How Does a VoIP Call Work?

VoIP telephony is in the process of displacing traditional landlines, include digital trunks such as T1 and ISDN PRI. What is it that is different about VoIP phone calls and what advantages does this technology offer?

You’ll hear VoIP referred to as a network service rather than a telephone service. This is an important distinction for network engineers and business owners, but not of much concern to users. One telephone set looks pretty much like another. When you lift the handset, you expect to hear dial tone and be able to dial out. When the phone rings, you expect to pick up the handset and hear the party on the other end and have a conversation.

A lot of engineering work has gone into making VoIP phone calls mimic traditional landline telephone calls as much as possible. The ideal has been that you shouldn’t be able to tell a difference. Now that this goal has been generally achieved, the new ideal is to make VoIP calls sound more lifelike than anything you’ve heard through a telephone. It’s something called HD or high definition voice.

The telephone connection is what determines whether you are using traditional telephony or VoIP. A traditional analog telephone line is based on technology that goes back over a century. It consists of two copper wires twisted together that connect a particular phone all the way to the telephone company office and into the central switching system. This line has certain AC and DC voltages and other characteristics. Often the phone line provides power to the telephone set. The phone itself has evolved from electromechanical components to relatively simple electronics. It just needs to have the proper characteristics to interface with the analog line.

This carries over to in-house telephone systems such as Key telephones or Private Branch Exchange (PBX). These are small switching systems that handle internal calls to keep them off the public telephone network. The in-house phone system connects to each phone in the company with a pair of wires that mimic the line from the phone company.

VoIP uses your company computer network as its phone line. For this to work, the phone has to include circuitry that makes it look like a network peripheral and be compatible with everything else on the network, including computers, printers, servers and so on. Phones that do this are called IP phones or SIP phones. They have a standard RJ-45 Ethernet jack on the back of the phone to connect to the network. They can be powered over this same connection by special POE (Power over Ethernet) switches or have separate plug-in power supplies to operate the internal electronics.

Smaller companies and residential users of VoIP can use regular telephone sets by plugging them into an ATA or Analog Telephone Adapter. This adapter has the electronics that you would find inside an IP Telephone.

VoIP gets its name from Voice over Internet Protocol. That doesn’t mean it has to run on the Internet, although some low cost VoIP services do use the Internet as your line to the service provider in order to save money. IP or Internet Protocol describes the technology used by Ethernet Local Area Networks. It’s what makes the Internet work and also runs many networks that don’t connect to the public Internet.

Actually, it’s easier to achieve high voice quality by avoiding the public Internet completely and connecting to your phone service provider through an extension of your network called a SIP Trunk. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) is the switching technology for VoIP systems. The SIP Trunk takes the place of the analog, T1 or ISDN PRI telephone line that normally goes to the local telephone company.

You can set up a VoIP telephone system in your company that shares your computer network, including any WAN (Wide Area Network) connections between business locations. You’ll install a IP PBX to handle switching calls between office phones and connect to your service provider for outside lines. A newer option is to skip the IP PBX and rent Hosted PBX telephone switching from the same service provider that connects you to the public phone system. This saves a major investment and allows you to add more phones as you need them.

Are you considering installing a new business phone system or expanding or replacing one you already have? Get features and pricing for hosted PBX and telephone trunking optionsto help decide what makes the most sense for your company.

Ethernet over TDM

You’ve heard of Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber, but have you heard of Ethernet over TDM? Here’s why it’s good to be familiar with this technology and what it can do for you.

TDM stands for Time Division Multiplexing. It’s the basis of T1 lines and SONET fiber optic carrier services. TDM was the chosen protocol of the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) when the decision was made to transition from analog to digital mid-20th century. It is still important is because it is still around and going strong.

TDM is a way to transmit multiple signals on one digital line or wireless channel. The way TDM works is that a digital transmission is divided up into timeslots. Each timeslot contains the digitized information for one signal. All the timeslots are linked together like railroad cars into a frame that contains all of the digital bits, end to end. This frame is then transmitted from source to destination. Once one frame is sent another immediately follows.

Think of TDM as a round-robin polling process. You take a chunk of information from one source, then a chunk from another source, and so on. When you’ve got something from all sources that you wish to multiplex, then you start over with the first source again. That way you always have fresh data from frame to frame.

What TDM did for the phone companies was to pack 24 separate telephone calls onto one T1 line instead of 24 separate telephone wires. The multiplexing process combines all calls into one bitstream that is sent down the physical copper wires. At the other end, a complementary process called demultiplexing separates the individual calls so they can be used by particular telephones.

Ethernet is not a TDM process. Instead, it bundles bits of data into packages called packets. The packets are sent on their way individually when they are ready. There’s no assembling the packets into a multiplexed “train” so that they can all travel together. Each packet is switched and routed individually.

From the sound of it, you would think that TDM circuits, like T1 lines, and packet switched circuits, like Ethernet over Copper, would be incompatible. It’s true that they are completely different technologies and don’t exist on the same piece of wire at the same time. That would really create a mess and you’d get completely jumbled up data. However, clever engineering can let one protocol carry another. This is where the idea of Ethernet over TDM comes about.

How Ethernet over TDM works is that the underlying transmission protocol is TDM. A typical example is a T1 line. The T1 frames are transmitted at a rate of 1.5 Mbps from source to destination. Ethernet packets are loaded into those T1 frames. In this case all the claptrap associated with dividing the T1 line into 24 separate channels is ignored. The internal channels are combined so that Ethernet packets can use the entire frame. The T1 timing and waveforms are preserved so that T1 interfaces and signal regenerators will work as-is.

Why go to all this trouble to piggyback Ethernet on top of a T1 TDM system? It’s to give you more options. Ethernet over Copper is a distance limited technology that works great within a couple of miles from the central office, but loses signal strength and bandwidth fast as you get farther away. T1 has fewer distance limitations and delivers a steady bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps even out into rural areas. As a newer development, Ethernet over Copper is also less available than T1 lines that have been around for 50 years or more.

So, if you want the advantages of Ethernet that include bandwidth scalability, easy interfacing to your network, and standardized services such as Ethernet Line and Ethernet LAN, but can’t get Ethernet over Copper or Ethernet over Fiber, consider Ethernet over TDM. This is also known as Ethernet over T1 or Ethernet over DS1. Check pricing and availability on all Copper Ethernet Services now.

What Is Toll Free?

We’ve all heard the term “toll free number.” Nearly all of us have called a toll free number at one time or another. But just what does that term mean and how do businesses go about getting toll free numbers?

You know that toll free telephone numbers must be something special because you aren’t assigned one automatically. When you order landline, VoIP or cellular telephone service, you are assigned a 10 digit phone number that relates to a specific geographical area. I’ll assume you are located in the US or Canada, which both use the North America Numbering Plan (NANP). Your number is formatted as: 1-NPA-NXX-XXXX.

Here’s how that breaks down. 1 is the trunk code or country code. Other countries use codes other than "1". It used to be that we thought of dialing 1 only to make a long distance call. Nowadays, with multiple area codes for each city, most of us have to dial 1 plus the area code even to make local calls. NPA is the Numbering Plan Area code, also called the area code. You might dial area code 312 for Chicago or 213 for Los Angeles. By knowing the area code, you know roughly where the call is going. That can be manipulated somewhat by VoIP providers, who will assign you whatever area code you want. Do you want people to think your business is in Manhattan? Get a 212 area code.

There are some area codes that have nothing to do with geographical areas. These are the toll free area codes, also called toll free prefixes. “Toll” means a charge by the phone companies for making calls that go outside of your city or local area. Therefore, “toll free” must mean that the calls are free of charge, right?

Actually, toll free is a misnomer. What that term means is that the calls are free for the calling party, who normally pays the toll charges on long distance calls. With a toll free number, the charges are automatically reversed. The caller gets a free call. The person who owns the toll free number gets charged for any incoming calls.

To get a toll free number assigned to you, you have to order one specifically. You can easily do that online from companies that specialize in marketing toll free numbers. There are two different types of toll free calling plans. You can pay a small fee for the number plus a small maintenance charge each month plus the cost of incoming calls by the minute. The other option is to pay a fixed fee each month for use of the toll free number regardless of how many or few calls you receive or how long you talk.

Toll free numbers are easily identified by their prefixes or area codes. The original toll free numbers all used the 800 prefix. Customers call you at your toll free number of 1-800-NXX-XXXX. The NXX-XXXX is your unique toll free number. As long as you are paying for the number, all calls will come to you. If you decide to give up the number, it will eventually be assigned to someone else.

Just how do you get those toll free calls? They come in on whatever phone you assign them to. Unlike a regular phone line, a toll free number isn’t assigned to a particular wired connection or wireless phone. Instead, you assign a “ring-to” number to the toll free number. When a toll free call comes in, it will ring to the phone number that you have specified. That can come in handy if you won’t be near your office phone but are expecting an important call. Change the ring-to number to have your toll free calls sent to your cell phone or other phone. The only thing you can’t do is have one toll free number call another. The ring-to number has to be a real phone line.

Toll free numbers have become so popular that other area codes beyond 800 have also been assigned for toll free service. These include 888, 877, 866 and 855. You can choose any of these prefixes for your toll free number since they all work the same way.

Low Cost 800 Numbers For You

Have you been considering an 800 toll free number for your business, but are concerned about the cost? Good news! Low cost 800 numbers are available for instant activation and you can have one for just $5.

Does that sound like a price that will work for you? Perhaps it sounds too low, considering some of the other quotes you’ve received. But it’s true. You can order an 800 toll free telephone number for your exclusive use and it will cost you just $5 to reserve it. The cost to maintain service is $5 a month for as many months as you want to keep the number. If you decide you don’t need it anymore, just cancel your service and you’ll owe nothing more than your final bill.

But keep the 800 number and look at all the features you’ll enjoy. First of all, you’ll be able to change the ring-to number at will. The ring-to number is the number of the phone that rings when a toll free call comes in. That can be your office phone, your home phone, your cell phone, a phone at some place you are temporarily staying, or other phone. Some people change the ring-to number during the course of the day so that they can always be reached at the same toll free number. Others simply set it to one phone and let unanswered calls go to voice mail.

Yes you do get voice mail with this toll free service. You can call in to get your messages, listen to them online, or have them sent to your email as a sound attachment. You don’t need a phone to get your voice mail messages.

You also don’t need a phone to get your FAX messages. Any time that someone sends a FAX to your toll free number, that FAX message is received and converted to an image that can be viewed online or sent to you as an email attachment. No matter where you are, if you have access to a computer or smartphone with an HTML Web browser, you can get your FAX messages.

There are also some fancier features such as virtual calling card. You call one of three voice mail access numbers and enter your toll free number and password. After that you can make outbound calls at the same rate as incoming calls. In most cases, that will be a lot cheaper than using a hotel phone.

The per minute rate for outgoing or incoming calls on your 800 number is just 6.9 cents per minute for calls that originate in the 48 US states. Calls from Alaska, Hawaii, US Territories or pay phones have a surcharge. For Alaska and Hawaii it’s an extra 7 cents a minute.

You also have conference calling available on your toll free service. Conduct conferences with up to 25 participants any time for as long as you like. Host them from your cell phone if you want. You’ll be charged the regular per minute rate for each conference participant that dials in on your toll free number.

Caller ID? You bet. You have the choice of setting the Caller ID to display your toll free number or the caller’s number. If you have several toll free numbers for several business opportunities, using the toll free number for caller ID let’s you know how to respond to a particular call.

Let’s recap. You can order an 800 toll free number right now and be using it in a matter of minutes. You pay $5 to reserve the number for your use and $5 a month for the complete array of toll free service features. Any incoming calls from the 48 US states will cost 6.9 cents per minute.

It’s quite a deal, right? This is reliable, high quality toll free service available without any contracts. It bills to your charge card. Want an even better deal? Get the same service features for $2 per number and $2 per month when you choose an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number instead of the more traditional 800 number.

Tel3Advantage Valentine Calling Special

Have someone special a long distance away, perhaps in a distant foreign land, that you want to stay in touch with this Valentine's Day? Tel3Advantage can make it happen for you at a very affordable rate. Tel3 is known for its excellent international calling rates. But sign up for their service between now and February 20 and you'll get a 30% discount on your long distance calls for a month plus $3 free talk time.

Tel3 is known for its ultra-low cost international telephone rates for both business and residential users. How low? With the special in play right now, your USA calls are 1.4 cents per minute. Call the U.K. for just 1.8 cents/min. How about some place that's expensive to call, like China? China calls are only 1.2 cents per minute. What's that about being expensive? Oh, you mean when you use other long distance services. You really should just get Tel3Advantage if low rates are important to you.

Tel3 is a leader in pre-paid long distance phone services. You buy your minutes ahead of time, like you would with a calling card. But unlike a card, Tel3 services use advanced technology to maximize your convenience and minimize your costs. You can make calls from any phone - home, work, cell phone, or even a payphone. Use the customized online control panel to set up your phones, track charges and update your balance. You make calls using the system without having to dial in some onerous pin number. Just dial the access number and your destination number and the system will take care of making sure you get the best rate possible.

But what if you don't want to switch your long distance service? No problem because Tel3Advantage doesn't require you to make any changes to your existing phone services. This is an independent service that you use only when you want to. That's probably often, since the calling rates offered by Tel3 are so much lower that you are probably getting charged now. Leave your current service in place. Use Tel3Advantage to make those expensive long distance calls, even when on the go.

Are you hesitating to make an important overseas phone call because you fear getting a huge bill in the mail? Put your mind and budget at easy. Take advantage of the special Tel3Advantage limited time offer right now.

Try VoIP Phone Service For Under $10 a Month

Have you ever wished you could try one of the new VoIP telephone services to see if you'd like it better than your old landline? You've seen the ads. Sound pretty good, don't they. The bundled local and long distance service is on one bill. You get lots of features without getting nickle and dimed. International rates are just a few pennies a minute to many countries. You know what your bill is going to be and it's a lot less than you're paying now.

So why don't you just go ahead and make the switch? Well, you may not be all that sure if you're really going to like the service or if it will even work properly with your broadband connection. Perhaps you're just averse to signing long term contracts, especially when the vendor wants $40 or $50 a month for their phone service package. Isn't there a way to put a toe in the water and give VoIP a try without getting into the whole commitment thing?

You bet there is. What you are looking for is no contract VoIP service from Phone Power. There are plans for both business addresses and residential addresses. Please note that the under $10 promotional offer available when this article was first posted has expired. However, you can still get excellent plan pricing from Phone Power

These aren't stripped down calling plans, either. You get all the great features such as Caller ID, Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, 3-Way Conference Calling, Voicemail and Find Me Follow Me, among others. You may be paying extra fees each month to use these features on your current service. With PhonePower they are all included with your service package.

So, how do you hookup this VoIP service? The idea behind VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol is that it uses your broadband Internet connection in place of traditional telephone wires to connect you to your phone service provider. Actually, you'll be sharing your broadband between your computer and your telephone. The way that's done is with an ATA or Analog Telephone Adapter, a box that converts your regular telephone into the digital format needed to connect to the Internet. PhonePower leases one of those boxes to you at no cost as long as you maintain your service.

Note that this type of VoIP Service does not require your computer to be on to receive or make phone calls. It doesn't hook into your computer at all, it just shares the Internet connection. As long as your broadband service is running, you'll have phone service.

One thing you do need is the right Internet connection. For VoIP that is DSL or Cable Broadband for most residential users. You can also use fiber optic Internet service if you happen to have that. In business offices you may have a T1 dedicated connection or higher speed service. All of these are suitable. Dial-Up access is too slow to work at all. Satellite Internet results in choppy and delayed conversations. Wireless Internet services may either prohibit VoIP service or have other limitations.

So, are you more interested in giving VoIP phone service a try? If your curiosity is piqued, then get all the details on features and terms of service and sign up if you wish for PhonePower VoIP digital telephone service.

You may also be interested in comparing a wide variety of VoIP service plans at Affordable VoIP.

Prepaid Business Calling Controls Phone Expense

Your telephone expenses are out of control and getting worse. In boom times you can pretty much let employees make whatever calls they want, wherever they want, and talk as long as they feel like. But not now. This year you have to get a grip on calling activities and get the best rates possible for domestic and international calls.

TEL3Business has just the tools you need to manage fixed and mobile business telephone calls. Their approach is a combination of technology and rates that give managers what they need to get more for their telephone dollars. Here are some surprising features that you may not have known were available to business users.

First, TEL3Business works with both landline phones, such as the standard desk set, and cell phones. This is significant as more and more telecommunication goes wireless. But you can't just implement a wireless solution or you leave out the significant amount of business activity transacted on office phones.

Second, this is prepaid phone service. Instead of getting a bill every month and the shock of finding out how far out of budget you are again, TEL3Business begins with a prepaid account that can be set up for manual or automatic recharging. Moreover, you can give every employee their own user account with a set limit. Then you know what your maximum charges can be.

Third, this solution is not a new phone system. It is a management system that works with your current suite of telephone equipment. VoIP telephony is often presented as a way to get new telephone features. But if you are happy with your phone system operation and quality now, there is no need to tear out everything and install an expensive new VoIP phone system. By implementing TEL3Business, you can get the management tools you need to maintain tight control of telephone expenses.

Fourth, you'll pay less for long distance calls and especially international long distance calls with the TEL3Business service.Your USA calls are 3 cents per minute from the contiguous states. Go ahead and call those numbers in Canada. The rate is 2.14 cents per minute. Doing business in the U.K. You'll pay just 2.7 cents per minute to call there. How about your operations in China? Relax. The calling rate is a mere 2.14 cents per minute.

These international rates are even better than you'll get with many prepaid calling cards. Plus, cards can be a pain. There are all sorts of hidden fees and you have to enter long access codes and pin numbers before you can even make a call. None of that is true with TEL3Business. You set up your accounts and phone numbers using a Web based management tool. There is a software application you download to mobile phones to enable them to use the system. After that, it gets really easy... and cheap.

There's no hardware or software to purchase. You don't even need to change your current phone carrier. Use this service for all your calls or just those expensive international conversations.

Does this sound like a valuable service for your business? If so, learn more and sign up for a TEL3 Business solution now.

The Surprising Low Cost Phone Option

With all the hype over bundled services and broadband phone, you're probably thinking that only a chump would keep one of those old analog landlines. Not so fast. Despite all the heavy promotion, your cheapest telephone solution may well be that century-old technology combined with a competitive long distance service.

Perhaps that sounds outrageous, but have you actually priced out your options? To do this properly, you need two things. The first is the lowest cost local service that meets your needs. You're more likely than not to get that from your local telephone company. Depending on how many local calls you make and how long you talk, you can easily overpay by buying too much service. The minimum you need is line access, also called dial tone. It's just what it says. You pick up the phone, you hear a dial tone, and you make your call.

Next you likely need some way to make local calls. You can get unlimited service. But you may also be able to get metered service that charges so much per call or so much per minute. Sit down and figure out how much you really call in a month. It will be worth the exercise. If you make only a few calls or primarily talk long distance, you don't need deluxe local service.

You may also want Caller ID. That typically adds about $5 a month. I'd never give it up, because it helps me avoid talking to political campaigns, surveys, scams scheming for donations, and banks looking to promote yet another credit card.

Next, you'll want to have a low per minute rate long distance service. Ten years ago, switching your long distance service to save money was all the rage. Now it's something of a lost art due to the emphasis on cell phones, bundles and VoIP. Once again, before you buy too much, use a long distance rate calculator to see how much your long distance calling is really worth. Competition has driven rates down to a few pennies a minute for most calls. Even overseas calling is dirt cheap these days.

Why not just use the long distance service that comes with your local line by default? Because it's the default service, chances are pretty high that it is NOT the low cost option. It's just convenient for people who just want to call the phone company, ask to have a line installed, and dutifully pay the bills when they come in.

Hey, why not just buy one of those bundled services and get everything for one price? Once again, it sounds good, but a bundle may not be your lowest cost option. Competitive bundles give you local dial tone, a package of local minutes or unlimited service, and a package of domestic long distance minutes or unlimited service. It's really convenient because you get one bill and you know what the price is going to be every month. What you don't know is how much you could save by paying separate bills for local and long distance service.

You should also know that competitive bundles have to buy their local lines from the local telephone company. That's because by law all the analog copper phone lines belong to your incumbent local telco. So you won't be getting a break on local service. You may or may not get a decent deal on long distance service and calling features, depending on your usage pattern.

OK, then, why not avoid the copper phone line issue completely and go with a VoIP telephone service? The same discussion of paying a bundled rate for service you may not ever use versus paying by the minute applies. Also, unless you have very, very good broadband service, you'll find that voice quality suffers and you may not be able to talk on the phone and use your computer at the same time.

Certainly, this discussion makes the most sense for someone with a home office, or a small office with a couple of phones and one or two lines. Once your business gets larger than this, you should consider T1 digital phone trunks or SIP trunks to get the best value for your telephone expense dollar.