Showing posts with label phones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phones. Show all posts

Friday, August 28, 2020

When Your Broadband Isn’t Stable Enough For VoIP Phones

By: John Shepler

People may point and laugh when you tell them your phones are still on analog landlines. Do you have to crank the phone or spin the dial? Very funny… especially when it turns out the joke is on them.

Get better VoIP phone quality nowThose old twisted pair lines were designed to have decent voice quality and rock solid stability. Yes, they can degrade with time. That usually shows up as noise on the line until you can’t make or receive calls. After a quick service call, everything is back in order for another year or two or a decade.

Oh, but that’s so old fashioned. The new phone line is the Internet. You can ditch the separate wiring and expensive line to the phone company when your computers and telephones share the same broadband connection. You can also get more advanced features, such as phones and computers that work together to support customers.

The only real hitch is that sometimes the new phones don’t measure up to the old phones. Oh, the handsets are great. They’re marvels of electronic engineering. Somewhere, somehow, the performance is getting lost. Calls may start out fine and then get garbled. The distortion can be so bad you can’t understand the caller. Worst case the call gets dropped…. and you slam that fancy handset back in the cradle. Not too hard, though. Those phones are expensive.

Where It All Goes So Wrong
The problem with VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol telephony isn’t the fundamental digital technology. It’s that Internet thing. The Internet serves everyone, goes everywhere and is cheap as chips, as they say. Anyone and everyone is online doing pretty much everything possible. Your phone call goes into the fray like every other session and winds up at your VoIP service provider. It’s also completely democratic. Your call is no more or less important than somebody streaming a movie or placing an online order.

What you may not realize is that your old phone calls were really dedicated private connections between you and the party you are talking to. The line itself from your building to the phone company is just a pair of wires that go all the way there. A switching system then connects your line to the other party’s line. You have a dedicated circuit for the duration of the call. If the system gets overloaded, the next caller gets a busy signal. On the Internet, nobody gets a busy signal. The system simply slows down or drops bits. That’s what wrecks nice clean phone conversations.

Is There a Way to Make it Better?
The fundamental problem is more bits per second than a connection can handle. First, stop letting your computers and phones fight for the bandwidth. Set your router up to give phone calls priority. Whatever they don’t use can serve the other equipment. If those operations don’t have enough left over, you are going to have to order a higher bandwidth line.

Another thing to know is that the first mile is the worst mile for an Internet connection. The core of the Internet has much higher performance than most local Internet Service Providers. The cheaper the connection, the more likely it is that you’ll be in contention with other users. Dump the shared bandwidth services like cable and cellular broadband in favor of a dedicated Internet connection, like a T1 line. The 1.5 Mbps bandwidth of T1 is probably not going to meet your other needs, so consider this just for the phones. Otherwise get a higher bandwidth service for everything using Carrier Ethernet over copper or fiber.

Get Off The Internet
If you really want to get control of call quality, replicate the old dedicated phone line but with newer technology. What you need is a dedicated line service from your company to your phone service provider. Most PBX systems can use a T1 line, ISDN PRI (another flavor of T1), or a SIP Trunk. SIP Trunking is designed to directly support VoIP telephony.

Note that these dedicated lines go directly from point to point. There is no Internet connection involved.

If you want to tie together several business locations, an MPLS network may be cost advantageous. This is like a private Internet. The difference is that the line quality is carefully maintained by the service provider and is not the free-for-all you get on the Internet. Does it cost more? You bet. It may well be worth it, though, for customer satisfaction and employee productivity.

Are you frustrated with the quality of your phone service or the performance of your entire network? It’s time to take a look at voice and data connections that will get the job done and probably save you more money than they cost.

Click to check pricing and features or get support from a Telarus product specialist.



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Tuesday, July 09, 2019

Enterprise VoIP Moves to the Cloud

by: John Shepler

Enterprise VoIP has been replacing switched circuit analog telephone business systems for decades. PBX systems transformed into IP PBX, but they were still premises based hardware and software. Now those telecom rooms are emptying as business VoIP moves to the cloud and transforms into Unified Communications.

Find the cloud communications services you need now. What’s Cloud Got To Do With It?
Businesses started installing their own phone switching equipment when half a dozen buttons on a desk phone weren’t enough anymore. PBX actually stands for Private Branch Exchange. It mimics the phone company central office but sized just for your company. Even so, that can mean hundreds or thousands of people and phones. PBX systems that can handle this amount of traffic often require their own dedicated staff.

The impetus to move to the cloud centers around clearing out all that equipment and the staff to keep it updated and running smoothly. However, it’s not magic. The common joke about the cloud is that there really is no cloud, it’s just somebody else’s computer. That’s about it. Only cloud providers have huge facilities with huge staffs for economy of scale. You not only get away from the hassle of running a phone system, you can likely save money in the process.

New Capability and No Investment Required
One problem with in-house technology is that it’s easy to outgrow and it goes obsolete really fast. You avoid both issues with cloud services. A decent size cloud can handle as much expansion as you can think of. Software updates are routinely handled by the provider. Most PBX functions are now in software anyway. That means that adding or changing features doesn’t require junking racks full of perfectly good equipment. It’s a simple download to what is likely a virtual server.

Telephone calls are getting to be just one of many functions that companies want in their “phone” system. The old standard desk phone has to easily integrate with mobile smartphones where a lot of the conversations are taking place. Then there is text messaging, email and video conferencing. This is how business people communicate these days. The voice call is just one option. With IP telephony, the concept of voice as an application has been realized. What’s more, you may want to have multiple types of communication going on at the same time. That’s Unified Communications and cloud providers offer it under the name Unified Communications as a Service or UCaaS.

Special Needs of Call Centers
Many businesses find it advantageous to have their own in-house call center rather than outsourcing that function. With managed cloud services this is easily realized. You can add features such as an automated receptionist, call recording, automatic call distribution, interactive voice responses, call queues, skills-based routing, dedicated phone numbers, integration with CRM systems and reporting & metrics.

The beauty of cloud based call centers is that they don’t much care where the employees are located. None of your people will be sitting in the cloud data center anyway. This means that you can easily add remote workers and contractors to your team. They just let the system know when they are available and they’ll start getting assignments until they indicate they are unavailable.

What It Takes to Connect To the Cloud
You need to take special care in connecting your business and your people to the cloud if you want top notch performance. The Internet can be a bit dicey at the worst possible time, so you want the best connections possible. From your home office and remote offices, if possible, dedicated lines or SIP Trunks are best. Just avoid the Internet all together. Home workers may not even have that option or it can be too expensive for one worker locations, so the most reliable high speed broadband available is highly desirable. New SDN or Software Defined Networks make it easy to combine several broadband connection to make one faster and more reliable Internet connection. That can be the difference between distorted and interrupted calls and smooth seamless connections.

Are you getting frustrated with an under-performing phone system or feel you are missing out on productivity by not having the latest UCaaS features? You have many options available and complementary expert consulting to help you pick the most appropriate for your organization. Find out what Enterprise VoIP, Call Center and UCaaS services are available to you now, quickly and easily.

Click to check pricing and features or get support from a Telarus product specialist.



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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Private Branch Exchange Connections

Private Branch Exchanges, also known as PBX telephone systems, are the most popular business phone technology for medium and large organizations. Recent technical advancements have brought PBX prices down to the point where even small companies can upgrade from hard wired analog phones or key telephone systems. If you are in the market for a new PBX system or want to see what's available, you can contact the VAR Network to get an idea on prices and system options.

In addition to the hardware, Private Branch Exchange systems need connectivity. There are a wide variety of options available, each with their own cost and performance advantages. The most basic connection is called an FXO or Foreign Exchange Office. That's another way to say analog telephone line to a phone company central office or CO. These are individual twisted pair connections that provide dial tone and local phone service. They may also be set up for long distance calling and toll free numbers. For one to a few lines, it's hard to beat good old analog lines for cost and voice quality.

Once your business has grown to the size where you are using more than a half-dozen outside lines, it's time to consider trunking services. A trunk is digital phone line that carries multiple conversations simultaneously. The most popular digital trunk line is ISDN PRI, which stands for Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate interface. That mouthful is jargon for a T1 line that offers up to 23 outside lines plus faster call switching and Caller ID. Another version of T1 telephone service offers 24 phone lines, but slower call switching and no Caller ID information. ISDN PRI lines usually plug into an interface card on your PBX system, a common option.

The reasons to go with ISDN PRI service are high voice quality at lower cost than multiple analog lines. This type of service is very popular with corporate users and call centers. Each line can be configured for incoming and/or outgoing calls. DID service can give each employee their own telephone number without having a separate outside line for every number. The system assigns lines as needed. Larger organizations can get multiple ISDN PRI lines for greater capacity.

The newest PBX systems go by the designation IP PBX. This is enterprise VoIP telephony. IP PBX systems can have individual lines run to each phone or use SIP handsets connected to an Ethernet network. SIP is the switching technology of VoIP. A SIP trunk can provide outside phone lines and even Internet service as an option to the combination of ISDN PRI trunking plus T1 dedicated Internet access.

With all these options, how do you go about choosing the right service for the performance and capacity you need? An easy way is to get free comparison pricing and discussion of your needs with a expert consultant from Telarus through the Shop For T1 service. Even if you already have a phone system that you are happy with, Telarus can likely save you money on your monthly business phone bills.


Click to check pricing and features or get support from a Telarus product specialist.




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Friday, June 01, 2007

TalkSwitch Supports both VoIP and Legacy PBX

The decision on whether to go with a traditional analog or digital TDM PBX phone system or the newer VoIP telephone system can be a perplexing business decision. Well, why take a big chance when you can hedge your bets with a TalkSwitch system that supports both types of phone technologies?

This is where TalkSwitch is playing the commercial telephone market smart. Take the hybrid TalkSwitch 244vs, for instance. This desktop PBX system supports 2 incoming phone lines, 4 extensions for analog phone sets, and a wealth of user features including voicemail and music on hold. This low cost system also includes support for 10 remote extensions, which are cell phones, home phones and phones on other systems that can be reached by dialing a 3 digital extension. It's like the remote phones are part of the PBX, even though they do not directly plug into the system.

If that sounds like a traditional PBX system, it is. But the TalkSwitch 244vs also supports 4 VoIP trunks and VoIP extension phones. The VoIP features use your company LAN and WAN rather than dedicated telephone wiring. Whether to use analog or IP phone extensions is your choice. It's largely influenced by what you have already in the way of handsets and wiring.

The type of trunk lines to use is also a personal choice. You can simply plug in analog phone lines from your local phone company to the RJ-11 jacks on the back of the PBX console. Or you can use a VoIP provider with the equivalent of 4 lines called "VoIP trunks." Another popular option is to use T1 Integrated service that combines traditional phone lines and broadband Internet service onto a single T1 line.

The target market for TalkSwitch products is small companies or companies spread over multiple locations, perhaps with remote workers. The PBX unit itself can be held in your hand. Multiple units can be networked to a maximum of 16 traditional phone lines, 16 VoIP trunks, and 64 local plus 40 remote extensions.

Remote workers, often operating from their home offices, connect with the main company PBX by using a VoIP Gateway. A typical gateway is the Mediatrix 2102. The teleworker plugs an analog telephone, FAX machine, and computer or wireless router into the Mediatrix. The user's broadband modem plugs into the WAN port of the gateway. This allows the office PBX system to include the remote worker on the phone system via the Internet as if they were located down the hall rather than across town or across the country.



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