VXSuite Takes the Scary Out of VoIP

By: John Shepler

You know that Unified Communications based on VoIP telephony is the future of business communications. You also know that it is likely a good UC solution can improve the productivity of your business. You’ve been hesitating, though, because ripping everything out and moving to the new technology is downright scary. The phones work fine on their old twisted pair wiring. Well, if by fine you mean you can make and receive calls on your desk phones. That’s pretty much the end of the road for analog and TDM technology. If you want more, you’ll have to make the leap to IP networking all the way around.

Not So Fast...
Oh, but you’ve heard horror stories about companies merging their phones onto the computer network. All of sudden, voices get distorted, calls get dropped. Who wants that? Perhaps it’s better just to stay old school and let somebody else take on the new technology.

Can You Afford Not To?
OK, but you are also letting them take the profits that come with the increased efficiency of having your business apps, desk phones, smartphones, video conferencing, and call center all on one integrated system. Wait long enough and your competitors responsiveness will improve so much that they’ll run circles around your company and start siphoning off customers, then employees.

Looking Under the Hood
What if there were tools that could take the guesswork out of implementing VoIP and UC on your network? Most of the issues you’ll encounter arise from the fact that a network set up for computers can work just fine for file transfers but be a disaster when it comes to handling real-time apps like voice and video. You need to protect those interactive streams from getting crushed by mountains of data moving around. To do that you need to look inside the network and see what is happening.


VXSuite is a toolset ideally qualified to analyze your currenct legacy network and report if you have bandwidth, latency, jitter or congestion issues that will make a mess out of VoIP. You’ll need to implement class of service on your network so that each type of packet stream has the priority and other characteristics it needs to perform optimally.

Before the Move
First, use VXSuite to analyze your system before your make any changes. VXSuite will report on your current voice call volume and usage. It uses that data to calculated min, max and average bandwidth requirements that will support VoIP when you switch. Find and fix problems here and you’ll have a much smoother transition.

A Quality of Experience Assessment is an automated test that deploys software agents on your network to create VoIP test calls to see what bottlenecks arise. Each test call is analyzed for delay, jitter & packet loss and then assigned an MOS score that indicates the quality of the voice communications.

After the Move
Once you deploy your new VoIP and/or UC system, you are not left in the dark. VXSuite monitors call quality and network issues during the rollout phase that can include both VoIP and legacy PBX systems simultaneously. You’ll get reports on how things are working and alarms if there is trouble.

Continuing Support
As ongoing support, the VXSuite cloud-based analytics toolkit continues to monitor your network environment to ensure that voice quality is maintained and issues diagnosed and resolved. You can set threshold levels for delay, jitter, packet loss, MOS, CPU utilization, memory utilization and so on to enable your IT staff to know instantly when problems develop. No more worrying that trouble is sneaking up behind you.

The Toolset You Really Need
Have you been putting off making the technology changes you should because you are worried that things will get worse, not better, when you make the move to VoIP and Unified Communications? If so, now’s the time to get more information about how VXSuite tools and cloud based communications
can improve your productivity and likely reduce cost at the same time.

Best Way to Manage Your Phone System: Get Rid of It

By: John Shepler

What is a common denominator for all businesses? Telephones. What’s a common denominator among business phone systems? They need to be managed. Well, what if they didn’t? Would that be a load off your mind and a competitive edge for your business? It certainly could be. Let’s see why. Even more importantly, let’s see how.

The Trouble With Desk Sets
The legacy business phone is a heavy black box full of analog circuitry and connected to the phone company its own telephone “line”. Today, the phones are lighter, some have digital circuitry, others are cordless with multiple handsets. They still have their own unique “telephone” network wiring.

When you have a single phone or a cordless set with several handsets, managing the phone system is no big deal. There’s really nothing to manage. If you’ve got a dial tone, you’re good to make and receive calls. The one thing you might add is a backup battery if the phone has an AC power adaptor. Legacy analog sets get their power right from the phone line. Newer electronic phones, especially the cordless variety, have DC power supplies that plug into the wall.

Management headaches begin when you get a number of phones sharing outside lines. Sure, each phone can have its own outside line, but that gets real expensive real fast. Plus, not everybody is making outside calls at the same time. Some are calling within the company. Many are not on the phone at all.

Types of Business Phone Systems
The two most popular types of business phone systems are Key Telephone Systems (KTS) and Private Branch Exchange (PBX).

Key systems let you call between phones inside the company using only your internal telephone wiring. That’s a big advantage over independent phones because the telephone company will charge you for every call that has to go through their network. The limitation of KTS is that each line has its own button on every phone and has to be manually selected to make or receive calls. That limits the practical number of outside lines to typically 4 or 6.

Private Branch Exchanges are little phone company switches within your business. You can still make internal calls through the PBX without using an outside line. The PBX system manages a pool of outside lines that are shared among all the phones in the system. The number of lines you need depends on what percentage of employees are making or taking calls from outside the company at the same time. A dozen lines can often serve dozens of users.

Why Get Rid of Your Phone System
Someone in the company, and it may be you, is responsible for telephone expenses. These include local and long distance charges, the cost of purchasing and maintaining the phone system, plus moves, adds and changes to your telephone assets.

The cost of “moves, adds and changes” comes from the fact that each phone has a dedicated line that goes to the KTS or PBX. The connection tells the system which phone is picked up or needs to ring. If you want to move a phone to another desk, you have to also move the connection in the phone wiring or reprogram the system so that it knows the new location. Otherwise employees have to change phone numbers every time they are relocated. Add a phone? You’ll need to add a phone jack at that location and a line back to the system.

The larger the company, the more phones there are, the more phone wiring there is to wrangle and the more expensive the phone system becomes. Worse, if your company grows beyond the capacity of your system, you’ll have to upgrade it if possible or rip it out and put in a new one if not. At some point the technology will become obsolete and it will get really pricey or impossible to keep the beast running. Then you are looking at a major capital investment.

How to Get Out of the Phone Business
Whatever business you are in, it is probably not the telephone business. You simply need those phones to get your job done. Even call centers are focused on the services being provided and not the telephone equipment itself.

What if you could just buy or rent the telephone sets as you need them, plug them into your existing computer network and let somebody else worry about buying and maintaining all that expensive switching equipment?

You can with a service called Hosted PBX or Hosted VoIP. Both mean the same thing. VoIP is the technology that turns telephone sets into network peripherals. Like all computers, the phones have their own internal address on the network. They can be plugged into any network jack and will work just fine. No need to change any wiring.

There is no KTS or PBX on your premises. A much larger “Cloud” system is located at the service provider’s data center. All you have on-site are telephone sets called SIP Phones and a special router or call controller to direct phone calls to the provider. You no longer need outside lines to the phone company. Instead, you have a digital SIP Trunk that connects your location to the provider.

The Pay as You Go Advantage
What’s happened is that you have traded a large initial investment in a phone system and the ongoing costs to maintain it and make changes for a simple “cost per seat” for each phone. Some providers include all new SIP phones when you sign up for service. They’ll send more when you expand the business. No need to pay up-front for phones and lines that will sit unused until you need them. If you need to downsize at some point, you return the phones and stop paying for the ones you no longer need.

Advanced Features
Chances are that your existing business phone system doesn’t have the ability to include smartphones or integrate with computers for efficient call center operations. You many not even have the functionality to support auto attendants or hunt groups for multiple agents for your call center. The hosted system will not only have many more advanced features that what you probably have now, but will be kept up to date as new features are offered. You never have to upgrade your phone “system” because the system is provided for you in the cloud.

Are you feeling limited by the functionality, inflexibility or high costs of your current phone system. Before paying a small fortune to upgrade your in-house equipment, take a closer look at Cloud Hosted PBX Business Telephone Service.

Non-PBX Telephone Solutions

By: John Shepler

We all know what business telephone systems look like. The very smallest consist of a single desk set or a cordless system with multiple handsets but still one line. Next up are key telephone systems where each phone has buttons to access 2 to 6 outside lines. Beyond that is the realm of the Private Branch Exchange or PBX. This is the standard for most business office applications… or at least it was.

Why PBX?
What made PBX systems popular was the opportunity to get away from having to pay the telephone company for internal calls and lines that mostly sat idle. Yes, there was a time when every phone had its own line to the telco and its own incoming phone number. If you wanted to call someone down the hall, you had to place a local phone call just like if you called someone across town. Each of those calls rang the register at the local phone company.

Direct Connections
It seems obvious today that calls from desk to desk inside your own building should be direct connections. There’s no need to use an outside line to go down to the telco switch and another line to come right back. A simple connection between the two local phones works just fine. What’s needed is a switch like the one at the telephone company office, but for inside the business only. That’s what a PBX is. It’s a miniature telephone exchange switch. That’s the “private” in Private Branch Exchange.

Why PBX Seemed Ideal
All internal calls are managed by the PBX on its own wiring. There are no per-call charges. The PBX also manages outside lines that are used for calls that come in to or leave the premises. There are almost always fewer outside lines than phones because many calls are internal and most phone sit idle while other work is being done. This optimizes the cost of telephone service for the business, right?

Escalating Costs
That was true when PBX was the only game in town. The one fly in the ointment is the cost of the PBX system including maintenance and repairs, and the everyday effort needed for moves, adds and changes. That PBX is just a machine. It doesn’t know that you moved your phone to another location until you tell it to use a different set of wires.

Flexibility Issues
PBX systems aren’t all that flexible, either. Each machine has a capacity. Sure, you can upgrade to add more phones… up to a point. Then you have to install a much larger system when your business grows beyond what your current equipment will support. That’s a major capital investment.

What’s a Better AlternativeToday?
Like many innovations in information technology, moving your phone system to the cloud offers a number of advantages. Yes, there is still something that provides the same function as your old PBX. But, it is a largely software driven system that is located remotely, has nearly unlimited expansion capacity and, best of all, you don’t have to pay for it. You only pay to use the system.. and that’s pay as you go.

How Cloud Communications Works
Cloud communications, also called Hosted PBX or Hosted VoIP, is a virtual PBX system offered as a service. What you have in-house are telephones that plug into your local area network instead of standard telephone jacks. The connection from the network to the service provider is called a SIP trunk. It serves the same function as the analog or digital lines to the phone company that you have now.

What You Gain With a Hosted Solution
The beauty of a hosted PBX solution is that you can move phones around at will without any wiring changes. Just plug the phone into another network jack and the system will recognize it and know who it is assigned to. Adding or removing phones from the system is done through a simple browser interface. Some cloud suppliers will even provide you with business phone sets as you need them. It’s included in the “per seat” cost of your service.

Day to Day Operations
How does this work on a day to day basis? Your phones still act like normal telephones. You can make internal calls with no per-minute charges, often even if the other phone is at a branch office on the other side of the country. Only calls that have to go over the public telephone system will still have per-minute charges, like you pay today.

Advanced Calling Features
Hosted PBX systems are always up to date and have advanced calling features you may not enjoy today, such as the ability to include mobile phones within the system. They have a dedicated staff to keep the switching equipment working 24/7. In the rare event that tornado or flood destroys your office, your phone system will still work. You just need some working phones and a network connection to the cloud to be back in business.

Check Out The Value of Non-PBX Solutions
Are you looking at a new business phone system or facing a costly upgrade cycle? Before you go the PBX route, take a look at what a hosted PBX solution offers in the way of performance and cost control for your organization.

Unified Communications for the SMB

By: John Shepler

Large companies long ago latched onto the concept of unified communications to improve the efficiency of their business telephone systems and the productivity of their employees. UC, as it is called, may have started out in major enterprises, but it is working its way into the small and medium size businesses. Why? For the same benefits the big companies achieve.

Just what is unified communications? The idea behind UC is that electronic business communications has spread way beyond the corded desk phone. Oh, desk phones are still a staple of any office. But now we have cell phones, smart phones, tablets, laptops, notebooks and the desktop PC. You can treat these as complete separate devices or unify them so that they work as a single system.

Why not stick with separate devices for different uses? One big problem is that we don’t sit at our desks all day. We may be moving around in the office, taking meetings, making sales calls to clients, visiting job sites and collaborating with peers outside the company.

We always did those things, right? True. But how did you stay in touch? Decades ago, pay phones were an important business tool. If you had the option, you left a forwarding number with the secretary when you left the premises. Important clients had your home phone number as well as the office number printed on your business card. If nothing else worked, you could always depend on the answering machine or, later, voice mail.

Sure, this approach works even today. But why are you doing it the old school way when your competitors are embracing the latest technology. While a sales prospect or customer with a big problem sits frustrated after leaving you a voice message, the competition is taking their call while walking down the street. The five members of your committee grind to a halt because you had to leave the office and can’t vote on the issue needing resolution. That company across the street keeps humming along because every member of their team is always connected.

What unified communications does is tie together different communications devices so they work together. No need to list a half dozen phone numbers on your business card and hope a caller has the patience to call each number in order to see if you happen to answer. UC gives you a single phone number and your calls will always get to you no matter where you are.

Cbeyond, a major telecommunications and cloud services provider, is moving unified communications from major enterprises to small and mid-sized businesses. They’re doing this with a new suite of services called “Communications on the Go.” The emphasis is on including smartphones as part of the business communications system. Within that realm, Cbeyond is offering cloud based communications, managed network services, and integration of smartphones, desk phones and computing devices. What this means is that you have access to the same calling features regardless of where you are or what device you are using. You have one phone number and one business phone system to learn.

Cloud communications, also called hosted VoIP, is a real enabler for unified communications. Yes, you can accomplish many of the same things with your own in-house PBX. However, you have the grief of having to cough up a major capital investment to get the equipment and the ongoing maintenance expenses of keeping everything up to data and secure. By moving your communications to the cloud, you move to a cost model of paying for the features you need when you need them. It’s easy to add and subtract users or make changes when people move around. The service provider has ownership of the infrastructure and network connections needed to deliver all the capacity and functionality you need. From your perspective, your unified communications services are infinitely large and always up to date.

Are you looking for a more effective and less costly way to communicate within your business and to your customers? This is a good time to find out what cloud hosted unified communications has to offer for your business, large, medium or small.

Hosted PBX Adds Video Services

Hosted PBX, also called Hosted VoIP, is becoming popular with large, medium and small businesses as a way to get the latest phone features without the big investment. Now that capability is being expanded to include video services as well.

MegaPath, a major competitive network carrier and cloud service provider, is adding cloud-delivered unified communications video services to its hosted PBX portfolio.

The key to video with voice is a new generation of business phones that replaces traditional analog desk phones and even VoIP digital phones. Polycom, one of the leaders in IP telephony, calls these media phones. These are telephones with video screens. Think of them as tablets that look like telephones. Some have cameras built-in. Others use a plug-in webcam.

Unified Communications (UC) is the process of combining voice, data and video on a single network. UC in the cloud is the next step. All you need are your company LAN and the network attached equipment that meets your business needs. In many cases, this is desktop computers and telephones. Everything else can go to the cloud. Add video capability and you have desktop conferencing without buying any new servers or making big changes to your network. All the complexity involved in making this work is handled out there in the cloud.

What are the advantages of adding video to your voice communications? You instantly have video conferencing without the infrastructure and inconvenience of setting up special video conference rooms and having people convene there at a particular time. Video conferencing has long been used as a substitute for expensive and time consuming travel. Desktop video conferencing takes that to the next level. Now you can have spontaneous or scheduled video conferences without having to uproot otherwise productive employees just to waste time gathering at the other end of the office.

Where else do you see this type of personalized video communications? Smartphones, of course. Also tablets, Ultrabooks and laptop computers. All of these have one thing in common: mobility.

The fact is that people don’t work in one particular location anymore. You may have your first conversations before you leave home in the morning or on the way to work. Then you spend some time at your desk along with moving around in the office. Many employees will leave the office building at some point to meet with clients or other business and personal related activities. In the old days that means having an operator take your incoming messages or letting callers record voicemail. You’d find out who was calling and why when you got back to your desk.

At the speed of business now, you can’t afford to be incommunicado for hours or even minutes. A missing employee can put an entire team project on hold. A sales prospect may well move on to the next vendor if they don’t get through to a person immediately. You need all of your communications integrated into one unified system.

This is where cloud-based PBX services shine. They support integrating desk phones and mobile phones in a process called Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC). With the addition of video and single number calling, you are now connected at all times with the same feature set no matter where you happen to be.

Another feature of many hosted VoIP systems is HD audio. We’re used to the sound of standard “toll grade” voice quality. This has somewhat degraded with the introduction of mobile phones and some inadequate VoIP systems. HD audio reverses the trend to make VoIP a higher voice quality service than traditional analog and digital TDM arrangements.

Are you feeling that your current business phone system is hurting rather than enhancing your productivity. Are you having maintenance headaches or face a major capital investment in new equipment? Don’t commit yourself to any particular solution until you’ve had the chance to evaluate Hosted PBX Cloud Services for audio and video communications.

Cloud Hosted IP PBX Enables New Telephone Apps

You know how apps have taken the smartphone market by storm. Now even desktop and laptop computers are changing their approach away from traditional software packages and toward apps. Have you been thinking that there should be some apps for your phone system, too?

Well, they’re here. AireSpring is offering a suite of apps that work with their AirePBX cloud hosted PBX system. What sort of things can you do with these apps? Let’s take a look.

CommPortal is the interface that controls your messaging on the PBX. You can check your voice mail online or have them sent to your email. Set up a one-number service that will locate you no matter which device you may be using at the moment. You can choose to prioritize some callers over others and even send some directly to voicemail. Click-to-dial will ring your phone first and then dial the party you want. Contacts are always available on whatever device you are using.

Now CommPortal is available as an app that works on multiple platforms so that you have your PBX with you at all times. Other apps are also available. Two of these are the “Call Me” button and the QuickDial Accelerator.

Call Me buttons make it easy to connect instantly to customers. You install this button on your Web pages or email signature. When the customer clicks on the button, they are prompted to enter their phone number. You phone rings immediately so you can capitalize on opportunities that may disappear in a few minutes.

The complement to Call Me buttons is the QuickDial Accelerator. This cool app lets you initiate a call right from your browser window. Simply highlight any phone number you want to call and the system will place the call for you. No more trying to wrangle two screens at once or risk dialing the wrong number.

Why are we seeing the appearance of telephone system apps at this time? It coincides with the move to cloud hosted PBX systems. The traditional PBX is all about switching calls between desk phones in the office and connecting to outside trunk lines when you need to make a call outside the company. This was cutting edge technology at one time. No more. Today’s telephony is all about unified communications and computer telephone integration. What we’d like to have in a business phone system was difficult to impossible to do previously and expensive to do now using the old school technologies.

Many companies that dream of having the latest business phone features choke when they see the price tag on the latest sophisticated IP PBX systems. They also worry about the day when their present PBX runs out of capacity or becomes unmaintainable and they have to face the music on capital investment. What they may not realize is that all of these issues can be easily avoided by employing cloud hosted PBX services.

Hosted PBX means that instead of buying and maintaining your own in-house PBX system, you pay for use of a much larger and likely more sophisticated PBX operated by a service provider. The service provider has the investment and expertise to support many clients. Economy of scale means that this approach is often less expensive than doing it yourself, even without the capital investment.

Are you dissatisfied with your current business phone system but unsure what to do next? If so, get more information about Cloud Hosted IP PBX solutions and compare with your other alternatives.

How to Get Your Business Phones For Free

You’d like to update your phone system, but the cost is hard to justify. After all, you can still receive and make calls just fine. What you are missing out on are all the cool features that the more advanced phones have to offer. You may also be stuck with a phone system that doesn’t work with your wireless phones and other mobile device. What do you do? Sit and watch as your competitors gain productivity advantages?

Would you be surprised to learn that you can easily afford all those up to date phone features and put new high tech phones on every desk? Would you be more surprised to find out that you won’t have to invest a penny of your own money to make this upgrade?

It’s hard to believe, but true. The secret is a change in business model from owning everything to paying for what you actually use by the month. This is the power of cloud based communications.

The big technical advance that makes telephony in the cloud a winner is getting the telephones on the data network and off their own proprietary network. There are a couple of key reasons this better both technically and financially.

The technical reason is that LAN and WAN networks have far more bandwidth available than common telco channels. These include traditional analog business lines and multiplexed calls over ISDN PRI digital trunks. Both are good for something like 64 Kbps or less. No problem for voice conversations that are limited to less than 4 KHz. Also no problem for low speed data like Caller ID or dial-up modem service. Now compare this to network connections that start at 1.5 Mbps (T1) and go up to 1,000 Mbps (GigE) and beyond. This opens the door to transport dozens or hundreds of simultaneous calls on one trunk and enabling other features like HD voice for higher call quality.

In fact, there is so much bandwidth available that you can use the same WAN network connection to transport both telephone and Internet data over a single trunk line.

But, wait, aren’t there call quality issues when you send phone calls over the Internet? The trick is not to let the phone calls themselves touch the Internet. Broadband Internet and telephone calls are combined at the provider and then separated at the user location. The combination process uses the same line, but keeps voice and data from interfering. This is done by giving voice packets priority status, something you can’t do on the Internet.

You get higher bandwidth for more call capacity and both broadband and telephone service on a single network line. This is part of the cost savings. More comes from being able to select your provider from many competing cloud communications providers. What a lot of people don’t realize is that analog copper telephone lines are owned by the local phone company. Network connections can go anywhere and aren’t owned by the local telcos.

The last piece of the puzzle is moving the call switching system from the telephone company or a back room in your building to the cloud. Cloud hosted PBX systems have the economy of scale and spread the cost over many customers. Since the hosted PBX provider specializes in this service, these systems are kept up to date with the latest feature sets.

So how do you get free phones? Some, but not all, cloud communications providers include new IP desk telephones as part of your monthly service fee. This allows them to optimize their systems for particular phone models, buy in quantity, and ship you brand new telephones to replace the old ones you have now. If staff up and need more phones, they care shipped to you ready to plug into your network.

Would you like to upgrade your current business phone system without having to make a capital investment? Are providers offering free phones more cost effective than those that don’t? The way to find out is to get competitive quotes for a variety of hosted PBX service providers and see what best meets your needs.

E911 For Enterprise VoIP

The move from switched circuit to packet switched telephony has created some unintended consequences. One of these is emergency calling to 911. We take the 911 system for granted. When disaster strikes, just punch in those three little numbers and help will be on the way. Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Now consider this. There’s a fire in the maintenance closet down the hall and it’s getting out of control. You pick up your handset and dial 911. You reach the emergency operator and report the fire, then run out of the building and across the street. An hour later, the facility has burned to the ground and no fire trucks have shown up. How could this happen?

The fire trucks did show up within 5 minutes of your call. Unfortunately, they went to your main office in Phoenix. You just called from the satellite office in Indianapolis. Oops! Something is not set up properly on your VoIP phone system.

Such a problem would never arise on an analog landline phone. Why? Because the phone wire is in the ground at it always goes the same place. That’s why they call it a landline. VoIP, however, is a network service. As long as a SIP phone can connect to the network, it can make a call. It makes no difference where that connection takes place. Networks that encompass multiple locations need special consideration when they are converged for voice and data. The same technology that makes it easy to move phones around also makes it easy to lose track of just where they are plugged-in. This is especially true if any of your phones connect via the Internet.

XO Communications, a leader in enterprise VoIP deployments, has an instructional video called “9 Ways to Ensure E911 VoIP Service for Enterprise VoIP Deployments.” Have a look now and see if there is something needing your attention...



Make no mistake about it. VoIP technologies, including Hosted PBX and Unified Communications, offer enormous benefits in cost reduction and employee productivity improvement. Like all new technology, the more cutting edge the solution, the trickier it is to get it right. You want to be working with a top-tier service provider who understands the legal requirements for issues such as E911 and has processes in-place to ensure that your system is set up accurately.

If you are considering an upgrade to your business phone system, get recommendations, options and pricing on competing telephony solutions. Be sure you understand how they ensure accurate E911 call routing.

Call Centers Move To the Cloud

Hosted PBX systems are becoming popular alternatives to in-house telephone system upgrades. More and more businesses are discovering the advantages of having their phone switching done in the cloud. So, why aren’t call centers doing the same thing?

In fact, some company contact centers are already well entrenched in the cloud. The smaller or more distributed the contact center, the more it makes sense to make the move from premises to hosted phone system. It’s been harder for the larger call centers to do likewise. Why? Because the phones are only a part of what they need. In addition, call centers need Computer Telephone Integration (CTI) functions to create customer “screen pops” and management monitoring and control software.

The days on on-premises call center systems may be numbered. Cloud based services have become more sophisticated. A decade long pioneer in enterprise VoIP solutions, Smoothstone IP Communications, now offers a system with unlimited scalability and the more advanced functions that call center managers need.

Smoothstone’s ControlMaxx lives in a set of geographically distributed data centers monitored by a 24/7/365 Network Operations Center (NOC) to ensure that the system is up to date and available. Monitoring of Quality of Service (QoS) and security is proactive. The system is based in the cloud, but integrated into your business processes and applications.

The ControlMaxx Call Director allows you to manage your inbound numbers and how they route. You can base this on geography, time of day, holiday schedules, and even in response to disaster recovery plans if trouble strikes your facility. The point is that you have control to adapt call flow patterns on the fly as business conditions dictate.

Call Queuing can be set for agent priority, call distribution, music or message on hold and overflow conditions to better manage your agent staff and minimize caller hold times.

Management can record or monitor calls without disrupting the agent for the purpose of quality assurance, training or compliance. You can record both individuals or call groups and then retrieve them through a simple interface

Call Reporting has the status and analytics you need to manage your call center, including reports by queue, by agent, by call or by path. Combined with recording and monitoring functions, this reporting gives you the tool set you need for efficient call center operation.

The agent can be set up with an Agent Desktop Client, a PC application that gives them access to real-time queue/call statistics and alerts, call status, transfer capabilities and secure chat. The screen pop functionality integrates with your CRM software, such as Salesforce.com.

A combination of cloud based call center technology and high bandwidth low latency connectivity enable you to establish a call center of any size and staff it anywhere it makes sense. That includes existing call center facilities, satellite offices worldwide and part time or full time homeworkers. With communications in the cloud, you have a flexibility to adjust resources beyond what you normally expect.

Do you run a large call center or company contact center that is costing a pretty penny and may have scalability or maintenance issues? Before you go out and raise capital for a big construction project, give cloud based call center solutions a closer look. You might very well get more performance at a lower cost than with what you have now.

Enterprise Communications Services To The Cloud

There’s a great migration underway. This is a technical migration, from the public switched telephone network and private branch exchanges to cloud based communications services. XO communications is a leader in cloud communication services. Here’s why they predict that in the next few years 60% of companies will move close to a third of their voice communications to the cloud...



If you would like a complementary consultation and competitive quotes for your enterprise communication needs, we can offer you prompt and courteous service through our affiliated Telarus product specialists.

So, is it time to rethink your approach to voice communications, such as business telephone? You know that the upgrades you want to make are going to cost a fortune in up-front capital at a time when big capital outlays are frowned upon. You could just let the whole thing go until the economy picks up steam and money flows like water. But...

Here’s the problem. You want and need the productivity improvements you can get with unified communications right now. You may also suspect that you are spending too much on operations and maintenance, and rightly so. The dilemma is that with traditional approaches you can’t afford to make the changes that will give you the available savings.

Now, here’s the solution. It’s called communications as a service. Instead of trying to be in the telephone business yourself, turn that over to experts in enterprise level VoIP over MPLS networks. That way, you can get all of your many business locations on the same network using the same equipment with the same connectivity. You can get niceties like HD voice and video, mobility integration, plus calling features you don’t have now. Best of all, you pay as you go with a predictable per-user monthly cost.

No need to stay mired in limbo. XO cloud communications and other competitive carriers offer migration paths where you can integrate what you have now while you gradually shift to the new cloud solution. Eventually, you just pull the plug on the old PBX and PSTN trunk lines when you no longer need them.

Does pay as you go sound like a better business model for these days than invest and wait years for a payback? If so, you owe it to yourself to take a few minutes and get a complementary consultation and competitive quotes for enterprise services in the cloud.

Is HPBX Your Next PBX?

It’s almost back to the future, to coin a phrase. Companies nationwide are getting rid of their phone switching equipment and going back to service providers, what we used to call telephone companies. Only the phones and the telephone trunk lines remain. Is technology reversing itself or is there something new going on here?

Make no mistake about it, telephony today is different from the telephone service of yesteryear. But there are similarities, too. What companies have found is that building and maintaining little telephone companies in-house entails a lot more cost and bother than you might expect. If that’s true, though, why did they ever leave good old Ma Bell in the first place?

One problem with business phone service versus what you have in your home is that there are lots and lots of phones. If you only have one or two lines, you probably have just one or two phones. It’s likely that each phone is tied to a particular phone line. Perhaps you have multi-line phones where each line has a switch or “key” so you can select it. Some small offices have only a single phone set one one line and use a second line to connect a FAX machine or credit card terminal.

So what’s the problem with having so many phones? It’s pretty likely that by the time you have a few dozen phones, your office facilities are so spread out that people can’t lean over to the next desk and have a conversation. They either have to get up and walk down the hall or make a phone call. If each phone has its own line, then those calls will go through the phone company and you’ll likely pay a charge. If you want to talk to someone in a branch office in another state, you’re surely going to pay long distance charges.

What companies really wanted was something of an intercom feature, where they could just dial a few digits and get to another phone in-house. To accomplish that, they bought PBX or Private Branch eXchange equipment. The PBX is the device that connects phones and also managed outside lines as needed. All the phones connect to the PBX and the PBX connects to the phone company, but only for calls leaving the premises.

The local telephone companies offer a service called Centrex (Central Office Exchange) to compete with the PBX. The switching equipment is kept at the central office, like always, but the system functioned more like a PBX. The Centrex system based on the individual copper pair from each phone to the CO is now being replaced by HPBX or Hosted PBX service.

What’s different about HPBX is that it is a VoIP phone system. Communication is over a WAN network connection called a SIP Trunk. This frees the user from being tied to a particular local phone company by those ubiquitous twisted copper pair. Now any service provider anywhere in the world can be your phone company as long as you can get a digital connection between their facilities and yours. What you need in-house is IP phones, also called SIP telephones, connected to your converged voice and data network. Your service provider hosts the PBX switching function with termination to the public switched telephone network as needed.

Are you ready for a phone system upgrade or merely concerned that what you are doing now costs more than it could? Get competitive quotes for hosted PBX telephone systems, some of which include new phones as part of the service fee.

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.

Where to Get a 1-800 Number Cheap

Looking to have your own 1-800 number but don't want to spend a lot of money? No need to. How's $5 sound?

Yes, you can get an 800 inbound toll free number for just five bucks. It will also cost you a mere $5 a month to maintain your use of the number and 6.9 cents a minute for the calls you receive. For most business users, that's a pittance.
But it's a pittance that can pay off big.

Here's why. Anyone who calls your 1-800 number is doing so because they saw it in an ad, on a business card, on a flyer, in the newspaper, on TV, on a billboard, or heard it on the radio. Anyone who is motivated to call that number has a serious reason for doing so. Usually that translates into a motivated customer.

Most business owners know that 1-800 numbers have a powerful attraction for new and existing customers alike. People just have an aversion to paying long distance charges to call a business. It's something like paying shipping costs. The actual cost involved may not be that much, but it's a big turn-off compared to free.

What many business owners assume is that a 1-800 number is going to cost them a fortune to buy and use. That may go back to 10 or 20 years ago when the phone company was the only source for toll free service. The perceived value was high and so was the price tag.

No more. Now there are competitive toll free service providers who've made it possible for anyone, even the smallest independent professionals or entrepreneurs, to have at least one toll free number.

Is $5 a month too much? OK, then how about $2? Yes, you can get an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number for just $2 a month to order and $2 a month to maintain. The same 6.9 cents per minute applies for calls coming in from the contiguous states. It's a little more from Alaska and Hawaii.

This is why I said at least one toll free number. At $2 a pop, many companies have a bunch of toll free numbers. There is one for catalog orders, another for customer service, another for specials running on TV, another for items featured in the newspaper, and so on. The more numbers you have, the more finely you can track your marketing efforts. With a separate number for each ad you'll know exactly what is pulling and what isn't.

The service I'm recommending, Kall8, makes it easy to track these ad campaigns. In addition to assigning you a number, you'll get an online control panel to determine how your number is assigned and track any and all calls coming in. You'll have a complete accounting report for each of your numbers that you can check from any Internet enabled computer. Take a lunch break at your favorite restaurant offering free WiFi and see how your ads are doing.

You can also pick up your voice mail from these numbers if you wish. If you don't have the luxury of having someone to take calls, you can have your incoming toll free calls go to voice mail when you aren't available. If you want, audio clips of those calls will be sent to your email at no extra charge. Any incoming fax messages will also go to your email. This way your office is wherever you happen to be. "Another latte, please. My toll free numbers are paying off big today!"

MPLS Networks for Enterprise VoIP

Medium and larger size companies often have multiple locations with multiple sites around in the metro area, and even branch offices scattered around the country or the world. Traditional PBX phone systems with connections to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) have provided high quality telephone service for decades. So why risk switching to a VoIP phone system? If you do, what takes the place of the PSTN?

The proven quality and reliability of the century-old public telephone network has made many organizations think twice before embracing newer technology. After all, the legacy of "Ma Bell" is formidable indeed. Indeed, it's not uncommon for companies to gut their internal phone systems and replace them with network voice equipment while leaving the old phone lines in place. An IP PBX with SIP phones on every desk can take the place of the old proprietary PBX design to add functionality and ease of moves, adds and changes. By plugging in a multiple FXO card or T1 PRI Interface card, the existing PSTN connections can continue to be used as-is. There is no need to change this, but there may well be lost opportunity.

Consider the multiple location organization. The simplest telephony solution is to install separate phone systems at each location and route all your inter-office calls through the PSTN exactly as any other outside calls. Therein lies the problem. Every time the public toll network is used to connect from place to place, there is a per minute charge. We expect that when calling customers or vendors long distance. But for internal calls it can get pricey fast. It doesn't seem right to discourage employees from calling colleagues at other sites, but when cost control becomes critical it can become necessary.

The other problem is that you enjoy three or four digit calling within your building but wind up having to dial all 10 digits to get to another location. It reinforces the notion of us (inside) versus them (outside). It feels a lot more like the same company when every call to every desk works the same regardless of location.

A solution to the dialing problem that also lets you avoid toll charges is to connect your various phone systems together via PBX tie lines. These are point to point solutions, so you'll need to either create a star network with all control at a central office or install tie lines from every office to every other office. Oh, but that gets expensive fast.

What you really want is a fully meshed network where any location can connect to any other through a cloud. The PSTN does that on a switched basis. The Internet does the same thing for IP data. But the Internet is iffy as a telephone network. It was never designed to ensure quality of service for real time applications such as VoIP. It can work fine sometimes, not so good at other times, and just terrible when you least expect or can afford it. What you need is a private version of the Internet structure but designed to properly transport packet based phone conversations.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switched networks do just that. MPLS uses specialized tag switches instead of IP routers to identify each packet and ensure that it gets directly to the proper destination and with enough bandwidth to avoid and delays or corruption. MPLS networks are private IP-based networks that handle a wide variety of voice, video, and data traffic in various protocols. Hence the term multi-protocol. But why are MPLS networks so suited to enterprise VoIP telephony?

MPLS networks offer a meshed cloud structure that each site connects to via a broadband IP service, such as a T1 line. Within the cloud, the tag switches label packets as voice or data and then transfer them to their intended destination. QoS or Quality of Service is guaranteed by the tagging process and adequate resources of the network. The result is ease of connectivity from any site to any other site with call quality assured. It's the PSTN updated for today's packet network technology.

Prior to MPLS networks, Frame Relay networks were another way to provide similar connectivity. But the newer competitive MPLS networks offer considerable cost savings while supporting both voice, video and data connections among your business locations. Could MPLS be the high quality / best cost solution for your company's upgrade to VoIP telephony? a newly introduced specialized search tool makes it easy to find out. Get an unbiased service quote that meets your needs in less than 24 hours with an easy 2-minute online MPLS network query process right now.

How Many POTS Lines in a Trunk?

If your business started very small, your first business phone may have been your only one. It was no doubt a single line desk set or perhaps one with a wireless handset and a speakerphone. You plugged it into an RJ11 wall outlet, lifted the receiver and there was dial tone. You probably didn't refer to it as POTS, but that's what it was.

POTS is a telecom industry acronym for Plain Old Telephone Service. POTS runs on the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network. POTS connections are twisted pair copper wires that run all the way from your phone jack back to the telephone company's central office. These are also called analog lines because they operate on analog voltages and currents according to standards that go all the way back to Alexander Graham Bell himself. Nowadays they may be called landlines to distinguish them from wireless phones that operate on the cellular phone networks.

POTS is solid, reliable telephone service. Voice quality is excellent. It has been enhanced over the years to include options such as call waiting, call forwarding, three way calling, and Caller ID. You can buy a nice business phone for POTS service at any office supply store. If one line isn't enough, you can get a phone that handles two POTS lines.

But what if your business has grown to the point where you need more than two outside lines? Many small to medium size businesses move up from individual phones to phone systems by adding a Key Telephone System. The key is the name for the line selector push button. Every phone set has two to six line keys along with a dial pad and other buttons. It's up to you to decide whether you'll join a conversation on one of the busy lines or select an open line to make a call.

Key Systems are also POTS based. So is the entry level PBX or Private Branch Exchange phone system. The PBX manages outside lines, so you don't have to worry about finding an open one to make a call. It also allows you to directly dial from one phone to another within the business using just a few digits. These calls never use an outside line. They are handled through the PBX system directly.

PBX systems have the ability to grow either by adding on to them or buying larger replacement systems. As your business grows you may barely notice the number of POTS lines creeping up from 4 to 6 to 10 to 20. Users generally have no idea how many lines there are. Management may also not have taken much note of the incrementally growing cost of telephone line service. POTS lines have little economy of scale. It's so much per line depending on the feature set. Saving money is where the idea of the trunk line comes in.

A trunk is a phone line that carries multiple telephone conversations. Modern trunks long ago switched from analog to digital technology. The most popular trunks are T1 telephone lines. T1 is a digital telephone standard that creates 24 individual channels in a strictly timed digital bitstream. Each channel can carry one telephone call. T1 voice lines can do the work of up to 24 POTS lines. The T1 line will plug into a T1 interface card in your PBX system or can be connected to a channel bank that will give you the 24 individual line connections.

Why go to all this trouble? It's no trouble when it results in a cost savings. That's what T1 lines offer. If you are paying for more than half a dozen individual POTS lines, T1 service will likely cost less per month for the same phone service. Once you get to 10 or 12 lines it is almost certain that you can save money by switching to a T1 line.

So, that means there are 24 POTS lines in a trunk, right? Yes...and no. T1 telephone lines can carry 24 phone lines. But many businesses prefer ISDN PRI or Primary Rate Interface service. This is another format of T1 line that gives you up to 23 phone lines. The other channel is reserved for switching and data, so you can have Caller ID capability on your PBX system. There's also something called Integrated T1 that gives you up to 12 phone lines and broadband Internet on one trunk line.

The newest wrinkle is the SIP trunk. SIP is the VoIP signaling protocol. A SIP trunk also carries multiple phone lines and perhaps Internet service. You can trade off voice quality for bandwidth, so a SIP trunk might carry even more than 24 phone conversations simultaneously.

How many POTS lines in a trunk? How many do you need? The trunk can be sized accordingly to give you the lowest cost for the quantity and quality of phone line service you require. Just remember that the purpose of going to trunked telephone service is to save money. How much? Check out the cost savings on telephone trunk lines now.

PRI vs POTS Telephone Service

Business telephone systems range in size from single line desk phones through enterprise telephony with hundreds or thousands of handsets. Chances are that your business needs are somewhere in the middle. But where? What is the right service for you?

The most basic and traditional phone service is called POTS or Plain Old Telephone Service. Chances are that you won't see it advertised that way. Instead it will be called business line or dial tone service. What you get is an analog connection to the nearest telephone company Central Office or CO. Any conventional telephone will plug into the RJ11 jack on the wall and give you dial-tone when you lift the handset. You can expand the number of rooms with phones by paralleling twisted pair wiring to other phone jacks. But you still only have one line and, if it is in use, no one else can make or receive calls.

Basic POTS is local phone service. Long distance service is either bundled for a single price or assigned to a competitive long distance carrier that offers lower per-minute rates on separate billing. Caller ID is an add-on service that is multiplexed on the same phone line and displays the caller's phone number and other information on phones with the necessary display, or a separate Caller ID unit. Toll free service can be added to forward incoming calls from a toll-free number to your phone line.

A logical upgrade from POTS is to add a separate identical line service and use a two-line business phone. These are commonly sold in office supply stores and can work well for small offices. Such phones are entry level Key Telephone Systems. What distinguishes a key system is that there are buttons or "keys" on each telephone to select the desired phone line. These buttons flash to indicate the line is ringing with an incoming call or light steadily to show that line is in use. Larger key systems can handle a half-dozen separate phone lines.

Businesses with 6 or more outside lines are likely to switch to a PBX or Private Branch eXchange phone system. Like the name implies, this is a mini telephone company office on your premises. Once giant racks full of equipment, the modern PBX may be just a small box that sits on a shelf in the telephone closet. PBX systems work differently from Key systems. The PBX manages all the phone lines for incoming and outgoing calls. It also interconnects all the telephone handsets so you can dial from phone to phone inside your building without incurring any telephone line charges. When you need to make an outside call, the PBX system will assign you the next available line. You don't really need to know which one it is, they all work the same. Callers can directly dial a number for your phone, called DID, or reach an automated system where they can enter your extension number. The PBX will then ring your phone.

Up till now the phone lines we've been discussing for all of these different telephone systems are individual analog POTS lines. You pay for each one separately and the total cost is generally the cost per line time the number of lines. Once you need 8 to 12 lines or more, it usually makes economic sense to switch to digital trunk rather than use multiple analog lines.

The digital trunk, called a T1 voice line, converts up to 24 separate phone lines into a single digital connection between you and your phone service provider. The most popular variety of T1 service is called T1 PRI or Primary Rate Interface. It is also known as ISDN PRI for Integrated Services Digital Network. The difference between a T1 PRI line and a T1 voice line is that the PRI protocol establishes one channel of the 24 as a switching and data channel. This makes calling faster and allows you to have Caller ID for the other 1-23 channels or 1 to 23 outside phone lines.

If your phone system has grown over the years to a dozen or two dozen analog phone lines, it's time you got a competitive quote for T1 PRI lines service. Connecting PRI to your PBX system usually involves plugging-in a special interface card if your system doesn't already have one. Many new PBX systems come with this connection feature.

SIP vs PRI Telephone Trunking

Telephone trunking is the means of transporting multiple telephone conversations across metro or long distances on a single line. The first approach to this used analog frequency division multiplexing in an approach known as carrier telephony. The noise and crosstalk associated with carrier telephony has long since been replaced by digital trunk lines using time division multiplexing techniques. But now TDM trunk lines are being challenged by an even newer technology called SIP trunking.

The impetus for SIP trunking is the move from the traditional circuit switched telephone world to packet switching. In other words, the traditional PBX system is giving way to the iPBX or VoIP telephone system. Does that mean that T1 telephone lines are yesterday's news? Not by a long shot.

The dirty little secret is that just about all business telephone systems with more than half a dozen phone lines are using T1 trunk lines or their big brother, the T3 line or DS3 connection. That includes the latest IP PBX systems, even those that are connected to their phone service providers via SIP trunking. The reason is simple. T1 lines are the most universally available and cost effective carriers commonly available.

The real discussion is what format T1 line to employ. Business office PBX systems and call centers usually want a variant known as T1 PRI. The PRI stands for Primary Rate Interface, a term that comes from a set of telecommunication standards called ISDN or Integrated Services Digital Network. What PRI adds to a standard channelized T1 line is a dedicated signaling channel that makes call setup and teardown faster, plus the ability to provide Caller ID and ANI (Automatic Number Identification.) A T1 PRI line gives you 23 channels that can each carry one telephone call plus the data or signaling channel. If you need more phone lines, simply add another T1 PRI line to your system. If you need a lot more phone lines, say more than 4 or 5 T1 PRI lines worth, you may find it more cost effective to upgrade to a T3 line or DS3 service on fiber optic carrier.

SIP trunking also uses a T1 line, but one configured differently than a T1 PRI line. In this case, channelization is unnecessary because the phone conversations are assigned to packets, not channels. SIP or Session Initiation Protocol is a switching system used for IP telephony, also known as VoIP. SIP is becoming more popular, supplanting other switching protocols in VoIP phone systems.

Both T1 PRI and SIP trunks connect between your phone system and your telephone service provider. Which you select depends on your system's capabilities and the provider that terminates your calls to the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network. It is not necessarily true that a new VoIP phone system will automatically use a SIP trunk for service. In fact, many IP PBX systems are ordered with T1 PRI interface cards because the best service deal may well be from a competitive supplier providing PRI local and/or long distance telephone service.

Not sure what to order or if you are getting the best possible deal from your current service provider? Let our expert consultants help you get the best lease rates on the most cost effective voice and/or data services for your business needs.

Hosted Telecommunications from Packet8

Your business has grown to where a multi-line phones or a simple Key Telephone System just isn't good enough anymore. Yet, the thought of shelling out tens of thousands of dollars for a business PBX system and having to support it is really more than you want to face. Is there anything in-between for the in-between size company?

You bet there is. It's called hosted telecommunications. The difference between hosted solutions and the traditional Private Branch Exchange is that the PBX or call center functionality is hosted somewhere else. Think of it like a hosting service for your Web site. You have all the functionality of an in-house system, but there is no rack of equipment in the telephone closet. Instead, you have the full featured business phones on your desks. They communicate via broadband network connections to the provider that maintains all that telephone equipment.

Packet8 is a leader in hosted telecom services for small to medium businesses. They helped pioneer the adaptation of VoIP technology with sophisticated calling features for companies that don't have and don't really want the burden of maintaining their own telephone systems. Their most popular business product is called "Packet8 Virtual Office." They also have an expanded product called "Complete Contact Center." This extension of the Virtual Office gives you call center capability without having to invest in building a stand alone call center.

Packet8 Virtual Office is a hosted iPBX solution that grows with your business. The term "virtual" is important. Your office can consist of separate sites anywhere in the world. For instance, you could have locations with one phone each in all 50 states. The Packet8 Virtual Office will tie them together like they were in one large office building with 50 phones. Smaller companies might consist of several collaborators located in different cities. With Virtual Office, everyone can dial everyone else with 3 digit extensions.

Other familiar PBX functions provided by Packet8 Virtual Office include voicemail, call forwarding, call transfer, conference bridging, call park / call pickup, ring groups, do not disturb, music on hold, Caller ID, distinctive ringtones, and automated attendant. You also get integration with Microsoft Outlook that coordinates your phone and PC so you get screen pops based on your Outlook Contacts.

With the screen pops, you are entering the realm of call center capability. As your needs advance beyond the Virtual Office capabilities, consider Packet8 Complete Contact Center. This sophisticated hosted telecommunications service adds call center features such as skill based routing, monitor and barge-in for supervisor, call recording, and CRM that creates a Web based tool to manage customer interactions. The Contact Center scales from 1 to 100 agents, so your call center can start small and grow with your needs.

Packet8's hosted telecommunications services are based on full-featured business telephones with network adapters so they communicate through your Local Area Network and to the Internet through a Wide Area Network connection. High quality business broadband connections are needed at each location to ensure high voice quality and functionality. That also means that you can have a virtual office location anywhere you can get a high quality broadband connection. Locate your business downtown or out in the boonies. Or some combination of both.

Is your SMB (Small to Medium sized Business) ready for the professional capabilities of a PBX system, but at a price appropriate for your budget? If so, take a few minutes to learn more about Virtual Office Hosted Telecommunications Services from Packet8.

Fonality Call Center in a Box

Are you ready to start a new call center, but blanch at the up-front investment and set-up costs involved? A major call center is a major undertaking, but what if you simply want to add call center operations to your company or start small and grow as revenues increase? What you need is something simple, yet powerful. How about a call center in a box?

Fonality has just such a product. The box is actually an off-the-shelf PC tower running as a Linux server, which can be upgraded to a rack-mount server if you need the power. What turns a PC into a call center is the proprietary software and hardware interface cards.

The software that powers Fonality's PBXtra Call Center Edition is based on the popular Open Source Asterisk PBX software from Digium. You can get Asterisk software and third party interface cards and roll your own PBX, but you won't have what you get with Fonality. A good part of their value added is the modifications to the native Asterisk code that improve reliability & stability and add enterprise-class features in five different areas: Management software including a Web-based administration software and User Panel, easy integration of telecommuters, simple phone provisioning, system health monitoring, and LAN Interoperability with your existing network.

The other key piece in making a server into a PBX telephone system is the hardware interface. Fonality offers a range of plug-in cards that provide the signals necessary to operate analog telephones and telephone company lines. You have the option of using standard analog telephones or you can buy SIP-based VoIP phones from Fonality. Your phone service can be multiple analog phone lines, T1 / PRI digital phone lines with up to 96 channels, or SIP trunking service from a business grade VoIP carrier. A popular combination is to use VoIP phones within the call center and T1 / PRI voice lines for local and long distance calls.

The Fonality Call Center functions include everything you'd expect in a standard PBX telephone system, plus extras useful for call center operations. Unlimited call queues, full featured automatic call distribution, skills based routing, graphical queue reports, agent call recording, remote agents on cell phones or home analog phones, and support for unlimited VoIP providers are all included.

Most of the Call Center Edition upgrades to the PBXtra functionality is related to management and evaluation of call center agents. This product is intended to support from 2 to 200 agents, allowing you to start with a small phone order taking operation and expand to major catalog sales, customer support, or stand-alone call center services.

All this without the need for major in-house technical support. Fonality supplies its PBXtra and Call Center Edition servers pre-configured and ready to go. Phones also come pre-programmed to work with your system and are essentially plug and play. They include an Ethernet bridge so that a VoIP phone and desktop PC can share a single LAN connection.

If you are currently running a call center operation and would be interested in cost savings for your inbound and/or outbound calls, both local and long distance, our voice line telecommunications experts can negotiate among numerous carriers to get you the best per-minute rates.

Attention: Telephone System Dealers

If you are in the business of selling, installing or servicing business telephone systems, you're going to be interested in a new business model that's sweeping the country. It a way to generate more business without additional up-front expense.

What is this new system? It's the VAR Network. If you haven't heard of it, pay attention because your competitors likely have. In simple terms, the VAR network is an online database system that contains business profiles on thousands of telephone and computer networking dealers. It's fully automated so that when a potential customer does a search to see who can help them with their telecom needs, the VAR Network will automatically notify matching qualified dealers in their area. Each dealer can then choose to pursue the opportunity or let another dealer have a go at it.

So how is this different from other online business directories? It's really quite a step beyond mere listing services. First of all, this is an enormous project designed with the capacity to link thousands of dealers with tens of thousands of potential clients on an intelligent basis. The customer doesn't have to sort through a pile of listings and try to figure out who to call. The system acts as matchmaker and sends the warm lead to only those dealers who are likely to meet the customers needs. Aside from the initial online inquiry, the customer doesn't have to take any initiative to contact dealers.

The VAR Network is also specifically targeted for business to business transactions among telephone system and computer networking dealers and prospects. It's designed by Telarus, a major telecommunications master agency and developer of the GeoQuote(tm) automated T1 and DS3 pricing service. The VAR Network is for Value Added Resellers only.

The VAR Network is intended to supplement or perhaps eventually replace other professional advertising resources you might be using, such as the Yellow Pages, newspaper ads, industrial directories, search engine pay-per-click, direct mail and telemarketing. It also has a more advantageous payment model. While other ad resources require you to pay up-front for leads or mere exposure, the VAR Network makes you a partner with no up-front fees. You join by filling out a short profile about your business and the services you offer. You'll be partnered with professional telecom agent at Telarus who will help you expand your listing and be a resource to ensure your success. Once your profile is online, you'll begin receiving lead notifications from businesses in your service area. It's then up to you to chose the opportunities you want and negotiate with the customer to sell your products and service. For every lead that results in a sale, you'll remit a small percentage back to the VAR Network in consideration of the service. Any leads that don't pan out cost you nothing.

Because of the partnership with Telarus, you'll also have the opportunity to earn monthly residual commissions on T1, ISDN PRI, DS3, and other telecommunications line sales to your customers. Many dealers pass over this business because they aren't equipped to deal with the intricacies of line sales and contracts. Your Telarus partner is an expert in this area and will handle these details with you or on your behalf.

As a business professional, how can you let another day go by without leveraging the additional business you could be getting through the VAR Network? Other dealers near you have already signed up and are receiving leads that you could also be bidding on. Visit the VAR Network now to see how it is organized to help you get more business. Sign-up immediately right on the site. Or, visit the VAR Partner site to learn more about the business opportunity. It could be working for you sooner than you think.