside the organization. A corporation and its suppliers and major customers may be connected on an Intranet to transport voice and data. For connection to the outside world, calls have to be terminated to the PSTN. A voice gateway performs the conversion between the packet and switched networks. A single T1 trunk offers up to 24 individual telephone lines. The T1 PRI variant offers 23 lines plus a signaling and data channel that can speed call connections and offer services such as Caller ID. The T1 or T1 PRI line connects to the phone service provider to offer incoming, outgoing, local, long distance, or any combination of these phone services.

Do you use T1 lines to transport your PBX or IP PBX outside calls? If so, our expert consultants would like to save you money on your T1, Integrated T1, Point to Point T1 or T1 PRI service as soon as possible. Get an instant online quote or talk to an T1 line expert right now at T1 Rex.