Upgrading to Fiber FAQ

By: John Shepler

The bandwidth solution you’ve had for years is running out of capacity. It’s worked well for you, but now you have no real choice but to upgrade to something faster, more reliable, lower latency, more consistent or all of the above. How about fiber? You’ve always had twisted pair copper or cable. Does fiber make more sense for the future and… can you afford it? Let’s look at some key questions and answers for making this decision.

What Can Fiber Do That Copper Can’t?
The real beauty of fiber isn’t necessarily what it will do for you today. It’s the virtually unlimited upgradability down the road that is unique to fiber. Every copper technology runs out of capacity at some level. Technology advancements have expanded copper’s capability and extended its life. However, technology advancements have also expanded fiber capacity beyond what most of us can fathom needing.

I Have a T1 Line Now and Love It. Can’t I just Add Another T1?
You bet you can. The process is called bonding. It makes 2 T1 lines act like a single line with twice the bandwidth. You can bond T1 lines up to 10 or 12 Mbps, which is about the entry level for fiber. One limitation is that you have to get all your lines from the same provider to bond them. A more serious limitation is cost. You may find that 10 Mbps fiber is a lot less expensive than 10 Mbps bonded T1.

What About Ethernet over Copper?
EoC is a competing technology to T1 and uses the same twisted pair copper. You can get higher bandwidths at lower cost than T1, but the technology is distance sensitivity. For 10 to 50 Mbps, you need to be geographically close to the office supplying your service. For higher bandwidths, say 100 Mbps and up, it’s rare to find EoC available. At 1Gbps, it’s pretty much fiber all the way.

Don’t Cable Companies Offer Fiber Bandwidth over Cable?
Yes and no. Yes, you can get hundreds of Mbps, perhaps even Gbps, bandwidth over the same coaxial cable that brings in hundreds of TV channels. This is relatively inexpensive service, but it is a “shared” bandwidth that varies with the number of users online. It’s strictly Internet access, not private line, and has no performance guarantees. For demanding business operations, the Cable companies offer competitive fiber optic service using their core transmission networks. This grade of service is similar to what you get from telecom companies.

OK, But Isn’t Fiber Hard to Get?
Not any more. The first fiber technology, called SONET, is a telephone company product and has been both expensive and limited in availability. A newer technology called Ethernet over Fiber is offered by a wide array of competitive carriers, including many traditional suppliers. Nobody is building out copper plant anymore. It’s yesterday’s news. All of the new network construction is fiber and there is a race among carriers to capture the business market

Where is Fiber Available?
Ethernet over Fiber and SONET are both readily available in major metropolitan areas. Fiber is also often available in suburban areas and smaller cities. There is a big push right now to replace T1 lines with fiber to increase the bandwidth of cell towers from 3G to 4G and, eventually, 5G. That is extending metro fiber networks out into the countryside where they haven’t been before. Eventually, fiber will be everywhere.

What About Now? Where Can I Get Fiber?
Your best bet is to be located in an already “lit” building. That means the building has fiber optic service installed and operating. Once the terminal equipment is in place, adding another customer in the same location is trivially easy for the carriers. If you can’t be in a lit building, you’ll need to be near enough that construction costs are minimal. It’s those long distance runs that need new fiber installed that get expensive.

Note: A popular option for companies that find fiber construction costs too much to consider is to locate their high bandwidth equipment, such as servers, in a colocation data center where multiple fiber options are readily available.

So, Where Are These Lit Buildings?
Lit buildings and nearby fiber optic services can be easily located using the Telarus GeoQuote search engine. This is a tool specifically developed to quickly locate existing fiber services. You can find out in seconds what’s available in your area with no commitment.

Great, I’ve Found Fiber Service. Will It Cost a Fortune?
You may be shocked to find how affordable fiber optic service is today. This isn’t consumer grade FTTH (Fiber to the Home). It’s a business grade service that is installed at commercial locations. Bandwidth generally starts at 10 Mbps, which is the same speed as traditional Ethernet. If you’ve had your T1 line for many years and haven’t negotiated a lower priced contract, you may find that you can get 10 Mbps fiber for about the same price. Yes, you’ll pay more for Ethernet over Fiber than today’s T1 lines or low cost business cable broadband, but you can also expect higher performance.

How Much Bandwidth Makes Sense?
Many smaller businesses can get by with 10 Mbps Ethernet over Fiber. High tech or medium size operations will want 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet. Nowadays, Gigabit Ethernet is well within reason for companies that need highly responsive cloud applications or make extensive use of video. Municipalities and school districts often find that Gigabit Ethernet or GigE is exactly what they need at a reasonable price point.

How Easy Are Upgrades
Legacy T-Carrier (T1, T3) and SONET (OCx) services can take a long time to provision because each bandwidth level has a unique interface. Ethernet over Fiber is designed to be easily scalable. You install a port with the maximum speed you expect to need (usually 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps). Then you pick the bandwidth you want to start out with. Often a quick call to your provider is all it takes to increase or decrease bandwidth within hours or days. Some services even let you make the changes yourself through a Web browser.

What’s the Maximum Bandwidth Available?
It’s not likely you’ll ever run out. Gigabit Ethernet service is common. So is 10 Gbps now. In some locations you can get 100 Gbps business bandwidth. That level will become more widely available in the future, as more bandwidth intensive requirements demand it. If you are a really high bandwidth user or have special protocol or security requirements, you might consider wavelength service. Each fiber can carry dozens of wavelengths. Each wavelength transports up to 10 Gbps.

Are you interested in finding out what fiber optic service options are available for your business location and how much they cost? Get fast quotes with no obligation and complementary expert consulting to help choose the best option for your needs.

10x10 Mbps Ethernet Providers in Demand

By: John Shepler

Some say that 10 Mbps Ethernet is the new T1. More and more, it looks like this is the case. Let’s see why, how it works and how you can get this service upgrade.

Companies have depended on T1 lines for decades. They offer high reliability back up by service level agreements, dedicated bandwidth that is rock solid at 1.5 Mbps and symmetrical operation where the upload and download speeds are the same. Over the years, T1 prices have plunged and availability has expanded to become almost universal.

What’s not to like? There’s really only one hangup with T1 service. That’s bandwidth. While 1.5 Mbps was more than you knew what to do with years ago, it’s woefully inadequate today. Once you get more than a few employees, start doing more on the Internet than email and casual web browsing, switch from in-house IT to cloud services or need to efficiently connect two or more business locations, T1 runs out of gas.

If you are still in love with T1, all is not lost. Most carriers are now set up to offer you multiple bonded T1 lines. What bonding does is combine the bandwidth of two or more T1 lines so they act like one larger line. That saves you the trouble of having to direct traffic over multiple connections. Bonding starts at 2xT1 for 3 Mbps and goes up to typically 8x T1 for 12 Mbps.

The 10 or 12 Mbps bandwidth level is just right for many of today’s needs. It’s enough to support video conferencing, cloud computing and hosted VoIP, and remote disaster backup and recovery. The problem is that bonded T1 lines at this level aren’t always available and the cost can make your eyes bug out. That’s because there is no economy of scale with T1 service. Two lines cost twice as much as one. Once you get up to 8 lines, your monthly bill is a significant budget item.

There are several options that may make more sense in getting the bandwidth you need to run your business. These include “consumer” type services like DSL and cable, Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber.

DSL and cable give you a lot more bandwidth for the money, but that’s typically only in one direction. They’re designed for downloading from the internet so the download speed is typically 5x to 10x the upload speed. The bandwidth is usually shared, meaning the performance you get from moment to moment varies all over the place. After all, you are sharing one bandwidth pool with a number of other users in order to get better pricing. Finally, there is generally no service level agreement. The service is provided on a “best effort” basis.

That leaves Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber as true competitors to T1 and bonded T1 line service. Like T1, these services come with service level agreements, are dedicated and not shared bandwidth, have guaranteed performance characteristics like bandwidth, jitter, latency and packet loss, and offer symmetrical performance.

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) is, indeed, Ethernet like you run on your LAN but expanded for metro and wide area networks. It’s based on industry standards so the EoC you get from one carrier is like the EoC offered by others. Ethernet over Copper uses a more advanced technology that T1 for sending data over twisted pair copper wires. They’re the same wires, but with different terminal equipment on each end.

What this does is allow higher speeds than you can get by bonding T1 lines and with better pricing. Basic 2 Mbps or 3 Mbps EoC is similar in price to a single T1 line and the cost advantage grows as you go up in speed. It’s not uncommon to get 10 Mbps EoC for just 2 or 3 times what you are paying for your old T1 line.

Ethernet over Copper bandwidths start at 2 or 3 Mbps and go up from there. How much you can get depends on how far you are from the telco office. Most companies can easily get 10 or 15 Mbps. Some can get bandwidths as high as 50 or 100 Mbps.

Even more flexible is Ethernet over Fiber (EoF). This is fiber optic service with highly reliable bandwidth starting at typically 10 Mbps and going up to at least 10 Gbps. You are unlikely to run out of capacity with EoF and you don’t have to pay for the full speed right now. Have your service provider install a 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, a 1 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet or 10 Gbps 10 GigE port and that’s the maximum your connection will support. You contract for the bandwidth you need right now with the option to quickly upgrade later with only a phone call. In most cases, no equipment changes are necessary to give you higher line speeds.

Are you ready to upgrade to higher bandwidth for your business but don’t want to spend a fortune or risk losing performance? Copper and fiber based Ethernet service may well meet your needs at an attractive price. Get prices and availability of EoC and EoF bandwidth services for your business locations now.

Affordable Conference Calls For 1,000 Participants With StartMeeting

You’ve read the case studies and seen the numbers. The cost savings from business conference calls, especially those that include screen sharing, are jaw dropping when compared with physical meetings. One issue has been that most conferencing solutions are either designed for a handful of participants or get very expensive when you expand to dozens, hundreds or a thousand participants. That’s all changed now. StartMeeting has an affordable conferencing solution that you’d be remiss not to explore.

StartMeeting consists of a number of elements that work together to improve productivity and save you money. It starts with audio conferencing. The voice portion of the conference is usually the most important, with video for supporting material. You have three options for voice communication. You can use a dial-in long distance toll number or a toll-free number with landline and wireless telephones, or elect to use HD VoIP audio with a headset connected to your computer.

You should know that using the regular toll number gives you a conference bridge at no additional cost. Each participant pays for the duration of their long distance call into the system. With the toll free number you are billed for the cost of the calls that are free to your participants. You can record your conference for later playback and include the screen sharing portion of the program if you wish. Note that unlike smaller capacity systems, This conference bridge can accommodate up to 1,000 callers.

Here’s a summary of the audio conferencing options. You get access to toll and toll-free dial in numbers, a reservationless system that is available 24/7, free conference recording, free call detail reports via email and conferences that are accessible via fixed, mobile and HD VoIP.

The second major piece of this solution is screen sharing. The video to go with the audio, if you will. You can share your entire desktop or just selected applications with 50, 200, 500 or 1000 conferencing seats. Record both Windows and Mac screens. Switch presenters if you wish. Annotation tools are included as well as an attendee list and chat feature. As you might suspect, there is a charge for screen sharing but it is quite modest, especially compared to the cost of gathering participants for even one in-person meeting. Plans are available by the number of seats and are billed monthly, starting at under $20 a month for 50 seats. There is a 30 day free trial so you can test the system before making a commitment.

Notifying participants of an upcoming meeting is also a breeze. You get a customizable meeting wall to create a landing page for your participants to visit. You can upload your photo and company logo, add the meeting title and description, invite others to schedule meetings and include web controls for audio. There is a Cloud Drop Box so you can store and share files. Once again, this system is reservationless so that you can use it 24/7 without having to pre-plan.

Another important tool is the Studio feature. With this you can create cloud-based presentations that are perfect for sales, training, marketing and HR needs, among others. Create all the presentations you like by recording anything on your screen with audio. These presentations will be available on-demand with unlimited and free viewing. It’s also mobile-savvy with compatibility for iPhone, iPad and Android users.

For one small monthly fee you can have all the meetings you want up to 6 hours in length each. Can anybody stand to be in a meeting longer that that? Include employees, customers, clients or affiliates. Even invite international participants to use the dial-in regular toll number. You decide who’s invited to each meeting.

Have you been frustrated with other conferencing systems or choked on the bill if you have more than a few participants? You really need to take a look at StartMeeting web and audio conferencing for your business or organization.

Is Mobility Killing Your Company?

Everything was fine when just a handful of execs had company cell phones. It made sense to keep them connected at all times for the good of the business. Then a funny thing happened. What worked for the C-level execs also worked for the VPs and the directors and the department managers. Finally, somebody did a trade study and soon everyone had a company issued smartphone. Productivity went through the roof, right?

Well, certainly there is a lot more interaction among team members and faster response to customers and sales prospects. But, oh, the expense of it all. Since this was a phased-in process, each location cut its own deal with its own preferred provider. Even if one carrier is predominant, there are hundreds of contracts with hundreds of bills. Sadly, some of these bill are routinely paid each month while the phones sit uncharged and unused in empty desks. Hey, people come and go. Who has time to stay on top of all this?

Certainly, you don’t. Your business isn’t optimizing wireless accounts. It’s keeping your own operation afloat. That doesn’t mean the situation is hopeless. Why don’t you turn over the entire load of hundreds of phones, their contracts and their bills to a company that specializes in wireless cost control? It’ll be out of your hair and you are almost guaranteed to save money in the process.

The first step is getting a free, no-obligation analysis of your accounts. The company that does this, Advantix Solutions, will go over a few months or more of detailed wireless bills with a fine tooth comb. They know what to look for and how to keep an eye on the big picture. Are some of these resources going to waste? Are there ways to consolidate contracts and bills? They don’t do this by hand, the way your harried managers probably do when they have time. They use proprietary analysis software to crunch the numbers and make accurate recommendations for cost savings. You’ll need to have anywhere from hundreds to thousands of cell phones to make this work efficiently, but work it will.

You’ll get a detailed report in 7 to 10 business days. It will outline where the problem areas are and what the opportunities are to optimize your wireless costs. What you probably don’t realize is that every provider has both published and hidden rate plans. You may well be on the wrong ones for how you use your devices. A few changes here and there and, suddenly, you are paying less for the same benefit.

OK, how much are you going to save and what’s this going to cost? Would you be shocked to know that the average Advantix clients saves over 29% on their monthly wireless bills? That’s without having to change service providers and reduce usage. Here comes another shock. Advantix gets paid out of the savings they create. In other words, they get paid and you get paid. Your expenses don’t go up, they go down.

That’s just the start of the good times. Advantix will also take the management headache of administering those wireless phones off your back. They’ll expedite support and trouble ticket resolution for all your employees. They’ll also raise accountability standards for every location to lower your costs. Need to order new phones, replace old, lost or stolen phones, get accessories, activate new services, change rate plans or user names, or cancel lines of service? Advantix has a dedicated support staff for that. They know what they’re doing and they’re good at it because that is all they do.

Mobility is no longer a two-edged sword when you have the proper support to make it work optimally. It’s pretty hard to go wrong when the cost of this service comes out of the savings you didn’t even know were available. Can you really say no to having your expenses go down? I didn’t think so. Before you do anything else, lock in a cost savings for your company right now by requesting a free, no obligation analysis of your wireless accounts. Get that ball rolling, and you’re already ahead for the day.

Can You Save 50% On Telecom Costs?

Here we are in the midst of an intractable economic recession and you may still be paying twice as much for your business telecom services as you could be. Need a quick and painless way to cut the budget without having to let people go or cut necessary services? OK, then stop paying so much.

If you are anxious to start saving, get a cost savings evaluation right now and then come back to finish reading the rest of this article. I’m going to explain why a 50% savings is well within the realm of possibility for your company.

First, let’s see where the savings are. Nearly every business buys two principal telecom services. These are telephone and broadband Internet. Larger companies, those with multiple locations, or companies in certain fields will also buy point to point or multi-point bandwidth to link two or more locations. Do you have telephone? Do you use the Internet? Do you have a private link to another location? If so, you have a cost savings opportunity.

Now let’s see why these cost savings are available. First, the telephone and networking industry has become more competitive, especially since federal deregulation of telecom services. There are a lot more players than there used to be and they’re all hungry to expand their customer base. That alone accounts for a major slide in long distance telephone rates and digital bandwidth prices. Did the price of a garden variety T1 line drop by half over the last few years? You bet it did.

This is part of the secret to cutting your telecom bill in half. Business telecom services, like T1, DS3, & OC3, are sold on a contractual basis for one, two or three years. You get the lowest prices with the longest contracts, so the three year contract is often the most attractive. You may or may not be contacted to sign another contract when that one expires. If not, your service doesn’t generally just switch off. You go on a month to month basis for as long as you keep paying your bill. Some companies have been paying the same rate for years and years and have given no attention to comparison shopping.

One reason is that when you bought your original service, there was only one game in town and that was the local telephone company. What you don’t realize is that during that time other competitive carriers have started serving your area, likely with lower prices. Unless one of their sales team happens to call, you probably won’t even know they’ve come to town. More service providers means more offerings and better pricing, but you have to know how to get in touch with them.

The is the first way to get a dramatic cost savings. Do some comparison shopping. You still have to know where to find these carriers, who may or may not have an office in your location. You can try the Yellow Pages, but you’ll have to put in some time and effort to make the calls and compare the offers. Chances are, you’ll probably still miss some good opportunities.

The easier and faster way is to engage a telecom services broker who represents dozens of carriers. You pay the same rates you would if you hunted down the service provider yourself, but you don’t have to put forth the time and effort for comparison shopping. You’ll find that you get fast and friendly service from Telarus, Inc. for competitive telecom pricing. Just be prepared for a shock when you see the offers you’ve been missing.

The other reason that major cost savings are available for the asking is that new types of services have proliferated in the last few years. Ethernet over Copper is now a major competitor with T1 lines. You can generally get twice the bandwidth for the same amount of money if this service is available for your location. If you have a T1 line but are only lightly using it for credit card verification, email and Web access, you can probably save half the monthly cost with 3G fixed wireless broadband. This service is available nationwide and, unlike T1, is practical for temporary business locations like holiday stores, construction sites and conventions.

On the telephone side, that T1 line of yours could be doing double duty. SIP trunking and Integrated T1 combine business phone service and broadband Internet access on the same line. Unlike do it yourself VoIP, this is a carefully engineered solution that assures the quality of your telephone conversations regardless of what is happening on the computers or Internet.

Another recent telephone innovation is hosted PBX. Forget paying for all that telephone equipment and incoming lines. All of that is now handled in the cloud. You pay by the seat per month and your system is always functional and up to date with latest features. All you need in-house are IP telephones and a connection to your cloud provider.

For business applications that need to link several locations or more across the country, MPLS networks can’t be beat. You’ll easily save that 50% cost if you’ve grown your network gradually by simply adding point to point lines as you need them.

Got a few minutes? Want to save a bundle on your monthly telecom bills? Then just enter some basic contact information through T1 Rex and explain what you need. A friendly Telarus agent will be in touch at your convenience and send you a complete range of resources that meet your requirements, along with pricing. It doesn’t get easier and it’s hard to save more.

866 Toll Free Numbers

We’re all familiar with 800 numbers. They were the first numbers we recognized as toll free. But did you know that there are other toll free numbers, too? What about 866? Is that really a toll free prefix?

Indeed it is. But is there a difference between 800 and 866 as far as toll free operation is considered? No, they work exactly the same. Just as 202 and 302 are toll number prefixes assigned to different locations, 800 and 866 are toll free numbers used nationwide.

That’s one difference between toll prefixes and toll free prefixes. Toll prefixes are used to designed numbers in a particular area. That’s why they are called area codes. Area code 202 is assigned to Washington, DC. Area code 302 is assigned to the entire state of Delaware.

The toll free number prefixes 800 and 866 do not have a geographical assignment. You can call an 800 or 866 number from anywhere in the country and you’ll reach your destination. You just may not know where, geographically, the number is being answered.

It should be noted that the idea of associating area codes with the physical location of the assigned telephone is going away with landlines being replaced by cell phones and VoIP or broadband phone. Neither wireless or broadband users are tethered to a particular location by a copper wire. In fact, some VoIP providers let you pick your desired area code regardless of where you happen to reside. That’s especially valuable when most of your calls come from a particular regional area. Calls from an area code to the same area code don’t pay interstate long distance charges. If your phone has a New York City area code, it will work like any other NYC local phone, even if you pick up the calls in San Francisco.

Toll free numbers take this concept to the next level. When someone dials a toll free number, they don’t pay for the toll charges regardless of where they are calling from or where the call is picked up. Please note that most toll free numbers are US only. You have make special arrangements to get an International toll free number.

Now let’s look at what happens on the receiving end of the call. If you are the owner of the toll free number, you’ll pay the cost of any calls you receive. Fortunately, with an inexpensive toll free service that cost will be minimal. What you get in return is a caller who is much more likely to dial your number than if they knew they had to pay long distance charges. This is a powerful incentive for call-in orders and customer service. In fact, customers have come to expect a toll free number and may balk at dealing with companies that don’t offer one.

Are toll free numbers really affordable by smaller businesses? Absolutely. You can get an 866 number assigned to you for just $2 and pay just $2 a month to maintain service. That service includes your exclusive use of the number, forwarding to any working phone including a cell phone, voice mail, plus FAX reception that forwards to your email. The cost of the calls is just 6.9 cents per minute for the continuous 48 US states. Calls from Alaska and Hawaii cost a bit extra.

For the same price as an 866 toll free number, you can also get one with the prefix 877 or 888. They work just the same as 866. You can also get an 800 number for the slightly higher fee of $5 plus $5 per month service fee and the same 6.9 cents per minute rate.

Load Up on Toll Free Numbers For Your Business

What’s a really inexpensive tool that many business users think costs a fortune? It’s the toll free number. True, toll free numbers used to cost a small fortune and take forever to get set up. Not any more. Now you can have as many as you want ready to use immediately for $2 each.

Shocked? I’ll bet. At that price you not only have to consider getting your first toll free number, but loading up on them as well.

Why get more than one? It’s all about the marketing. Businesses that run ads in a multitude of media need some way to know which ads are working and which are just along for the ride. You can do that with coupon codes or long confusing Web addresses. Often, companies will list a phone number but distinguish the ads with different extension numbers. None of these are sure-fire. Customers and prospects can easily forget codes and extensions or get them mixed up. Even when they don’t, do you really want to make your valuable customers jump through hoops to help you assess your ad results?

It’s much easier to simply present a unique toll free number. You can assign different toll free numbers to each ad, each product, or each sales representative. Different departments can each have their own toll free number to avoid the confusion of phone trees or having a receptionist transfer every call. That makes calling fast and easy for your customers. Since the numbers are toll free, they’ll never hesitate to call regardless of how far away they are located.

What’s makes multiple toll free numbers so attractive is both cost and ease of management. You control everything online for each of your numbers. That includes deciding which phone should ring, including cell phones, how many rings before a call goes to voice mail, and whether or not you want FAX messages delivered to your email.

Yes, those features and more are available with these toll free numbers. You make the updates yourself at anytime, day or night, using an ordinary Web browser. That gives you completely control and you don’t have to wait for certain hours or for someone to have time to make the changes for you.

The cost? It’s just $2 to acquire an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number set up and ready to use. After that you pay just $2 a month to maintain service for each number. Incoming calls cost just 6.9 cents per minute. As an example, if two customers are calling-in to 2 toll free numbers, you pay 6.9 cents per minute per caller for the duration of the calls. Calls from Alaska and Hawaii do have a small surcharge added.

How about 800 numbers? Yes, they are readily available and cost $5 each to acquire and $5 per month to maintain. The cost of the incoming calls is the same 6.9 cents per minute as the other toll free numbers.

Are you ready to load up on toll free numbers? Order your first number and set up your account. Then add numbers as needed. You’ll get online reporting for each number so you’ll know what you are spending and which numbers are producing for you.

Still Your Best Toll Free Option

Could your business benefit from having a toll free number? Perhaps you already have toll free service, but are looking at getting a better deal or upgrading to more numbers. What service makes the most business sense these days?

If you’ve never had a toll free number and aren’t positive that it will make a significant impact on your business, the best thing to do is get in cheap without making any long term commitments. That way you can test the waters and see what happens. So, how do you do that?

Kall8 offers an outstanding package of toll free services that has been popular for years. It's had staying power because you get a lot for a little with no contractual commitments.

Here’s how it works. Your lowest cost option is to pick one of the 866, 877, or 888 toll free numbers that are all set up and ready to go. It’s like visiting the toll free supermarket. Just take a number that looks good to you off the shelf and put it in your shopping cart. When you check out, you’ll fork over all of $2. That’s right, two bucks.

What do you get for your toll free $2? You get to have calls to that number ring to a phone of your choice as soon as your order is complete. That can be your office phone, home phone or cell phone. Change that option to a different phone whenever you like, even in the middle of the night. You have an online portal that gives you complete control of your toll free number 24/7.

This is huge for mobile professionals, like consultants or real estate agents. Give everybody your toll free number, set it to the phone you are at, and you’ll never miss a call. If you do happen to be busy, calls will go to your toll free voicemail. You can call in and get messages at your leisure, listen to them online, or... get this... have the sound file sent to your email. Wait! It gets better. If anyone sends a FAX message to your toll free number, you can read that message online or also have it sent to your email.

How much does this really cost? It’s $2 to get the number. Then $2 a month to maintain service plus the cost of incoming calls. Most calls, originating in the 48 contiguous US states, are 6.9 cents a minute. There’s a modest surcharge for Alaska and Hawaii. If you decide you don’t want service anymore, then cancel it. All you owe is for what you’ve been using.

How can Kall8 make an offer like this? It’s because once you have the service you’ll want to keep it forever. Since you are only paying a couple of bucks a month plus the cost of calls, the bill for your toll free service only goes up when you get more calls. More calls mean more business, so you can easily afford the calling cost. It’s one sweet deal.

Finding An Ethernet Internet Provider

You’ve heard that Ethernet Internet service offers advantages over traditional telecom services, such as T1 lines and DS3 bandwidth. But where do you go to find an Ethernet Internet provider? You go right here...



The Ethernet Internet Finder is your one-stop service for locating Ethernet Internet providers and getting competitive service quotes. It’s affiliated with Telarus, Inc., the renowned telecom services broker, and connects to their patented GeoQuote software and suite of expert consultants. All you do is enter some basic company contact information and you are good to go. Try to enter the main telephone number at the business rather than a cell phone, as the system uses this information to help find service availability and pricing.

Don’t worry about getting charged for any of this. The Ethernet Internet Finder is free to use for any serious business purpose. The friendly consultants will go over the range of services available for your location and make recommendations for how you can get the most bandwidth for the least cost. Yes, you need a location that is listed for business use for this to work. If you are working from a home office or want residential service, we recommend “Can I Get DSL?” to find your best options for DSL, Cable, 4G wireless, fiber to the home, and satellite broadband.

In case you are not familiar with Ethernet Internet access, this is a fairly new bandwidth service that is growing by leaps and bounds. It provides an Ethernet connection from your local area network, which is already running Ethernet, to the Internet, which is highly compatible with Ethernet. Traditional telecom connections were designed to transport telephone calls and are not as efficient as what’s known as Metro or Carrier Ethernet. There are also many new providers who specialize in Ethernet and IP networks that are anxious to compete for your business.

As a result, you can generally save money when you switch to Ethernet Internet service. How much? It’s not unusual to get twice the bandwidth for the same cost using Ethernet at 3 Mbps vs a T1 line at 1.5 Mbps. The higher the bandwidth, the lower the price per Mbps.

Also, new Ethernet over Copper (EoC) technology can deliver 10 Mbps Ethernet connections to your business using existing twisted pair copper wiring. You don’t necessarily have to bring in new fiber optic service to get the bandwidth you need. How much bandwidth can you get and for what cost? The easy way to find out is to use the Ethernet Internet Finder now.

Try Internet Fax For Free

In these days of hyperactive texting, fax machines may seem a bit quaint to the uninitiated. But fax messages are a staple of business and used to exchange contracts and other important business documents. So, does that mean you need to buy an armada of dedicated fax machines and run to the office when you need to send or receive a fax message? No way. You can do it all online from wherever you happen to be. That is, if you have the right fax plan.

What’s better than a fax machine in this business environment is a fax service plan. A fax machine is a one task dedicated piece of equipment that sits in a designated space, tethered to its own phone line. A fax service plan lets you receive and send faxes by email and online account. It works on your desktop PC. It works on your laptop computer.

Oh, I know. You remember those early fax software programs that ran on your computer. You needed a special fax modem and they tied up both your computer and your phone line. This service is nothing like that. You don’t need a fax modem or even a phone line. This is an Internet-based fax service that you access over your broadband Internet connection like other online applications.

Here’s what you get when you sign up for a RingCentral Internet Fax Service Plan or take the free trial offer. You get your own toll free or local phone number. What’s that for? It is so people can send fax messages to you. Remember that fax machines send and receive messages over telephone lines. RingCentral gives you a virtual fax machine, but it still needs a number for those other fax machines to call. Those incoming messages will be stored in your online account and sent to you via email. You can even get text messages on your cell phone or PDA alerting you to new faxes so you never miss an important message.

How about sending faxes? You can send a fax right from email. Your email message becomes the cover sheet. The attached documents become the fax pages. That’s the simple way to fax. You also get a free software application that adds a fax button to your Microsoft Windows applications, such as Outlook and Word. Click the button and you can send your document out as a fax message. You can electronically sign faxes using a bitmap of your signature. No need to print documents, sign them with a pen, and then scan them back in as you would with a standard fax machine.

The RingCentral Internet Fax is as powerful as a large dedicated fax machine. You can create groups of contacts and easily send faxes to the whole group from your computer. You don’t tie up any phone lines. You’ll be notified by the system when your faxes have been sent. Both the software app and online account let you create custom cover sheets. Over a dozen different page styles are included with the service. If you are having a problem with junk faxes, you can block those so they won’t come in.

By the way, your computer doesn’t even have to be on for you to get a fax message. The sender never gets a busy signal when someone is on the phone, either. Remember, this is a virtual fax machine that is hosted online.

How much does it cost for all this faxing goodness? Plans start as low as $7.99 a month for 300 pages with a small charge per page over that. If you regularly deal with high fax volumes, other plans will push that up to include 2,500 pages per month. That includes your toll free or local fax number. You can pay that much just for a toll free number from other suppliers.

Managed Hosting Service

If you run a website or an ecommerce business of any type, you are already familiar with web hosting. But did you know that there are many flavors of web hosting available? Have you heard of managed hosting serves? If not, you may be missing out on more reliable hosting solutions at costs lower than you may experience by trying to do everything yourself.

At the beginning of the commercial Internet, many businesses got their start online by acquiring server software and dedicating one computer to be the Web host. Today, most SOHO and small businesses have abandoned trying to do everything themselves and purchase their hosting service for just a few dollars a month. What they’re actually buying is something called “shared hosting” or “virtual hosting.” They are one of many businesses websites running on the same physical server. At relatively low traffic and business levels, you don’t need all the performance a modern server can provide and you don’t want to spend that much money.

Things change when you are supporting a larger organization or have a popular e-commerce site with thousands or tens of thousands of visitors browsing your pages, making demands on the databases, and placing orders with expectations of snappy response times. The need for the lowest cost hosting service becomes less important when the lost revenue from a day’s or even an hour’s downtime can exceed the monthly hosting fees. You can no longer afford to be at the mercy of someone else on the same server hogging resources or somehow crashing the system and taking your site down as well as their own.

At this point, you are ready for dedicated web hosting. That means that an entire server is allocated to your exclusive use. The question is whether to buy this service or buy the equipment and support the servers in-house. Companies with substantial IT staffs may have the talent and want the level of control that comes with having everything under one roof. Some may find that renting physical space in a colocation center gives them access to lower cost bandwidth and saves considerable cost on things like backup power and physical security. It’s still your equipment and you are responsible for it. It’s just not installed at your premises.

Managed hosting servers are provided by a colocation center and managed by center personnel as well. They buy the server hardware, provide all software updates for the device, ensure the physical security of their premises, have multiple levels of power backup so that power outages won’t even be seen by the equipment, provide fire suppression in the event something goes horribly wrong in those server racks, provide redundant bandwidth connections so that individual line failures won’t make your site invisible on the Internet, and monitor server operation 24/7/365.

One well known and respected provider of managed hosting services is The Planet. They specialize in mission-critical enterprise-class hosting solutions that range from a single physical server to complex infrastructures that can support the largest operations. These are customized to your needs and come with a Service Level Agreement that includes 100% power and network availability, 1 hour hardware replacement and 15 minute critical live-person response time. Their Northstar managed hosting also includes managed backup and data protection, security and patch management, database management and optimization and regular business and capacity planning.

Have your server-based operations become essential to the operation of your business? Do you struggle with having the right level of resources available at the right time? Would you be seriously jeopardized by a server outage? If so, you may be able to benefit from managed hosting from The Planet or other high quality hosting service. Get prices and availability on managed hosting services now.

Phone Toll-Free Service

In a business environment where it's hard to get anyone to buy anything, the easier you make it for your customers to do business with you, the more likely they'll buy from you instead of your competitor. One benefit that prospects and existing customers consider valuable is the ability to call toll-free instead of paying for the phone call themselves.

It may seem silly that people will make a buying decision on whether they have to spend a matter of pennies or dimes to make a phone call. But consumers are fickle. That even applies to business people under pressure to cut expenses no matter what. Letting them phone toll-free may not be the major part of the decision, but it does remove one more objection. Why not do it when the cost to you is so very little? Plus, when you get the right toll-free service you get additional valuable business tools that make your job easier and more productive.

One excellent provider of toll-free phone services is Kall8. You can get a toll-free number instantly for just $2. Then for merely $2 a month you have the online management system to put your toll-free number to work. Until someone calls, that's all you pay. You are charged just 6.9 cents per minute for incoming calls from the contiguous 48 states, slightly more for calls that originate in Alaska and Hawaii. Can it get much better?

You bet it can. The low cost and instant availability of toll free numbers is just the start of the service from Kall8. The first additional service you'll enjoy is the ability to change your ring-to number at will. That's the number of the phone that will ring when someone calls your toll free number. It doesn't always have to be the same phone.

Some sales people find it valuable to set their ring-to number to their office phone when they are at their desk, and then change it to their cell phone when they leave. At home they can leave it programmed to ring their cell, or they can change it to ring their home phone. That saves cell minutes and ensures that a prospect or client can always reach you immediately. Don't you think you might close more sales if the caller doesn't get frustrated by voice mail and goes elsewhere?

Do you ever get need to receive FAX messages? You may be calling from the road, but the FAX you need will be sent to a distant office machine. Not with Kall8. You just have your caller send the FAX to your toll-free phone number. It will be received by Kall8 and sent to your email. You can get access to it at hotel or coffee shop hotspot or even on your Internet-enabled smartphone.

Voice mail has a similar feature. If you elect to have your messages go to voice mail, you can call into the system to hear them. Or just have Kall8 send them to your computer as a sound file attached to an email.

Need to make a long distance call from someone's home or a client's office? You surely don't want them to have to pay for it. No need to. Call your Kall8 number, enter the access code, and you'll be able to use the service in reverse as a virtual calling card. The cost of the call will be charged to your account at the same 6.9 cents per minute that you pay for incoming calls.

You can even set up conference calls, with up to 25 participants calling in on your toll-free number. Kall8 takes care of the conferencing bridge and charges you the regular per minute cost per participant. This feature is included with your toll-free service and is available anytime you need it.

There are other features, including detailed call reports, that you'll find handy in managing your toll-free phone number. Hard to believe you can get all this for just $2 a month plus the cost of the calls. If you are paying more than that now or have always wanted toll-free service but thought it was too expensive, then learn more and order your Kall8 toll-free phone number(s) now.

T-1 Digital Telephone Lines

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get a Consumer Advocate On Your Side

We know that consumer advocates are valuable in representing the voice of customers to business. But what about an advocate for businesses? Could your business make good use of a consumer advocate? You can when you consider that you're a consumer too.

The fact is that businesses are purchasers of goods and services just like individuals. Depending on the size of your business, you may have little more leverage than an individual when dealing with much larger suppliers. So doesn't it make sense to even up the odds with a little more help on your side?

A perfect example of what I mean is the consumer advocacy aspect of working through a telecommunications broker rather than going it alone in dealing with the big carriers. Even a mid-size business has limited leverage when dealing with billion dollar corporations, especially when they know they have the upper hand.

How do they know that? Just as soon as they find out that you found them in the phone book or simply called the incumbent local carrier out of habit, they know. What they know is that the chances of encountering any stiff competition for your business is slim indeed. They don't need to try very hard. All they need to do is find out what services you need, look up their standard pricing and send out a quote. You may or may not get a small discount if you are buying several services at once.

What can you do to tilt the balance of negotiations in your favor? Let's consider a telecommunications broker like Telarus, Inc. in their consumer advocate role. You start by entering an online quote request, which takes a couple of minutes at most. The patented GeoQuote (tm) search engine then automatically queries the databases of perhaps a dozen or more competitive carriers and compiles a list of available services that meet your need and their prices. Calling around to do the same things could take days... if you even knew all the carriers to call.

But it doesn't stop there. Your consumer advocate swings into action to locate temporary special offers and recommend alternative services, such as Ethernet over Copper, that you may not have even thought of. You won't have to slug it out in contract negotiations. Your advocate will work with the carriers that best meet your requirements to get the best deal for you.

How much does such an advocate charge? Nothing. Seriously. If you own or manage a business, not a residence, that uses commercial telecom services such as PBX phone service, dedicated Internet connections, or a private network, your Telarus advocate works for you free of charge. Their fees are paid by the carriers they represent.

Wouldn't you rather be working through an advocate who represents many providers rather than a sales rep for just one? Don't you think that your advocate can get you a better deal than you can find on your own? I would think so. If you agree, call the toll free number or enter an online quote request now and get a consumer advocate on your side right away.