The Importance Of Buying Ernest

If you are a company with dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations, what you’d really like to deal with is a national local phone company for your telecom needs. But national local is an oxymoron, right? Can there even be such a company?

There is and it’s called Ernest Communications. This organization is unlike no telephone company you’ve dealt with. It’s focus is large nationwide multi-location accounts needing telephone lines, data lines, wireless mobile, or all of these.

What type of businesses fall into this category? National or regional chain stores come to mind immediately. Also, hotels, motels, gas stations, financial services, healthcare, real estate offices, insurance companies, entertainment venues such as theaters, and quick service restaurants. You can probably think of more categories, including the business you are in.

Any company depending on franchises, branch offices or service centers is in the business of supporting a multitude of small local operations. Every one of them has communications needs. Now, would you like to deal with a hundred or thousand separate local service providers or one larger company that has the staffing, expertise and products to handle all your business. Not only does this make your life easier by having a single point of contact, but you’ll likely save money due to the economy of scale.

Ernest Communications has taken advantage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to gain access to the nearly 200 million local lines that make up the Public Switched Telephone Network. Ernest provides your local telephone service plus they include most of the common custom calling features such as Call Waiting and Caller ID. Directory Assistance and IntraLATA toll charges are included in flat rate and blended rate plans. They’ll block all 3rd party and casual billing charges. Long distance rates are competitive.

Nearly all locations now require reliable broadband as well as telephone services. Ernest can provide high speed Internet access with speeds from 1.5 Mbps to 45 Mbps with performance governed by Service Level Agreements (SLA). You’ll get professional installation and 24/7/365 monitoring, which is not always the case with other providers.

Does your company have enough employees at one or more locations that you use a key telephone system or in-house PBX? Ernest can provide you with the ISDN PRI digital telephone lines that you need.

Many companies also now depend on wireless communications as well as line services to get the job done. Think about field service and sales people. Ernest has perhaps the only nationwide wireless solution designed specifically for business use. You’ll be able to choose from a variety of handsets, smartphones and mobile data devices, including BlackBerry devices. You also have your choice of shared, pooled, bundled and pay-per-use plans.

Getting your telecom services from a single provider has the advantage of giving you a single bill that combines all your voice, mobility and data services. Plus you have the ease of management that comes from having a single point of contact for moves, adds, changes and deletes that are part of normal business activity.

Could your regional or national multi-location business simplify operations and save money by working with a nationwide communications company? Why not get a competitive quote for your voice, data and mobility services and see for yourself. Our Telarus consultants can help you with this, plus any of your higher bandwidth or international communications needs.

Your Right to Competitive T1 Prices Protected

This afternoon the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reaffirmed your right to benefit from the intense competition in wireline based telecommunication services. In a 5-0 decision, the Commission rejected a petition by the Verizon Telephone Companies to "forbear" or let them out of regulations that mandate they provide competitive access to their lines in six major cities in the Northeast.

The forbearance provision of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was put in place to level the playing field between incumbent phone companies, the legacy of the Bell System monopoly, and newer competitors. The incumbents enjoyed a 100 year reign free from competition. They were protected as a government monopoly to ensure that telephone service would flourish and become universally available. That goal has long since been accomplished. One result is that every copper phone line to every home and business was installed and is owned by the local telephone company. That includes not only analog voice lines, but those used to provide last mile connectivity for T1 digital line service.

T1 lines are the mainstay of small and medium businesses who need regulated, reliable voice and data trunk lines for their PBX telephone, point to point connections, and dedicated Internet access. Basic T1 service is provided using two pair of conventional telephone line twisted pair. That's wiring that is already installed to every business nationwide. By bonding T1 lines together, higher bandwidths can be provided to offer fractional DS3 and the newer Ethernet over Copper services.

So why don't competitive carriers just get their own last mile connectivity and bypass the incumbent telcos completely? That's actually starting to happen. XO Communications runs fiber optic lines from its POPs or Points of Presence to nearby office buildings in major cities. They also offer wireless access using early versions of the new WiMAX radio service.

The problem is that building out new facilities, either wired or wireless, is a major undertaking requiring huge capital investments in a highly competitive environment. It will take many years before competitive paths are available with the kind of coverage now in place for the incumbent telephone companies. Consequently, it's not unreasonable to ask that the incumbent facilities put in place under monopoly protection be shared with competing carriers at least until equivalent connectivity can be installed.

It should be noted that the competitive carriers I'm talking about already have their own regional or national fiber optic backbones and network operations centers in place. If you are willing to colocate your equipment at one of their colo facilities or a neutral "carrier hotel," you'll get the best prices on bandwidth possible. It's only within cities where pulling new copper or fiber cable is pricey, or out in the boonies where the cost per mile for new lines is usually unreasonable, that competitive carriers need access to installed telco lines. For that, they pay the local phone company a fair price for the "local loop."

Is this all really important to you as a business owner? You bet it is. One of Verizon's assertions in asking for relief is that competitive carriers are cutting into their wireline business. There's a reason for that. Competitive means competitive pricing, the kind of pricing that has it made it possible for thousands of businesses to establish digital voice and data connections and others to expand their bandwidth at rates they can afford. If we go back to an era of telephone company monopoly, we'll go back to monopoly pricing too.

If you haven't checked the competitive prices for T1, DS3 and Ethernet services lately, you may be in for a shock. The expansion of voice and data network options that's been fostered in a free market environment is nothing short of astounding. Prices of once staid line services have plunged in just the last couple of years. Pull out your current contract and compare it to the results you get from an instant online T1 line service quote. You'll see.