Cheaper Business Broadband Abounds

With finances tight, most companies are looking for ways to save money without compromising the operations of the business. Telecom and networking costs are often eyed because they tend to be substantial monthly expenses. Well, go ahead and look closer. There’s money to be saved on your business broadband services.

What has given some managers the idea that their costs are fixed and non-negotiable is that they signed their original contract years ago with the one vendor in town who could provide the service - the local telephone company. That’s rarely the situation any more. Deregulation and technology developments have spawned a plethora of competitors who each have something to offer.

Let’s take that dedicated T1 line for instance. T1 is still an excellent choice for business broadband. You get bandwidth that you don’t share with anyone else, high availability, the option to bond lines to increase bandwidth, and the security of a private line that runs directly to your location. But, oh, the cost. Aren’t T1 lines the expensive way to go?

Not so much anymore. The price of T1 lines has come down dramatically in recent years. If you are still on an old contract or just paying month to month since your contract expired, you are probably missing out on a big cost reduction. What you want to do is get a new set of competitive T1 line quotes for your location and see what you’ll pay for the next three years, not the last ten.

For about the same price as T1, you can now get Ethernet over Copper in many business districts. EoC gives you a simpler interface since it runs the same Ethernet you have on your network, only standardized for long distances over telco copper cable. For the price of a 1.5 Mbps T1 line, you can probably get 2 Mbps or even 3 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. The one hitch is that this new technology isn’t available everywhere. It is distance limited to several miles or less from the nearest telephone company central office.

How about business class Cable broadband? If the local cable operator (MSO) has lines running by your location, you may be able to get 25, 50 or even 100 Mbps cable broadband for the same price as that T1 line. Cable offers a lot of bandwidth for the money, but it is a shared service so bandwidth fluctuates. That may or may not matter to you. Also, upload bandwidth is only a fraction of download bandwidth. That doesn’t matter for Web browsing, watching video, downloading software updates or email. It could be a limiting factor if you are use to constantly uploading large files to remote data centers or other business locations.

Want to pay even less and still get reliable broadband capability? Consider fixed wireless broadband running on 3G. This is similar to what you use for a laptop computer or smartphone, but designed as a box to install in your retail store, construction site or other business location. Bandwidth is typical for 3G, up to 1 Mbps or so for downloads and much less for uploads. But if all you need is point of sale connectivity and perhaps email and other occasional Web use, you could pay a third the cost of a T1 line and have installation within the week.

Are you concerned that you are paying too much for your business broadband and other network or telephone services? Chances are, your concerns are justified. Why wonder when you can find out quickly where you stand? Get current prices and availability for business broadband and telephone services suitable for your company location and requirements and see how much savings can be gained.

Call Overseas For Pennies From Your Cell Phone

Once your cell phone became your one personal and business phone, the idea of getting a better deal on landline long distance calls became moot. What good is a landline if you are never near one? What you really want is the ability to get great service on your mobile phone. You’ve got domestic telephone and broadband already. What you need is cheap international calling.

TEL3 knew this was coming and created their TEL3Advantage service to meet the need of mobile users in the US and Canada. Most of us have at least some occasions to call friends, family or business contacts in other countries. What we haven’t had until now was an affordable way to do that on a cell phone.

TEL3Advantage is an international long distance service that you access from your mobile phone. You are not changing cellular providers or adding any other contractual services. This is strictly a pay as you go add-on calling service. That means it works from any make or model cell phone and on any wireless service. In fact, you can even use it from a landline on those occasions when you are at your desk phone or at home.

What kind of rates are we talking about? Pennies per minute, literally. For instance, calls to China are 1.32 cents per minute. Want an even better deal? You can call China right now for a penny a minute with the special promotional rate. It’s good for your first 30 days of service. Call Asia and chat all you want. It’s cheap. Rates to Europe are dirt cheap, too. How about 3 cents a minute to Germany? That’s low, alright.

As if the deal wasn’t good enough already, you get free minutes upon signup. How many depends on how much you plunk down. How it works is that you prepay an amount from $10 to $100 from your major credit card or PayPal . The cost of your calls is paid out of that initial purchase. When you get low, you simply recharge your account to make more calls. If you decide you don’t need or want the service anymore, just don’t add any more money. There’s no contract cancellation fee because there is no contract to begin with. There’s even a 30 day money back guarantee. If you don’t like the service within the first 30 days, you’ll get a refund of the balance you haven’t used for calls. Truly, there is much to gain and nothing to lose.

Call quality is high, connections are fast and don’t require a PIN number, you can manage your account easily online, and the service works from any phone in the USA or Canada. But, wait, there’s more!

Do you have an iPhone? Get the TEL3Dialer APP from the iPhone App Store and you can dial from your address book or dial directly without entering any access numbers or PINs. The rates are the same as if you had dialed a local access number.

But what about other cell phone users who don’t have iPhones? You are also in luck. There are TEL3 Apps for Blackberry and over 400 cell phone models. Simply access your online account once you sign up and then download the “Smartplug Software” that is appropriate for your phone. Once installed, you’ll see a TEL3 logo added to your applications and you are good to call.

Ready to enable your cell phone for low cost international calls? It takes just a few minutes to order TEL3Advantage international prepaid long distance service. Then, talk all you like. It’s that inexpensive.

Try Toll Free Service FREE For 14 Days

Most toll free number services are structured as pay-as-you-go. In other words, you pay for each incoming call by the minute. Often there is also a small monthly fee to maintain the service. An alternate approach enjoyed by many users of i800 Toll Free Service is to simply pay one fixed monthly fee regardless of how many toll free calls come in.

The advantage of unlimited toll free number service is that you can budget for this telephone service and know what your costs will be each month. It’s $49. For that you get to select your number from a collection of 800,866, 877 and 888 toll free numbers that are already set up and ready to use. You publish this number where it makes sense. Customers and prospective clients will call at no charge to them, which makes it more likely that they’ll pick up the phone. This is especially valuable for catalog sales, customer service and recruiting efforts.

Here’s some even better news. You can try the i800 Toll Free Service from iTeleCenter for 14 days without charge. How many telephone services will let you do that? Just attempt it with a cell phone company and listen to them scream with laughter until they point at the contract and demand signature before your phone will even work. There’s no contract to sign with i800, even after the 14 day trial period. You keep the number and the service as long as you care to pay the $49 monthly fee.

That $49 is all-inclusive. There are no surcharges, hidden fees, activation fees or per minute charges. No extra fees for features, either. You’ll get an auto attendant or main greeting, voicemail to email or text, multiple extension mailboxes, online faxing, follow me call forwarding and over 30 additional features. This is a full-featured toll free service that has everything you need to make toll free service work for your small business.

I should mention that the unlimited plan does have a fair usage provision. If you exceed 1,000 minutes per month over a 30 day period, those extra minutes will be billed at 4.9 cents per minute. This shouldn’t be a problem unless you are trying to run a large call center. This service is designed for small businesses and expects to meet their inbound toll free needs well within the rules of fair usage. If you do happen to have success beyond your wildest dreams, that 4.9 cents per minute overage is still the cheapest toll free cost you’re likely to find.

Advantage of Independent Toll Free Numbers

You may have a toll free number that you got from your telephone company, or you may be considering one. Toll free numbers have tremendous advantages for all size businesses when it comes to sales and customer service. If you shop carefully, they are so affordable right now that even the smallest start-up companies and independent professionals can have their own toll free number. You’ll have the most flexibility if you order an independent toll free number.

What’s an independent number and why is that important? Independent toll free service is not associated with your landline or cellular phone bill. You'll have the ability to have your toll free number ring to any telephone you wish. You can even change your mind and have it ring to another phone anytime you want.

So what difference does that make? It makes a huge difference if you move or want to switch to another phone company. You may or may not be able to take your telephone company supplied toll free number with you. If they allow it, there can be a high fee charged to transfer the number to another service. Otherwise you’ll have to start all over with a new toll free number and change all your advertising and business cards.

You also won’t likely have the ability to decide which phone your toll free number rings to. If it is attached to your landline phone service, that’s the number that will ring when toll free calls come in. That may be no big deal if you are always at your desk or have a full time receptionist to take the calls. Otherwise you can be out and about when you get that important call that means the difference between sale and no sale. If you can’t grab it, the prospect may go elsewhere.

The alternative is an independent toll free service such as Kall8. With Kall8 toll free service, you get to pick from their suite of available 866, 877, 888 or 800 toll free numbers. Find one you like and by the time you are done placing your order online, your number will be ready to accept calls. You get an online control panel that lets you decide if toll free calls will come to your cell phone, home phone, or business phone. Change that any time you like. Some sales people switch it between phones depending on where they happen to be at the time.

You also get Kall8 toll free number features that include voice mail that you listen to online, by calling in or by having a sound file sent to your via email. Any incoming FAX messages will be converted to graphic files and sent to you via email. You also have conference call ability, so that you can conduct a conference call with up to 25 participants at any time for as long as you like. Even use your toll free number in reverse as a long distance calling card at the same rates.

That’s a lot of capability for just $2 to order an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number and $2 per month to maintain the service. Incoming calls are 6.9 cents per minute from the 48 contiguous states and a bit higher for calls from Alaska or Hawaii. Traditional 800 numbers are $5 each and $5 per month for service, plus the 6.9 cents per minute rate for incoming calls.

Low Price Toll Free Numbers

Are you looking for a toll free number for your business, but want to pay as little as you can and still get quality service? Your best bet may be Kall8 toll-free service.

This is much more than just a simple telephone number where you pay the cost of the call instead of the person calling. Kall8 offers a complete suite of telephone services that can make your mobile phone as powerful as your office phone. We’ll take a look at those services, but first you have to hear the price...

Kall8 low price toll free numbers start at $2. That gets you an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number all set up and ready to use immediately. Plus you get an online management account plus all the features that work with this number. You can keep your toll free number by paying just $2 a month for as long as you want it. If you decide to stop using the service, you pay only for the cost of the calls that have come in. Nothing more. There are no contracts or disconnect fees.

Yes, you can also get an 800 toll free number. These have all the same features as the 866, 877 and 888 toll free numbers. The cost is slightly more at $5 each plus $5 per month to keep the account.

But how much will you pay for those toll free incoming calls? Most calls are just 6.9 cents per minute. I say most calls, because calls that originate in Alaska, Hawaii or U.S. territories have additional surcharges. Even so, may businesses pay more than 6.9 cents per minute for just their regular outgoing long distance calls.

Now let's take a look at the features included with your toll free number. First of all, you get to set the ring-to number and change it anytime you want. The ring-to number is the number of the phone that will ring when someone calls your toll free number. In a sense, your toll free calls are automatically forwarded to the phone number of your choice. That can be an office phone, home phone or even your cell phone. If you move around a lot, you can go online and change the ring-to number at anytime.

Kall8 low price toll free numbers all have their own voice mail. You have a choice of how you want to retrieve those voice mail messages. You can call-in and listen to them. You can go to your online account from any Web browser and listen to them on your computer. Or you can have those messages sent as audio attachments to email messages.

Your Kall8 number will also accept fax messages. If anyone sends you a fax message, you can get a copy as an email attachment or go online to read it. Your choice.

Ever want to conduct a conference call, but didn’t have time or energy to go looking for a conferencing service? Now you can conduct conferences with up to 25 participants at any time for as long as you want. No scheduling needed. The regular per minute charges apply for each participant that dials your toll free number and enters the password that you give them.

Your Kall8 toll-free number also works in reverse as a virtual calling card. You just dial any of the voice mail access numbers and use the system to make outbound calls at the same 6.9 cents a minute that applies to incoming calls.

Other features include call blocking, custom call forwarding, choice of Caller ID display, and setting a maximum call length so callers don’t prattle on for hours at your expense.

Toll Free Number Includes Conference Calling

Are you on the lookout for cheap and easy toll free conference calling? Why not just use your toll free number to host a conference call anytime you want?

Can you really do that? You can if you happen to have a Kall8 toll free number . They start at $2 each with a $2 service fee per month plus the cost of incoming calls. For most calls that will be 6.9 center per minute.

What? Even the cheap conference calling services want more than that. Plus the old-line providers want you go through some rigamarole to schedule your conferences in advance. Does Kall8 really offer this type of conferencing service at such low rates?

Yes, they do. There’s no big fanfare about it. Toll free conference calling is just one of the many features already included in your toll free service. You may not have even known it was there. But it is, and it’s available for your use anytime.

What can you do with Kall8 toll free conferencing? You can call a conference anytime you want. It’s almost as simple as making a telephone call and using a speakerphone at each end. Only with this feature, you can have up to 25 participants located anywhere in the country. They simply dial your toll free number and enter a password that you have sent them. With that, they join the conference.

How much does all this cost again? For each participant calling your toll free number in the continental 48 states, you’ll pay 6.9 cents per minute. Calls coming in from Alaska and Hawaii pay an extra surcharge. If you want people to call for your special training, sales program or other event, you’ll find the total cost is way cheaper than specialized conferencing services that charge 10 to 25 cents per minute for the same service.

Oh, do you want a recorded copy of your conference call? No problem. Just select that feature on your control panel and a link to your recorded conference will be sent to you. The cost is just 5 cents per minute for this additional feature.

Let’s face it. If you’re in business and want to encourage prospects or customers to call you, one of the best ways to do that is by offering a toll free number. Kall8 toll free numbers start at $2 each with instant availability. Then you pay only $2 a month to maintain your service. If nobody calls, that’s all you pay. For each caller, the charge is the same 6.9 cents per minute quoted for conference calls.

Your Kall8 toll free number also has some nice features beyond conferencing. You can change the ring-to number (which phone rings) for your toll free calls anytime you wish. Voice mail is included and can be picked up by calling in, listening online in your account, or having the message sent to you as an email attachment. Inbound FAX messages can also be read online or sent as an email attachment.

What are the extra charges for these deluxe features? There are no extra charges. Those features are included, as are others such as call blocking, custom call forwarding, maximum call length selection, Caller ID display, and calling out on your toll free number as a virtual calling card. All this for a couple of bucks per month plus the cost of the calls.

Is this the best deal in toll free service you’ve ever heard of? Then why not have it for yourself right now? Learn more and order your Kall8 toll free number w/ conference calling feature now.

Scale Into Toll Free Number Service

You’ve been thinking that toll free numbers would be a big boost for your business. But it’s also been hard to commit to plunking down a major chunk of change to order a suite of numbers and their monthly service fees. What if this isn’t such a great idea after all? What if the business doesn’t expand the way you think it will? What if most of those numbers just sit there unused but still require a substantial monthly expense to keep them active?

Whoa! There’s no need to dig yourself into that hole. Don’t go making a major commitment until you know your toll free service will generate a handsome profit. Instead, just dip a toe into the water and see what happens.

That toe is perhaps a single toll free number. What you want is a way to try the service with all the features, but limited to just a single trial number or a few at most. That way you can publish a toll free number and get a feel for how everything works but limit your cost exposure.

Is there a toll free service that offers this ability to started small and grow as large as you need? Indeed there is. It’s Kall8 toll free service.

Just what do you get with Kall8? It’s a service that’s designed for small businesses with the scalability to serve major corporations. The heart of the service is your online account manager. Use your Internet Web browser to set up your numbers and change those settings at will. When you want to expand your number portfolio, you can easily click the button for “Add New Number” any time you wish. There’s also 24 hour customer service, toll free of course, if you want assistance at any time.

Some of the features you can change on the fly include the ring-to number, Voice Mail, FAX reception, virtual calling card, Caller ID, maximum call length, call routing, and call blocking. While you are in your account, you can view call history, pick up FAXes that you didn’t happen to see in your email, and listen to voice mail messages that you also didn’t have a chance to retrieve by calling-in or via email attachment.

So how much of a commitment are we talking about to try this sophisticated toll free service? Would you be shocked to learn that it’s just $2 to acquire an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number and $2 a month to maintain it. That plus the 6.9 cents per minute for incoming calls from the US 48 states. Classic 800 numbers are also available at a slightly higher cost.

Oh, but what about the contractual commitment?

Contract? What contract? There is no contract. You can cancel your service anytime and all it costs is what you’ve paid to date. There’s no cancellation fee unless you decide to keep the number and take it elsewhere. But why would you? This is the best toll free deal going.

Are you teetering on the edge of trying this service? With so little to lose and potentially so much to gain, why not order a toll free number and service right now. It’s an automated online process, so your number is ready for use as soon as you’ve completed ordering. Try it for a few months and see how much you come to depend on your new toll free service. Then go into your account and add more numbers as your needs grow. It’s so fast, easy, cheap and low risk that you’ll wish all your business services worked like this.

VoIP Replacement Services

Are you dissatisfied with your current VoIP service provider? Are you getting poor customer service, or even no service if they have gone out of business? Then use this handy VoIP Service Finder to compare offers and find a new provider. There are also some other alternatives you should consider if you are running a business.

VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol zoomed onto the scene and has made quite a splash for residential, small business and enterprise users. What's propelled the growth of VoIP has been the opportunity for cost savings on telephone services.

At the residential level, competitive phone service providers figured out how to use the Internet so they wouldn't have to lease regular lines from the local phone companies. They give you an adaptor so you can connect your phone to your broadband router or modem and then offer attractive bundle pricing for local and long distance service. This type of service is also attractive for very small businesses with only a single phone, including home office businesses. VoIP providers typically include many features, such as Caller ID, that traditional phone companies offer as options with extra charges.

Enterprise VoIP is a bit more sophisticated. There's big capital and expense savings to be had by using phones that connect to the company LAN rather than a separate telephone network. There's also an opportunity to tie computer screens and telephones together in computer-telephone integration to increase productivity in customer service and call center operations.

A big factor in VoIP call voice quality is the quality of the network connection. A good, solid high bandwidth Internet service with low latency and jitter and few lost packets can provide high call quality. A flaky Internet connection is going to sound bad no matter who the service provider is.

Enterprises rarely use the Internet as their telephone network. Instead, they terminate calls to the outside world through traditional digital telephone trunks or contract with a SIP Trunking provider that offers a private network connection.

A VoIP option called Integrated T1 service offers the benefits of lower cost telephone service for businesses using 6 to 12 phone lines and broadband Internet. A special access device connects to the service provider over a private dynamic T1 line. That line carries both telephone calls and Internet service. The quality of the phone calls is protected by the equipment, which assigns priority to any phone conversations and uses the remaining bandwidth for broadband Internet. The dynamic aspect is that any bandwidth not needed for telephone service is automatically reassigned to boost Internet speed.

NobelCom Offers Cheap Prepaid Phone Cards

Why use prepaid phone cards? To save money, of course. Not just a little bit of money, mind you. These are for saving a LOT of money, especially on international phone calls.

Let's say you need to make a personal or business call to China. How much is that going to cost, do you suppose? You may be flinching at the thought of paying a dollar or more per minute or even, say, 25 cents a minute. Well, how would you like to be paying 1.1 cent per minute?

What? That can't be right, can it? Just over a penny a minute to call China? Yes, that's the current best price using the Hello China prepaid phone card from NobelCom. This isn't some ripoff deal, like some of the cards you may have gotten stuck with in convenience stores. The Hello China card is highly rated and does not charge a connection fee. Watch out for that on other cards!

Now there are some things you should know to maximize the number of minutes you'll get from this and other prepaid calling cards. You pay $20 for this card and get 1,816 calling minutes. You'll want to call one of NobelCom's local numbers to get that rate. A surcharge of 1 cent per minute is charged if you need to call their toll free number to connect. That's still just over 2 cents per minute. Also, you'll get the most minutes with this card if you make one really long call or a number of shorter calls right after you get the card. There's a 99 cent maintenance fee per week. Choose a card that has no maintenance fee if you expect to be calling many times over the course of a year.

Do you have to call from the United States? For this particular card, yes. But you can pick other cards that let you call from just about any country to any other country at low rates. The best U.K. to China card rate happens to be 2.7 cents per minute at this time.

Some other popular destinations from the U.S. include Afghanistan for 10.9 cents per minute or to Iraq for 4.4 cents per minute. You can call Mexico as low as 1.8 cents per minute or Germany for 1.3 cents per minute. These are the rates available as of this writing.

Well, you get the idea. The calling rate with NobelCom International Calling Cards is typically a small fraction of what you'll pay with your regular long distance service. Plus, you can use these cards for travel. Can't do that with the office or home long distance service.

Have some place in mind that you'd like to call and pay less than you have been? Then get all the details and the latest rates on Phone Cards and International Calling Cards from NobelCom.

Vanity, Thy Number is Toll Free

Is there a place for vanity in business? You bet there is. Any technology that gives you an edge over your competition is worth considering, including a vanity toll free number.

So, what's the difference between a vanity number and any other toll free number? The answer lies in the relationship between letters and numbers on the standard telephone keypad. It's been long standardized that the 1 button does not have any letters printed on it. But 2 has a, b, and c. The number 3 button has d, e, and f. And so on up through 9.

One benefit of associating letters with numbers is that you can now dial phone numbers by spelling out words. For instance, someone selling boats might want the number 1-877-48-BOATS which is the same as 1-877-482-6287. A bridal shop might find that customers could more easily remember 1-866-59-BRIDE than 1-866-592-7433. That's especially true if they saw the number on a billboard or heard it on the radio or TV and didn't have a way to write down the number at the time.

1-877-48-BOATS, 1-866-59-BRIDE, and others such as 1-877-51-BOOKS, 1-866-96-CONDO, 1-866-531-DEBT, 1-866-760-FOOD, 1-877-967-TECH, 1-877-80-TOOTH, 1-866-50-YOUTH and 1-866-546-YOGA are all examples of vanity toll free numbers. They are also all available as of this writing for the small sum of $15 to reserve any of them for your exclusive use.

Really? It costs only $15 to get a memorable toll free number for business, organizational, or personal use? It does if you order from the right place.

A leader in toll free services, including toll free numbers is Kall8. What makes them a leader, perhaps THE leader in this field, is that you get an impressive array of features, a huge collection of numbers already set up and ready to order, and dirt cheap pricing. For vanity numbers, the pricing is $15 to order the number, $15 a month to maintain exclusive use of that number, and 6.9 cents per minute for calls that come in on that vanity number.

Can you think of any other business service that can help you get and keep customers at such a small cost? If not, don't wait a second longer. Pick your toll free vanity number from a list of dozens and dozens currently available and order quickly and easily online. All it takes is a credit card a few minutes and you'll be ready to go.

Better hurry. Now that I've mentioned these particular numbers, other readers might decide to grab them for their own businesses. You likely won't be too disappointed, however. There are so many good numbers available that you're likely to find at least one that exactly fits your needs. You should also know that while most vanity numbers are priced at $15 each, there are some that are so valuable, so easy to remember and so in demand that they command higher prices, say $20, $25 or $30 each. Even so, that's pretty cheap for something that can help you increase business just by being easier to remember than your competition's numerical phone number.

If you want to get started with toll free numbers even cheaper, there are many that are not claimed to be vanity numbers available for $2 each and $2 per month plus the cost of calls. Now, a clever person could go through the available numbers substituting letters for numbers and see what can be spelled out. You never know. You could wind up with the cheapest vanity toll free numbe of all.

Add a Toll Free Number For Next to Nothing

You'd like to expand your business phone features, but upgrades can be expensive. Here's a way you can add an inbound toll free number to whatever telephone service you have now, including your cell phone, for just a couple of bucks a month.

Toll free numbers offer a big advantage for nearly any business that publishes a phone number. Within a very localized calling area, customers can call your local number without getting charged. But even a few miles away, that call will be considered local long distance and they'll get dinged a higher rate. Across the border in the next state, prospective customers may really hesitate to make that long distance call.

But give them a toll free number and they'll gladly call you from wherever they happen to be. After all, with an inbound toll free number you pay the cost of the call. It's free to the caller. So much do callers hate to pay long distance charges that toll free numbers are expected for sales and customer service lines. Otherwise, your business may not be taken seriously.

What they don't know is that you're paying next to nothing to have that number available and a very small per minute fee for the calls that come in. Toll free numbers start at just $2 to register and $2 a month to maintain. That's within the budget of any size business and even contract professionals. If and only if you receive a call on your toll free number, you pay just 6.9 cents per minute for calls that originate within the contiguous 48 states and slightly more elsewhere. The only people who will call this number are serious customers and prospects, so it's the most cost effective 6.9 cents a minute you can possibly spend.

But there's a lot more. With Kall8 Toll Free Service your toll free number comes bundled with a wealth of handy features. You get voice mail, call blocking, caller ID, call forwarding and conference calling. Those are typical phone service features. But Kall8 also gives you the ability to program the number you want your toll free calls to ring to. Set it to your office phone, home phone or cell phone. The caller has no idea where you are. They are just calling the toll free number. Mobile professionals will change the ring-to number during the course of the day, so they never miss a call.

Speaking of mobile professionals, Kall8 includes a couple of service that make it easy to maintain an office from your laptop computer. Your toll free number doubles as a fax number. Someone can simply send a fax to your toll free number and it will be sent to you as an email attachment. The same is true for voice mail. You can have your voice mails sent as sound files attached to emails so you can listen to them on your computer wherever you happen to be.

Pretty fancy for $2 a month, right? There's more too, including detailed call reports that you can view in your online control panel. This service is so versatile that marketing companies will buy up a bunch of toll free numbers so they can track the response from each ad they run separately. After all, at this price toll free numbers are one cheap business tool.

New Online Tool Finds Better International Long Distance Rates

Do you make international or overseas telephone calls? Expensive, aren't they? Well, help is here in the form of a new long distance rate finder tailored to the international caller.

The problem with phone rates is that you're never sure if you're paying a reasonable rate or missing out just because you don't about better rates that have only recently become available. You can do your own online searches, work your way through the vendor's websites, and pick the one with the lowest rate. But that can take hours. You'll probably give up after looking at just a few offers because it's too much like work. What if you could comparison shop a wide variety of competitive carriers and see in seconds what the best deals are?

That's what the International Long Distance Rate Finder does for you. Go ahead and click on this link or the screen shot image and the rate finder will open in another window so you can follow along.

The first thing you see is that the interface is very simple, even sparse. There are only two steps to get started. You need to select the country you are calling from and the country you are calling to. That's really all the database needs to run your search on a reasonable data set. You'll notice that nothing is asking you for your name, address, phone number, email or anything else personal. There's no need for that information to generate a rate list, so your privacy is easily protected.

Let's try one. We'll call from the United States to China. The United States is already selected, so you can just leave that box alone. Using the pull-down menu select China as the country in "STEP 2". If there is a specific number you want to call, you can enter that for a more precise targeting of rates. But just the country will do.

Notice that a "STEP 3" box now appears with more choices highlighted in an orange color. You can just click the radio button that says "China". Or you can more precisely target an area in China. The reason for this is that there are often lower rates to specific areas of a country. If they are available and you can, say, select Beijing, then you may get a better rate than just the general rate to China. If you are calling a mobile phone, select "China (cellular)". Rates to mobile users are different, usually higher, so you might as well know what your call is really going to cost.

Let's just stick with China in general for right now. Now click on the black "Search For Rates" button. In a couple of seconds, literally, you'll get a chart of carriers and their rates to China. I count 20 separate service providers and their rates to China. They are ranked from lowest per minute cost to highest. In this case, the best rate is from Packet8. This is a VoIP provider who charges 1 cent per minute for calls from the USA to China. You'll also see what it costs for a 5 minute call (5 cents) and a 30 second call (30 cents). Since the billing increment is 6 seconds for this provider, it doesn't affect the cost of these calls. If you made a 5 second call, you'd still pay for 6 seconds. Big deal. Well, some carriers bill in larger increments of 60 seconds, so sometimes it matters.

Want to know more about Packet8? Click on the magnifying glass next to the name or on the linked name of the service provider. You'll be taken to their site where you can get a lot more detail about the services they offer. You also have the option to order service right from this page by clicking on the "Order Now" link on the right hand side of the page.

Notice that there are a wide variety of service providers offering low rates to China. You can select a VoIP service or dial-around, 1-Plus service, post paid calling card or conference call, depending on your particular need. If you want to limit the display to a particular type of service, unclick the check boxes of the services you don't want. You'll find those at the top of the chart.

Of course, you can change your search parameters at any time. There's a link called "Make changes to your search" at the bottom of the chart. Pick another pair of countries or different areas within your desired country and you'll get different results.

You may want to play around with this tool to get a better feel for what is available and how to use the service. You may also want to book mark the International Long Distance Rate Finder so you can come back whenever your needs change and run an up to date search for the lowest telephone rates to wherever you want to call.

Take a Conference, Save the Carbon

Conference calls have always been a tool of the trade for business, but one that is used sporadically or for special projects. Web conferencing is the Internet equivalent. By adding display screens to the discussion you can include bullet charts and graphics in the conversation. Still, it's hit and miss usage. When would it make sense to integrate conferencing into daily activities as a way of doing business, instead of just another tool for doing business?

There are several forces at work that may indeed cause such a tipping point. One is the advance of technology. Everybody has a computer on their desk. Many conference rooms are set up with Internet access and large electronic display screens or projectors. Speaker phones are everywhere. Where speakers cause too much disruption to non-participants, telephone headsets are an inexpensive solution. The move to enterprise VoIP is merging computers and telephones into coordinated, if not combined, voice and data solutions.

Technology makes it possible to do things that people don't necessary embrace just because they can. We all have our set work patterns honed over the years. The larger the number of people who have to change to something new, the more compelling the reason has to be. That reason might soon be cost. It's hardly news that the economy is sputtering along, with many businesses from banking to manufacturing scrambling for revenue. The idea of "cost cutting" seems to automatically suggest "chopping heads." But at some point the lack of adequate human resources results in poor business performance, worsening the financial situation. That's when a completely different way of doing things needs to be embraced.

A third factor that may have seemed arcane only a few years ago is the environment. There's a lot more awareness now about recycling, energy efficiency and carbon footprints. Flying large numbers of employees all over the country has been standard practice in many companies. It's expensive, polluting, time consuming, and in some cases a nuisance for the traveler. But it's expected by customers, suppliers, and peer organizations. Then again, maybe not so much anymore.

These three converging forces, availability of new technology, the need to reduce costs, and a desire to do one's part to help the environment, may actually be vectors acting in the same direction. Weigh the savings of lower travel expenses, recovered productive time, and reduced carbon production against the incremental cost to make audio, video and Web conferencing the defacto means of team collaboration. Instead of having groups walk, drive or fly to a common location to exchange ideas, they met in person less frequently but communicate electronically more frequently. Electronic collaboration can include team members that were previously relegated to the fringes, such as home workers, road warriors, field reps, ad-hoc consultants, and those stationed at remote sites.

One of the advertised benefits of hosted VoIP solutions is the ability to create virtual organizations that include far-flung members. Group members and anyone calling-in can't really tell that everyone isn't in the same physical space. An IP based phone system doesn't really care where on the network the instruments are located. Across the country is just as close as across the room.

Audio conferencing extends the concept of virtual meetings to include large groups such as independent sales representatives, field offices, franchisees, and prospective customers. Reservation-less conferences let you initiate an audio conference by dialing a toll free number and having participants do likewise. PIN codes give you access to a private conference room on a per-minute or volume rate whenever you need to get together.

Web Conferencing has also gotten simpler and cheaper. You can pay per-minute or a low flat fee per month to have a Web conference room that doesn't require participants to download any software. They just use the Internet connected computers they already have. You can present Microsoft PowerPoint slides or JPEG images, share an application or document, conduct polls in real-time, text chat, and use drawing tools on a virtual white board. All of this using 128 bit SSL security to protect your intellectual property from snoops.

Combine audio conferencing via telephone with Web Conferencing via Internet tools and you've got an environment where teams can work together on a regular basis without the disruption of having to get up and go somewhere. Need more face to face? That's where video conferencing and the very high-end telepresence can create a more in-person feel to meetings. By integrating this collaboration technology into normal daily work practice, you may be surprised by how seldom you really need to "go to a real meeting."