The Time for POTS Replacement Has Come

By: John Shepler

Nobody likes change when it is forced upon them. But change we must as technology relentlessly advances. On its way out are innovations from the gilded age. The incandescent light bulb? Gone. The telegraph? Long gone. The telephone line? You guessed it. It’s going fast.

POTS is Kaput!
Alexander Graham Bell’s fantastic invention, the telephone, is going stronger than ever. But, it has morphed into technologies that weren’t dreamt of by Bell or Watson. What’s on the way out is the century-old connection system of twisted pair copper wires and the instruments that connect to them.

Plain Old Telephone Service or POTS is the current jargon for standard telephone lines consisting of two small diameter copper wires connected to a telephone company office that provides the power, switching and signaling needed to allow any phone to talk to any other phone around the world.

Why Ditch It?
There are two answers. Cell phones and Computer Networks. Neither have any use for POTS interfaces. Residential users have long embraced their smartphones to the exclusion of most everything else. Fewer and fewer are willing to pay the phone company ever increasing fees just to have an old-timey desk or wall phone available just in case the cell tower goes out.

Businesses have been on a similar trajectory. Mobile phones have become important business tools, but the desk phone still has a lot of value. The only difference is that the desk phone often connects to the computer LAN rather than its own unique network. This enables a lot more calling features, including a mash-up of desk sets, smartphones, laptops, PCs and tablets.

With this every increasing switch away from POTS, the phone companies find themselves with huge stockpiles of lines and switching equipment but less and less revenue to support them. That’s why the petitioned the FCC to let them decommission their copper resources and convert the central offices to data centers in high demand by AI and other computing needs.

Why Copper Retirement is Actually a Problem
Not everybody is on-board with chucking a perfectly good technology that is serving them reliably. Lots of businesses still have multiple POTS lines with in-house switching. Larger systems use a digital connection called PRI that multiplexes 23 POTS lines into a par of… you guessed it…twisted pair copper wires. Yes, as POTS goes away so does PRI and its cousin, T1 lines, that use the same wiring.

Another problem is FAX. Traditional FAX machines were designed for POTS and don’t like packet switched networks such as the Internet. Other systems specific to elevator phones, fire and burglar alarms, credit card verification, gate access, and emergency call boxes also were designed for POTS and only POTS. You don’t just plug these into your LAN and call it a day. So, what to do?

POTS Replacement Options
While POTS, PRI, T1, DSL and other copper line connections are rapidly fading into the sunset and not likely to return, there are replacement solutions available. Some popular ones are based on LTE cellular with dual SIM cards, battery backup, and failover Internet access. Also important is that a POTS replacement box provides the same signaling and RJ-11 connector that you’d get from a telephone line wall jack.

On a larger scale, SIP trunking is a replacement for carrying multiple phone lines used in offices and call centers. It can be provisioned over the Internet or, better yet, through a direct connection to a cloud phone service provider that interconnects with the Public Switched Telephone Network.

Have you been notified that your POTS service is being discontinued or greatly increasing in cost? It’s time to consider moving on with a new network based system or a POTS replacement appliance that simply drops in place of your old phone line. Get expert technical advice and pricing on POTS replacement solutions now.

Two Internet Connections For Consistent Phone Calls

There are forces at work changing the way business phone systems connect. Plain old analog telephone service and traditional PBX switching systems are giving way to mobility, computer integration and cloud services that bear little resemblance to Alexander Graham Bell’s network of the last century. The new features can greatly enhance business performance… as long as the fundamentals of high quality robust voice communications aren't lost. Can we have both advanced technologies and quality of service?

We have to. There’s really no going back. If you are still tethered to an analog twisted pair or ISDN PRI, obsolescence is coming for you… and soon. It’s time to embrace digital voice and the cloud services that it enables.

What’s The Internet Got to Do With It?
Telephone networks were purpose built for telephone sets. When the Internet started, it glommed onto the phone network with dial-up modems because that was the only universal connectivity available. Fast forward to today and the Internet has moved on to high bandwidth fiber optics as a core network and last mile connectivity. Mobile telephony has developed its own wireless cellular system. That leaves the original phone network to rust in peace.

Business telephones are connecting more and more to the company IT network rather than run a separate phone network based on legacy wiring technology. For those calls to leave the company and connect to the greater world, a decision has to be made. Do you install a PBX system that connects those internal phone sets directly to the phone company using telco lines, or stick with the digital network system and connect to a phone service supplier via a dedicated private line or the Internet?

The Internet is a compelling answer. It has already been built-out to interconnect just about everybody, everywhere. Costs to reach them are as low as you can get. You already use the Internet and probably cloud business services for computer applications and file transfers. Why not let your phone calls ride along on the same network?

The fly in the ointment is that voice calls don’t have the robustness that file transfers enjoy. If the connection slows down a bit or gets little jittery, the data will get through just fine. The voice on the other end of the phone calls will cut in and out, become garbled or just disconnect. That’s unacceptable for business and a major impediment to adopting VoIP telephone systems.

How to Fix the Internet for Phone Calls
A solution to getting high quality business phone service along with the benefits of digital telephony is called SD-WAN. A WAN or Wide Area Network is any connection, such as the Internet, that goes outside your business. The SD part is called Software Defined. That means adding intelligence into the WAN connections to manage sensitive traffic for quality and reliability.

The most basic operation of SD-WAN appliances is to combine two or more WAN connections. That can be two broadband Internet lines, such as Cable, DSL, fiber, T1, 4G LTE or 5G cellular, or fixed wireless access.

The idea is that every connection has it own performance characteristics and variations that are different from other types of connections. That’s typical of the Internet. It varies all over the place from instant to instant, but not on all connections at the same time.

The SD-WAN appliance constantly monitors the characteristics of each connection. What is the speed, packet loss and jitter? Has the line gone dead or so congested it might as well be? With two or more lines to choose from, SD-WAN can route packet by packet through the best connection at each moment. Phone calls get priority over your other traffic so they get the absolutely best connectivity at all times.

There are other intelligent features that are also running to ensure voice quality. Forward error correction duplicates each voice packet so if one is lost, the other can take its place at the far end. That gets rid of a lot of the choppiness you hear in digital phone calls. Calls are also smoothed out using dynamic jitter buffering that collects the packets and delivers them smoothly in spite of variances in transmission time.

How about security? The Internet is notorious for terrible security issues compared to private lines and the traditional PSTN phone network. By encoding the voice streams and including a firewall and other intrusion preventing measures, even the Internet can be made acceptably secure.

SD-WAN Also Improves Your Other Applications
What helps improve voice calls is also a major benefit for all your network traffic over the Internet. As companies move more and more applications to the cloud, robust connectivity is becoming essential to productivity and customer satisfaction. SD-WAN can make all of your Internet interactions faster, smoother and more reliable. It comes down to having enough high quality links for the system to always have solid connections. Those links will be used efficiently since lower demanding traffic, such as backups and low priority file transfers, can traverse even slower and more jittery connections.

Are you frustrated with the quality and performance of your current business phone system or face disconnection of legacy services? If so, find out what high quality enterprise VoIP and Universal Communications options are available for your business.

Yes, You ARE Overpaying For Your Phone and Data Lines

By: John Shepler

With the economic future highly in question, every business needs to take a long, hard look at what it takes to survive. With future income uncertain and likely reduced, a good place to focus is on reducing expenses. Telecom lines, including data, telephone and Internet, can be a major monthly bill. It’s highly likely that right now you are paying more, perhaps much more, than you could be for the same quality of service.

Who’s Gouging Me?
Probably no one is cheating you or even taking advantage of your business. If you like, blame it on the gremlins. You know, those sneaky little critters that make everything break at the worst possible time. They also know how to bleed your budget without you ever knowing.

First, Get Rid of the Waste
You are paying for stuff you don’t need. I suspect you are paying for stuff that you don’t even use. How can that be? Anyone who has ever cleaned house has discovered all sorts of unopened christmas presents, products still in their original packaging, and food way past its safe date. The same is true in business. Things get bought. Some never get used. Others are used awhile, then the situation changes and they are set aside… just in case. Just in case never comes back again.

The worst offenders are subscriptions and contracts you pay for monthly but don’t get any value from. Right now, pull the bills for the last few months related to computing and telecom services. Services are especially sneaky at bleeding your budget because they are often out of sight and out of mind. You don’t trip over them like you do a big piece of equipment.

Now, grab a cup of coffee and go to a quiet space with your bills and some highlighters. You have to walk through these from top to bottom and question everything. Are there lines installed that aren’t being used anymore? Are there cell phone numbers that stopped being used when people left long ago? What about special fax machine lines, alarm connections, direct lines to buildings you got rid of? More DID numbers than you can possible use today? Toll Free numbers you don’t even advertise? Highlight them all. They’ve got to go.

Save a Bundle on What You DO Need
Now that you’ve made arrangements to delete all that extra costly clutter that adds no value, you’re left with the essentials. Of course you need phone lines and broadband service. You may need a direct connection to a cloud service provider or another office. You may well want managed security instead of having to keep someone on staff to fend off cybercriminals. Don’t cut so far to the bone that you hurt your ability to do business. Just get a better deal.

There’s a little secret about telecom services that escapes notice most of the time. Business lines, especially the dedicated ones like T1, DS3, SONET and Carrier Ethernet, are sold on contract. Usually you commit for at least a year, but probably take a 3 year contract for better pricing. Nothing wrong with that. It’s what happens at contract expiration that matters.

You might be tempted to simply renew the same contract at the same price, figuring you are lucky to avoid price inflation. Wrong. This industry is highly competitive and technology is advancing constantly. That translates into lower prices, not higher. For the same money you should get more bandwidth. Otherwise you should get a lower price for the next 3 years at the same bandwidth.

When New is Cheaper
Upgrading your technology could actually save rather than cost. Still nursing an old PBX system that needs maintenance and has pricy replacement parts? Have a look at
VoIP cloud service providers and let them manage the switching gear. All you need is phones and a SIP trunk to the cloud. You also gain new features that old analog desk phones can’t support.

Fiber optic bandwidth connections used to cost an arm and couple of legs. Not anymore. If you are in a built-up, not rural, area there is probably lots of fiber in the ground and overhead. Even the cable companies are leasing out extra fiber capacity. You might find that an upgrade in bandwidth could cost less than you pay for copper service now.

Running your own servers used to be the only way to go. Not anymore. In fact, it’s hard not to save money by pulling the plug and getting your infrastructure in the cloud. This is especially true if you need special high capacity lines to handle customer traffic. That bandwidth is likely cheaper at the remote data center and you’ll only need a lower bandwidth connection to manage the cloud services from your location.

Well, what do you think? Is there opportunity for cost saving in your business? Give these ideas at least a good look before you decide you are doing as well as you can. That includes getting a new current set of competitive quotes on all your line services, telephone, wireless and cloud services to see what might be available that you don’t know about.

Yes, You can Still Get a T1 Line

By: John Shepler

When the Internet was just beginning to take off and business was starting to migrate to the Web, the connectivity of choice was the T1 line. T1 is no longer king, as business cable broadband and fiber have eclipsed it with much higher bandwidth capability and much lower prices per Mbps. Even so, there are places and applications where T1 is exactly the right fit. The only question is: “Can you still find a T1 line?”.

Why Would You Want To?
T1 is a technical standard introduced by the Bell system in 1962. That’s right, the telephone company. This gives you a hint for where T1 is well entrenched. It is phone systems for small and medium sized businesses. The original implementation of T1 phone lines replaced 24 twisted pair copper analog phone lines with two pair running a digital protocol. A later scheme called ISDN PRI uses the same T1 line to carry 23 phone line conversations plus switching data and caller ID.

When the long distance carriers went to T1 and its higher bandwidth T3 cousin to replace the old analog carrier systems, one thing you immediately noticed was the disappearance of noise and crosstalk. In addition to using fewer circuits, digital technology gave us higher quality conversations.

Where do you find T1 lines for phones? Any business with multiple outside lines is a candidate. The more lines, the easier it is to justify the cost of a T1 or ISDN digital line. Typically six to twelve lines make more sense on digital than analog connections. Many key telephone and PBX (Private Branch Exchange) in-house phone systems support T1 directly or can easily be interfaced.

Rock Solid Performance and Reliability
T1 lines are dedicated point to point connections. It’s a pair of wires or a couple pair that go from your location to a telco equipment office. You may get your service directly from the incumbent local telephone company or from a competitive provider that leases the lines and terminal equipment from the telco.

T1 and ISDN PRI divide the line bandwidth into channels. That’s 24 channels for T1 and 23 for ISDN. The leftover bandwidth is used by ISDN for switching, ringing and Caller ID. Whatever channels are not in use at the moment simply idle and wait to carry a phone call. Unlike typical broadband services, there is no sharing of T1 bandwidth with other businesses or consumers. The bandwidth is dedicated to your usage. It’s also symmetrical by nature. In other words the bandwidth is the same in both directions.

Another important characteristic of T1 lines is that they are synchronized at both ends using PCM or pulse code modulation to convert between analog and digital. This compares with packets used in IP networks, which do not have the timing synchronization as they do not use channels. Why does this matter? T1 lines have minimal latency. It’s just the delay through the equipment and the distance between locations. You don’t get the variable latency of Internet routing or jumbled up packets that cause dropouts and distortion in VoIP calls. This clarity and reliability of performance makes for clean reliable phone calls and also makes T1 lines great for credit card verification.

T1 Broadband…It’s a Thing
The idea of a 1.5 Mbps line called broadband is pretty much laughable these days… unless you can’t get even that. That’s right. Rural broadband is the vast wasteland of our time. There are so many locations in the boonies that get nothing. No cell phone service and certainly no cable or fiber. What they can get is T1 lines. Why? Because they are already wired for Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). T1 was designed to run on ordinary phone cables with regeneration equipment every mile so so.

So, if you have a rural business, you can probably hook up with a T1 line or two. Have one for your phones. Another as a “last mile” connection to the Internet. You won’t be downloading 4K movies in any reasonable amount of time, but you probably aren’t doing that anyway. T1 can support your inventory management and other business software. If you need more bandwidth you can bond another T1 for 3 Mbps and more to get up to 10 or 12 Mbps. That much bandwidth won’t come cheap and isn’t available everywhere, but… if you gotta have it.

A Faster Alternative
Technology advancements have resulted in newer protocols than the sixty-something year old T1 standard. One called Ethernet over Copper uses the same multiple twisted pair cable as T1 but runs much faster. The tradeoff is distance from the equipment office. If you are within a mile or two, you may get 10 or 20 Mbps. Way out yonder, EoC probably won’t work, but T1 will. Ethernet over Copper is worth look at if you are just outside the city limits but not served by fiber or cable. Pricing is pretty attractive and you might get all the bandwidth you need.

Are other connections too unstable for your phone system or are you having trouble getting any connectivity? There are numerous carriers still supporting T1 and related technologies. Get a quote on a venerable T1 line and see if it meets your needs.

Tips To Reduce Your Telecom Costs

By: John Shepler

Business is open. Business is closed. Business is open again. Most businesses are suffering from whiplash as they navigate the Covid-19 crisis. When times were good, growth was king. Now survival is key and a major element of business survival is cost control. Here are some things you can do immediately to curb expenditures while still being operational.

Are You Paying For Things You Aren’t Using?
it seems obvious that nobody would pay for something they don’t use, yet both consumers and businesses are guilty of just that.

Get your phone bill and some pens and highlighters. Now go through it line by line. Consider yourself an old time prospector looking for gold. That gold is in the form of expenses that don’t provide value.

Are you currently using every line that comes into your business? How about lines to buildings that were offices and are now storage? Fax lines not connected to fax machines anymore? Old burglar alarm lines or extension phones? Old data lines that aren’t being fed by anything anymore?

What about mobile phones? Each phone should be currently used by an employee. Are there leftovers from departed employees that haven’t been reassigned? What about features that nobody is using?

Every line, every feature, every device should be assigned and preferably be in-use. Now, get on the phone with your carrier and delete everything not being used.

The same goes for equipment rentals. If you are not using it, send it back and stop the bleeding. When things pick up, reacquire the resources you need then.

While you were doing your survey, I’ll bet you found a bunch of equipment squirreled here and there. Routers, switches, PCs, phones, adaptors, and even boxes full of software. Have someone who is not otherwise engaged look into selling this stuff on e-bay. True, some has little value and should be just recycled. Sell anything that is worth the time and shipping cost to unload. This could turn into a cash cow and justify an ongoing job assignment.

Pay Less For The Same Value
I feel pretty safe in saying that you are paying more than you have to for your telecom lines. That’s because deregulation and new competition have driven down the cost of bandwidth year over year. You may be finishing a 3 year contract or be paying month to month on an expired contract. There’s high value-added in figuring out how many lines of what performance you need and getting a new competitive price quote .

T1 lines are still popular, but they cost a fraction of what they did a decade ago. Same lines, much lower prices. The fiber optic services from DS3 (45 Mbps) and OCx to 10 Gbps and more are largely being replaced with Carrier Ethernet. It’s more compatible with today’s equipment, bandwidth is scalable, and costs are much, much lower. Fiber is king these days, but there is also Ethernet over Copper and wireless services. MPLS networks are a better deal than multiple point to point lines. SD-WAN is replacing MPLS for even greater savings.

How do you sort all of this out? You need to work with a good master agency like Telarus that has relationships with dozens and dozens of suppliers. A knowledgeable agent will get you multiple quotes and help you decide on the best options for your situation.

Don’t Invest, Pay As You Go
You’ve heard that the cloud is taking over everything. Well, there’s a good reason for that. We’re past the time when every company needs to maintain telecom rooms and server rooms. All of that goes bye-bye to the cloud, which is nothing more than one giant data center with full time staff to maintain everything. You concentrate on your business and they take care of the constantly changing infrastructure. Cloud centers can also provide cybersecurity and stay on top of evolving threats? Do you really want to be saddled with that?

Moving to the cloud does two things for you. It avoids capital expense (capex) and allows you to pay as you go (opex). Paying as you go these days can be really helpful because you can scale both up and down rapidly as business goes on a rollercoaster.

Don’t forget to consider bandwidth that can also be easily scaled both up and down. If you get a fiber optic service with a GigE or 10GigE port, you can run any bandwidth level you like and pay for just that. Some services even let you upgrade and downgrade online instantly. It’s a far cry from the old days of nailed-up telco circuits.

Are you busy adjusting to the new normal and concerned that you may not be able to afford your ongoing business costs? Don’t let networking and telecom drag you down. Get competitive quotes and expert advice now and reduce your costs ASAP.

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.

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.

SIP vs PRI Pros and Cons for Business PBX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Metro Fiber Ethernet Handles Just About Everything

By: John Shepler

When it comes to a “one size fits all” network service, Metro Fiber Ethernet seems to be closest to meeting the criteria of a universal solution. Let’s see why that is and what Metro Fiber Ethernet can do for your business.

The Panoply of Connectivity
Telecommunications network transport services have evolved through a rich set of technical options that can be generally classed into copper, fiber optic and wireless.

Amazingly, copper-based telephone and broadband lines are still based on twisted pairs of small wires that can run for miles between a telephone company’s central office and the business location where they terminate. Copper can also include coaxial cable that is primarily used for cable broadband, often as part of a hybrid fiber coax network.

Wireless involves microwave, cellular and satellite. A major application for wireless is portable and mobile operations where any type of physical connection just won’t do.

Fiber has gone through its own evolution from a proprietary long distance telephone trunking system to the modern packet switched protocol that forms the heart of the Internet. It has also become the connection of choice for most business applications.

Why Metro Fiber Ethernet?
The beauty of Ethernet over Fiber is that it perfectly mirrors the now universal Ethernet protocol running on local area networks. As you might suspect, it is pretty much seamless to connect your LAN to a Ethernet transport service to the Internet or to another LAN hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Metro Fiber Ethernet is the name given to Carrier Ethernet over Fiber within populated areas. Ironically, perhaps, the growth of 4G and soon 5G cellular wireless has prompted a major deployment of metro fiber to cell towers well beyond the city limits. Traditional copper solutions just don’t have the bandwidth to support high speed broadband. Fiber has as much as you need… once you have the cables in place.

Don’t assume that just because your business isn’t located in the downtown business district of a major metropolitan area that you can’t get fiber optic service. Fiber is become more and more ubiquitous, even in smaller towns and some rural areas.

What Service Levels Are Available?
Unlike T-Carrier or SONET fiber technologies pioneered by the telephone companies, fiber optic Ethernet doesn’t require changing hardware every time to want to move up a level in speed. Most network equipment now supports 10/100/1000 Mbps, with some capable of 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps. These same service levels are available with Metro Fiber Ethernet.

Ease of Scaling Service
A typical fiber installation will include an edge switch or router with a Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) or Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) port. The port speed determines the maximum, but not the minimum, speed of your connection. You order the bandwidth level you want and the carrier will rate limit the connection speed to that level, say 50 Mbps. If you find you need a faster connection, a quick phone call or online control panel change can increase that to 100 Mbps. If you have a Gigabit Ethernet port installed, you can change the speed to 250, 500, 750 or 1,000 Mbps at will. Of course, the price of your service will depend on the speed you select.

Other Characteristics of Metro Fiber Ethernet
This is commercial, not consumer, grade service. Regardless of speed, your fiber service will have high reliability, low latency, low packet loss and low jitter characteristics. Many carriers will spell out and guarantee the line performance in a SLA or Service Level Agreement.

Ethernet service is also dedicated, not shared like cable or wireless broadband. You have exclusive use of the bandwidth so there is no congestion caused by competing with other businesses on a common line. This gives you consistently high performance that is important for mission critical applications. There are no data caps. You can use as much or as little of the maximum line capacity as your wish.

Applications
Metro Fiber Ethernet can be thought of as a fast, nearly transparent, pipe. It can be your high speed connection to the Internet, a dedicated link to your cloud service provider, or a point to point line between two business locations. it can also be an “on ramp” to a larger MPLS network for linking multiple locations on a semi-private network that can include locations around the world.

Metro Fiber Ethernet is being rapidly deployed to support 4G and 5G cell towers. It can easily provide the Internet service connection for a WISP or Wireless Internet Service Provider as well. This offers a business opportunity in areas not well served by telco DSL or cable broadband.

Is your business being limited by inadequate Internet service or needing dedicated links to other locations? If so, you will likely be surprised by the cost and performance of Metro Fiber Ethernet service to your building.

MegaPath Merges Integrated and Hosted Voice

Telephone switching has migrated over the decades from the local telephone company to the enterprise and now out to the cloud. MegaPath is building a bridge from in-house phone systems to cloud telephony by adding hosted services to their Integrated Voice services. This could be the cost effective transition you’ve been looking for.

If all you are doing is buying a few analog business lines from your local phone company and running them through a small business phone system you got at one of the big box office stores, you’ve pretty much got what you are going to get. Small companies have a way of growing to become medium size companies, however, and a two or four line system with a half dozen desk sets is quickly outgrown.

This is where most businesses call in a local phone system dealer who installs and maintains a particular brand of business phone system. With an in-house PBX (Private Branch Exchange), you’ll be adding more outside lines but now you have the opportunity to shop around. You can get your analog lines from a competitive provider or move up to digital trunk lines to save money once you get more than 6 to 12 lines.

MegaPath, a major competitive carrier with a nationwide service footprint, has a service called Integrated Voice specifically tailored to SMBs with their own PBX systems. They provide the outside lines that connect your PBX system to the world. The interface can be traditional analog lines for smaller systems, T1-CAS or ISDN-PRI digital trunks for medium and larger systems, or SIP Trunking for the newer IP PBX systems that support enterprise VoIP.

The Integrated feature of Integrated Voice is that you get both telephone and broadband service over the same dynamic DSL, T1 or Ethernet connection. This is a bit different from simply adding a third party VoIP service to your broadband service. With Integrated Voice, the combined data/voice is carefully managed to ensure that voice packets have priority over data packets so that using your computers won’t cause the telephone calls to break up. Any time a phone wants to make or receive a call, the bandwidth for this is reserved from the Integrated pool. Bandwidth not used for phone calls is automatically assigned for broadband Internet access.

Integrated Voice services are popular with small to medium size businesses because nearly every business needs both telephone lines and broadband Internet access. You can pay for these separately or have a more efficient and cost effective solution that combines the two.

Hosted Voice is a different animal. With hosted services, you no longer have a PBX system on your premises. Instead, you use a much larger PBX that is located at your service provider. It’s as if the service provider has become the new phone company. All you have in-house are telephones. These can be traditional phones that connect to an adaptor called a voice gateway or SIP Phones that are designed to connect directly to your network.

Hosted Voice services, also known as hosted PBX, are popular with companies that haven’t invested in their own PBX system or want to avoid the capital outlay for a needed upgrade and the ongoing maintenance headaches. All of those issues move to the service provider. As a user, you don’t perceive that the phone system is in the cloud rather than in the basement of your building. You may also enjoy advanced features such as remote worker, find me/follow me, simultaneous ring, auto attendants and hunt groups that weren’t available on your old PBX system.

MegaPath has been offering both the Integrated Voice and Hosted Voice services. What they’re doing now is giving businesses the chance to add Hosted Voice features to their Integrated Voice service as an overlay to their lines or trunks. This offers the opportunity for companies to gain more features almost instantly without the headache and expense of completely redoing their phone system right away. It’s something of a hybrid cloud approach where some of the equipment is on-site and some is in the cloud at the service provider’s facility.

Are you interested in upgrading your current business phone system with more advanced features or getting a better price on phone lines and trunks? If so, check out Integrated and Hosted Voice Services for business locations to find the mix that works best for you.

NetWolves Leverages The Power Of The Pack

When you are looking for a comprehensive solution to all of your business voice and data needs, it’s pays to have a wolf doing your bidding. NetWolves is an aggressive service provider with an unusual flexibility to optimize the exact suite of services you need.

First and foremost, NetWolves is an FCC-licenced and tariffed carrier in all 50 states. But beyond that, they have strategic agreements with over 120 leading telecommunications carriers. By leveraging the power of the pack when it comes to telecom service providers, NetWolves can pick and choose from an enormous menu of available services to get exactly the right mix for your particular applications. Many carriers are working from a much shorter line card and need to fit your requirements into whatever they have available.

Most businesses, even the smallest, have a particular mix of needs that include telephone, Internet, security, offsite backup, remote workers, employees in the field, private data transfers, e-commerce, and perhaps multiple site connectivity. NetWolves takes all of this into consideration and custom designs an array of services tailored to your situation. They also offer consulting and management services as an adjunct to your IT team or as the IT support for companies that don’t have their own staff.

NetWolves can offer you a complete range of voice services including multi-carrier solutions on a single invoice. These voice services include switched outbound and inbound toll-free service plus intrastate, interstate and international calls over your existing business lines. Do you have your own PBX or IP PBX system? NetWolves can provide the ISDN PRI and VoIP services you need to support whatever phone system you have. That includes ANI (Automatic Number Identification) and DNIS (Dialed Number Identification Service).

Data services include private lines from 56K/DS0, DDS, T1/DS1 at 1.5 Mbps, on up to T3/DS3 lines running at 45 Mbps. For multiple locations, you can get MPLS network connections that create a VPN or Virtual Private Network. NetWolves also offers VPN security technology that includes IPSec VPN and SSL VPN. While IPSec VPN is ideal when transferring large amounts of data over a secure site to site connection, SSL VPN is an attractive solution to support business travelers and partners who need secure access only for email and small files.

NetWolves is capable of providing complete network management for your company. Their WolfPac security platforms act as network gatekeepers to control access into and out of a company’s network. Security services are scalable and include Stateful Inspection firewall, IPSec, SSL VPN, intrusion detection, congestion management, quality of service control, email virus protection, content filtering and other services with the ability to provide 24x7 monitoring.

Could your organization benefit from the capabilities of NetWolves or other highly competitive carriers anxious to bid for your business? If so, get price quotes tailored to your requirements for whatever level of service you need.

QT Talk is Both VoIP and Dial-Around

You’ve been toying with the idea of switching your phone service to VoIP to save money and get more calling features. But now you’re in a quandary. VoIP is a landline service that needs a wire. Granted, it’s a broadband wire like DSL or Cable Internet. But you still need a fixed location to install it. What do you do when you are out and about, like you are most of the time? For that you need wireless service. Wireless and VoIP? They don’t go together, do they?

Now they do. You’re not the only one with this problem. Lots of people would like the calling features and low rates, especially international rates, that are offered by popular VoIP calling plans. But they also want these rates available on their cell phone. QT Talk says, “no problem.” Take both at the same price.

How can this possibly work? It’s a very clever system. The heart of the service is a feature-rich VoIP telephony service. The most popular option is called North America Plus, which includes unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico for a special introductory rate of $12.95 for the first 3 months. Then it’s the standard rate of $19.95 per month, a great deal in itself. You also get to choose a special low rate to an international destination that includes Mexico, Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Vietnam.

Well that sounds great for a VoIP service, but what about cellular use? How are you going to call Mexico or Vietnam from your cell phone and not get a monster bill the next month?

Ah, that’s where the dial-around service comes into play. Along with your North America Plus VoIP service, you also get free access to a toll-free number that gives you the same rate that you enjoy on your VoIP. So, if you want to make a nice long call to Canada from your cell, just call the toll free number and talk to your heart’s content. It’s all part of your plan. Want to call Vietnam from your car (while stopped, of course)? It’s just 9.9 cents a minute on your cell, along with using cellular minutes.

Who is QT Talk service ideal for? It’s for residential and small business users, like home offices, that want an unlimited calling plan within the US, Canada and Puerto Rico. It is especially good if you make international calls to any of the 6 designated countries. You can upgrade your service to have unlimited calling to 35 global destinations with a service called Unlimited World Select. That’s just $34.95 a month.

How about those VoIP features? Included with your service are speed dialing, call forwarding, simultaneous ring, call waiting, caller ID, call return, caller ID block, do not disturb, last number redial, conference calls, transfer your current number or get a new one, and online account management. All this, no extra charge.

So who’s behind QT Talk? It’s QT Globe, a major international telecommunications company that sells wholesale services to other carriers. They’ve got the network in place to serve fussy telecom carriers, but they also offer retail services to serve fussy individuals and businesses.

By the way, QT Talk also offers feature rich business plans and IP telephones as well as the residential services designed for the individual, family and home office user.

Does this sound like a service that would meet your needs? If so, learn more and order your QT Talk calling plan quickly and easily online.

What is ISDN and Why Do I Want It?

You may have heard the term ISDN related to telephone services. So what is it and what can it do for you?

ISDN stands for Integrated Services Digital Network. It's a fancy term for digital telephone service. But not just any digital phone service. This one has very specific standards.

The story behind ISDN goes back to the days when the standard for Internet access was a dial-up modem using an ordinary analog telephone line. ISDN was envisioned as a way for users to have a combination of separate telephone service and Internet service on a single ISDN telephone line with three channels. Two of these are called "B" or bearer channels and are 64 Kbps each. The third is the "D" or delta channel that is used for switching and signaling. One B channel can be used for a telephone handset. The other can be used for a modem. Or both channels can be combined for 128 Kbps Internet service. This arrangement is called ISDN BRI. The BRI means Basic Rate Interface.

The telephone companies expected ISDN BRI to be a hit with consumers as an upgrade to their analog phone service. But by the time it was ready for mass deployment, Internet standards had moved on and everybody really wanted DSL or Cable broadband. After all, 128 Kbps may be impressive when compared to a dial-up modem, but it pales in comparison with always-on broadband at 512 Kbps or higher. Today, even mobile users want bandwidth above 1 Mbps, so ISDN BRI is of little interest to most users.

The exception is in the field of broadcasting and professional audio. ISDN BRI lines can be used to transmit high quality audio through the telephone network by using a CODEC (Coder / Decoder) to convert the audio to and from the ISDN format at each end of the call. Guests around the country can join a panel discussion and sound like they are right in the studio instead of hundreds or thousands of miles away. Voice over artists can contribute to a production from their home studios.

Where ISDN flourishes today is in its second standard, called PRI or Primary Rate Interface. ISDN PRI consists of 24 channels configured as 23 bearer channels plus 1 delta channel. The 23 bearer channels can each support 1 telephone call each. That's 23 digital phone lines, plus the delta channel used for signaling and Caller ID data.

ISDN PRI is the telephone service of choice for medium and large company telephone systems. Most PBX and IP PBX business phone systems offer built-in support for at least one ISDN PRI line. Other systems can be configured for one or more ISDN PRI trunks with a plug-in circuit card.

In addition to office PBX telephone, ISDN PRI is preferred by company contact centers and independent call centers. There is a significant cost reduction realized by using a single ISDN PRI instead of a dozen or more individual analog phone lines. Each channel on the PRI can be configured to be local and/or long distance, incoming and/or outgoing calls. If more than 23 lines are needed, more can be added to the system to double, triple or quadruple the number of active phone lines.

ISDN PRI is delivered on a T1 line in the United States. For this reason, it is sometimes known as T1 PRI or T1 telephone service. In other countries, an E1 line might be used to provide PRI service.

Now that you know what ISDN is good for, can this service help your business or organization to provide high quality voice communications for perhaps less than you are spending now? Find out by checking ISDN PRI service pricing now.

The AccuConference Cost Advantage

Audio teleconferencing, video conferencing and Web conferencing are enjoying a renaissance in this economic downturn. The reason is that they are one business tool that can cut costs and improve productivity without the ugly process of layoffs or facilities closings. It's a classic example of technology usurping traditional business processes that are no longer viable. By tightly coupling teams to make their progress faster and substituting for expensive air travel and hotel stays, electronic conferencing helps businesses stay viable while economic activity is slow. AccuConference is a clear leader in this field.

What differentiates AccuConference from other companies in the conferencing space is that they offer a complete range of solutions, including traditional audio conference calls, video conferencing and Web conferences. By getting all the conference solutions you need from one supplier, you don't have to worry about having to integrate potentially incompatible services.

Cost savings are a major attraction of AccuConference calling services, but not at the expense of quality. Poor voice quality can spoil the effect of connecting far away locations so that everyone sounds like they are in the same room. You need to be able to understand what is being said without having to say "could you repeat that?" That's why AccuConference uses only the best carriers available, Tier A for international and toll free traffic and Tier B for local calls. They also lightly load their conference bridges, the devices that actually interconnect participants, so that no bridge is at more than 50% capacity. This gives AccuConference the ability to accommodate a sudden requirement for additional conferences at the same high performance level.

How about those cost savings? If you've shopped around, you know that you can pay upwards of 25 cents a minute per participant or even more with some conferencing providers. AccuConference will give you top rate performance for just 7.9 cents per minute per participant on a pay as you go basis. Each participant dials a toll free number, so it costs them nothing. As an account holder you'll get a monthly bill for the minutes used, but no set up fees, contracts or monthly requirements. You use the service whenever you want with no reservations needed.

The pay as you go program also includes Insight Web Conferencing at no additional charge. There's something you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere. You'll be able to share Microsoft PowerPoint charts, have instant online chat, and online voting/polling while your audio conference is in progress. Or you can use their Meeting Central Unlimited Pro plan that expands PowerPoint presentations to include application sharing, desktop sharing, remote control sharing, webtour, white boarding, and instant chat. All of this capability is available along with toll free audio conferencing at just 7.9 cents per minute per participant.

There's also a flat rate audio conferencing option that features an area code 404 Atlanta dial-in number, Insight Web Conferencing, and 24/7 availability without reservations. Participants and moderators will pay long distance charges to call the Atlanta number. As account holder, the service costs you as little as $14.95 a month for up to 5 lines. Other plans are available for 10, 25 and 50 lines. The advantage of flat rate is that you know what you'll pay each month, regardless of how much you use the system.

Larger organizations can also enjoy the advantages of low cost teleconferences. You can get options that include hundreds of participants, international dial-out or dial-in, operator services and video conferences. All of these are available at attractive rates.

The right way to evaluate the cost advantage of audio, Web and video conferencing is to compare using these services with what you'd do otherwise. If you can get the same results via conferencing that you could with travel for in-person meetings, you'll be way ahead using the technology. A more subtle comparison is to weigh the productivity improvement you get with real-time interaction between team members who are not collocated versus exchanging ideas and documents by, say, email. If you cut the time to market or time to solve a problem by half, how much is that worth to you?

You may just have to give this a try and see how well it works for your organization. You have little to lose since there are no contracts or commitments. You may have an incredible amount to gain in both cost savings and business advantage. Learn more about AccuConference telephone, Web and video conferencing options and get started quickly and easily right now.

Do You Have The Instinct For Covert Ops?

Do you have what it takes to be secret agent? Do you know Jack? Jack Bauer, that is. You watch his moves on the Fox series "24". Don't you fantasize about being right in the action with that crew? Well, fantasies are good. What you need is access and a special phone, of course. That phone: The Samsung Instinct.

The Instinct phone from Samsung in special agent black (what else?) is one of a new generation of cell phones that give you more features than ever before. It starts with an extra large high resolution touchscreen color display. You'll have confidence that you are making the right selections because this screen provides tactile or haptic feedback in the form of a slight vibration when you press the screen or use the stylus.

A screen with the ability to display over 262,000 colors needs an equally powerful digital camera, don't you agree? The 2.0 Megapixel camera that is built into the Instinct has a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. That's good enough to print as well as send to your friends. With multimedia messaging you can take and receive both picture and video messages. Your videos are captured in QVGA resolution at 15 frames per second using the MPEG4 format. How long can you record? That's limited only by the amount of available memory. The expandable memory slot lets you load microSD cards to make sure you have enough.

The Instinct is also an Internet connected device. It operates on the Sprint EV-DO Rev A network, the really fast one, with downloads up to 3.1 Mbps. That's better than many DSL and Cable broadband services. What do you need this level of speed for? To watch Sprint TV, for one thing. You can also browse the Internet with full HTML support and the tactile user interface experience. Your QWERTY keyboard appears on-screen with virtual touch keys.

Any agent worth his or her salt needs voice communication, Internet access to download building plans and other documents, and navigation to avoid getting lost. The Samsung Instinct has built-in GPS to take advantage of Sprint Navigation Services, so you'll always know where you are in the action.

Now that you know about the Instinct, you've got to have one for yourself. Right? Well don't pay retail when with a little research you can get an excellent discount. Here's a clue: Learn more about the Samsung Instinct with Sprint PCS service and order yours online at this site at a price we won't share with any bad guys. Note: Evil doers, go buy your phone in a store.

Fans of the show "24" have a special Operation Instinct site available from Fox to download screen savers and get weekly sneak peeks beamed to your Sprint phone. There's also a training maneuvers game and a sweepstakes where you can win prizes related to the show.

Not into the whole special agent thing or just want to shop around for the best deals on cell phones? No problem. You'll find the Instinct and many others available at special discounts, some even free, at Cell Phone Plan Finder.

Conference Bridge to Everywhere

A conference bridge is a piece of telephone equipment that connects multiple phone lines together so that people in far flung locations call all participate in a discussion. Very large organizations may elect to buy and maintain such equipment, but for individuals and small to medium size businesses it is much more cost effective to simply pay as you go.

CogniConference is low cost conferencing service that lets you organize and participate in telephone conference calls as you see fit. You may be well served with audio telecons using speaker phones in conference rooms and individuals on handsets. But you may also find that CogniConference is valuable in providing the audio link that complements a web conferencing tool such as GotoMeeting.

Managed teleconferencing services can be expensive, but CogniConference is designed to be a low cost solution that offers flexible management and high quality performance. It is based on toll free numbers for the U.S. and Canada. As moderator, you invite participants to join the call by giving them the toll free number and access code for your particular conference. Both you and they simply dial-in to be connected. Note that the number is toll free so it doesn't cost participants anything, although they may be using minutes if they are calling in from a cell phone. The cost to the host of the call is 9.9 cents per participant per minute in the continental U.S. and 24.5 cents per minute for Canadian participants. Participants from other countries can also join in at rates particular to their location. Some countries may not have toll free numbers available.

The per minute per participant rates are it. There are no per conference or monthly fees. It's pay as you go. Like other telephone services, there are governmental taxes also. But you pay those no matter what service you use.

To see the cost advantage of CogniConference, let's take a look at a typical call. Say 8 people participate in a 30 minute business conference call. The rate is 9.9 cents per minute for each of the 8 participants times 30 minutes. $0.099 x 8 x 30 = $23.76.

Compare that with a face to face get-together. Even if you are all in the same town, you might spend that much alone on gas driving to and from the meeting. If you need to pay for a meeting room, that's additional. Then there's the lost productivity involved in just getting there and back. Suddenly $23.76 looks dirt cheap, doesn't it? If your group is scattered around the country, costs for an in-person meeting soar into the thousands.

This is why more and more businesses are saving travel for when it's really essential and leveraging technology such as telephone conference calls for day to day needs. That includes things like team collaboration, training, presentations and distribution of important information to management, employees and stockholders.

CogniConference holds your costs down and gives you flexibility by allowing you to schedule conferences on the fly, with up to 16 legs in each call. A leg is one phone calling the conference service at the toll free number. Of course if that phone is a speakerphone, there could be a dozen participants at that particular location. No operator is required to set up your conference calls. You or the moderator you designate gets a special host password that they can use with the easy Web and telephony interfaces. Payment is by credit card and you can set a usage limit to control costs.

Have you been spending too much money and getting too little participation via email, physical meetings, or a more expensive conference calling solution? You should give CogniConference Ultra-Low Rate Conference Calling a try.

Technicians at Your Beck and Call

With the economy on the rocks, having even one full time technician on your staff can be a luxury for smaller companies. Does that mean that you have to put off the telephone and network upgrades and maintenance you really need? Or settle for hiring somebody who isn't very skilled but works cheap? No way. Not when you can have technicians at your beck and call without having them on your staff.

The trick is to hire contractors, but not just any contractors. What you want are pre-screened professionals who are capable and experienced in exactly the service you need. You don't put them on salary. You have them bid on the job and then pay for only the specific work you want done. Often you'll get a package deal. You buy the equipment and the installation, setup and training services on contract and get one special price. You can get wireline services, such as T1 lines or SIP trunks, along with your hardware so you know everything is going to work perfectly before the technicians turns it over to you. In some cases, you'll find several eager contractors anxious to bid on the same job. Lucky you!

So where are all these valuable technicians? You haven't getting resumes dropped off lately. In fact, no one has even called you in the longest time to see if you could use some help. Does that mean having to work you way through the phone book listings or calling a temp agency? Absolutely not.

Take the easy and proven approach. Use the quick and easy online matchmaking service called the VAR Network. VAR stands for Value Added Resellers. Those are the people you want. They specialize in particular product lines and have the connections and training to bid on your project and deliver results. You don't have to settle for a general "handyman" either. These VARs are professionals, but few represent all lines or offer all services. They specialize. That's an advantage for you, but doesn't it make finding the right VAR difficult?

No, not when the VAR Network is based on an automated online database system with several thousand registered VARs. That's right. Thousands of technicians in the network. Of course, they all have their own service areas. Some major equipment dealers serve the entire nation. Other specialized professionals may serve a very limited geographical area. It doesn't matter because the sophisticated matching capabilities of the VAR Network pair-up your requirements with only those VARs who offer the right expertise and serve your particular area.

Sounds like there's going to be a hefty fee for this service, doesn't it. No, no fee. As a business owner or manager with a definite commercial need, you are just who the technicians in the VAR Network want making inquiries. There is absolutely no fee to browse the network or put in a request for quote. If you have multiple needs, go ahead and put in multiple requests. You'll never pay a fee. What you will get is contact from qualified VARs eager to satisfy your requirements. Then it's up to you to decide which, if any, to hire.

Have you ever felt so important? That's because your business really is important and valued by the technicians in the VAR Network.

Low Cost 800 Numbers Are Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Free International Phone Calls

In these depressed economic times, what's the word you really long to hear? I know... FREE. Did you know that you can make international phone calls for free until the end of this year, 2008?

Well, you can with a special promotional offer from Phone Power. They're doing this to promote their highly competitive business and residential VoIP telephone services. If you're a heavy user of international minutes, you'll want to jump on this deal as soon as you can. But even when the promotion expires or you just want domestic phone service, I think you'll find that Phone Power is a really good deal.

Let's see where you can call for free this holiday season. This offer applies only to landline destinations in this list of countries and their calling codes:

United Kingdom (44)
Spain (34)
Ireland (353)
Israel (972)
Germany (49)
Singapore (65)
France (33)
Denmark (45)
Greece (30)
Italy (39)
China (86)

China? Free calls to China? Yes. I know that seems fantastic when not so long ago you could pay a buck a minute or more to make calls to China. Hey, I remember when calling Europe would set you back a week's pay. Well, friends, now you can call these destinations for free this month.

Of course, you'll need a Phone Power account to make these free calls. Residential plans start at a promotional price of $9.95 a month for virtually unlimited inbound and outbound service. There's a prepay plan that gives you 2 lines for 2 years for $200. Are they kidding? That's under $5 a line per month.

No, I just checked the site. They're not kidding. That service includes over 25 features such as caller ID, find me - follow me, E911, music on hold, call forwarding, voice mail and a lot more. Other pricing plans start at 500 minutes for a regular price of $17.95 a month and a promotional offer of $9.95 a month.

How about business plans? Virtually unlimited monthly calling is available for $39.95 a month. I say virtually unlimited because after 5,000 outbound minutes are used, you pay a 2 cent per minute overage cost. Now that's for both local and continential US long distance calls. Compare that with what your local telco will ding you for just local business service. Phone Power business lines also have an extensive feature set and qualify for an auto-attendant and music on-hold.

If your business is larger than just a couple of desk phones in a tiny office, you may want the advantage of a hosted PBX system. This is the type of telephone system that you've been spoiled by if you've ever worked for a major corporation. With the Phone Power hosted PBX you can have dozens or even hundreds of extensions and they don't even have to be in the same building. That's one of the big advantages of VoIP telephony. With a hosted service you don't have to buy or maintain a central telephone system. That's all taken care of for you.

Phone Power is clearly out to get your business. They certainly seem deserving with their low prices and extensive features. If you want the 2008 free international calling deal, or even if you don't, it is well worth your while to give Phone Power a closer look. They could save you bundle on your telephone expenses.

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.

Integrated T1 Gives You Phone and Internet

As a small business owner, you want the best quality and performance you can get from your telecom services. But you can't just go out and buy what the major corporation down the street has. Well maybe not exactly the same, but pretty close.

What I mean by that is that you can have clear sounding, reliable phone service and reliable, dependable Internet service scaled for the size of your operation. That big company needs more capacity than you do because they have so many more people trying to use it. They also pay 10x to 100x more than you will.

What you don't have to compromise on is quality of service. To achieve it, you'll be using a T1 line. T1's are the industry standard for voice and data. A medium size company will likely have at least one T1 line for telephone service and one or more for dedicated Internet access. But you don't need all that. You'll do just fine with a single T1 that provides you with both telephone and Internet access.

But, wait. Aren't T1 lines set up to be telephone trunks or data lines as needed? Yes that's the usual setup. But there is another type of service called Integrated T1 that transports both phone and Internet at the same time.

How does it do that? A channelized T1 telephone line has capacity for up to 24 outside phone lines. Do you really need that many? Hardly. Half a dozen to a dozen are plenty for most smaller businesses. If that's all you need, what happens to the unused capacity? In standard T1 telephone service, those extra channels go to waste. Wouldn't it be nice if that unused capacity could be put to good use.

That's what Integrated T1 service does. You assign a certain amount of capacity, say enough for 6 to 12 outside lines, to be used for phone service. The rest is assigned for Internet service. Unlike broadband phone services, you never have to worry about your computer knocking out your phone conversations. Neither function interferes with the other.

How much Internet bandwidth do you get with this arrangement? It's very similar to DSL speeds. A T1 line runs at 1.5 Mbps, so if you use half of it for 12 outside phone lines, there is 750 Kbps available for data. If you only need 6 outside lines, you'll have over 1 Mbps for Internet access. That's more than enough for point of sale transactions, WiFi hotspots, business data transfers, Web browsing and email service.

Even better, some Integrated T1 services use what's called dynamic T1 lines. The dynamic line gives telephone calls priority, but is smart enough to know that any capacity not used for phone calls can be temporarily added to the Internet bandwidth. If no one is on the phone, the entire 1.5 Mbps is assigned to Internet speed.

Is Integrated T1 service right for your business? The cost of the service replaces both your current phone lines and Internet service, so it can be more affordable than you think. Plus you'll enjoy the benefit of having professional grade digital telecommunications service instead of some collection of services that may not work as well. Find out more about Integrated T1 and other voice and data options that are available for your business location with a simple phone or online inquiry at T1 Rex.