Office Telephone Service Via Cloud

When you think of office telephone service, the thing that comes to mind is a phone on every desk with an easy 3 or 4 digit number to call other phones in-house and access to an outside line whenever you need one. Today, that picture also includes your own direct dial phone number and personal voice mail. Transfers, call forwarding and conference calls are easy to set up. So, where is the equipment that runs this phone system?

For most people, the answer is “who cares?” The actual phone system could be anywhere. As long as it works all day, every day, the mechanics of how this is accomplished is beyond the interest of all but a few people. The ones who care are the business manager who pays the phone bills, the IT person or people who quietly keep everything humming, and the provider of the service.

That provider could be the local phone company. That’s how it was for at least half of the last century. For many if not most companies, at least part of the system is in-house. This could be a small wireless phone system with a couple of lines and a half-dozen handsets. It could be a key system using desk phones with a separate button for each of 4 to 6 outside lines. It might even be a PBX phone system mounted in a back room with lines coming in from each phone and going out to the telephone company.

Since very few people are all that interested in running their own in-house telephone switching system, why not ditch the whole thing? Does that mean going back to analog phones connected to the local Telco? Not at all. Today it means going forward to a cloud based solution that will give you all the functionality you have now and more.

Cloud communications is the new PBX. It’s also the new key system and the new small office system with only a few telephones. It may even provide your broadband Internet.

The cloud telephone system is more formally known as hosted PBX or hosted VoIP. You already know what hosting is. Chances are that you already buy a hosting solution from one of the many online providers. This could be a shared solution, a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server of your own. The economics of setting up your own data center just to run a web server don’t make sense anymore. There is so much competition in the hosting field that simple solutions are only a few dollars a month. Dedicated servers are only a few hundreds of dollars per month. That includes the box, the bandwidth and the IT services to keep it all running.

Larger companies that run their own customized packages for business information may have elected to just add one more server for the web to the racks they already have in their data centers. It hasn’t made much sense to go out of house for a solution when you need a large data center and staffing to optimize your business. Well, not till recently. Now these major corporations are shutting down their in-house data centers and moving to cloud computing solutions in droves. Why? For the same reasons that make sense to outsource telephone systems. You don’t need to invest in capital and you don’t need a staff to maintain it.

The point is that cloud services have evolved to the point where both your computing and your telephone can be supplied by a cloud vendor at a lower overall cost with more functionality and lower in-house staffing than doing it yourself. There are other advantages, too. You pay for a cloud telephone system per seat per month. You only buy as many seats as you need. When you need more, you order more. There is no need to maintain extra capacity just in case business picks up suddenly. Provisioning of extra resources is fast and easy because the cloud has all the capacity you need.

Now that you have office telephone solutions in the cloud as an option, is there any reason to be stuck with a technical solution that was “modern” decades ago? At the very least, take a look at what’s available in the cloud, what it costs compared to what you are paying now, and if you can get all new phones included with your service.



Note: Original photo of telephone operators courtesy of Seattle Municipal Archives on Wikimedia Commons.

Hosted VoIP Can Improve Telephone Reliability

Many mid-size and even large companies insist on maintaining their own in-house telephone systems in the belief that it’s the only way to ensure reliable communications. Is this really true, or just one of those long held beliefs that need to be re-examined?

There’s been a major game changer introduced into the telephone services industry recently. It’s the rise of hosted PBX or HPBX. You’ll also hear it called hosted VoIP or communications in the cloud. Like everything else “in the cloud,” this is truly a revolution in technology. In a decade or two, we’ll look back and wonder why we didn’t always do it this way.

“Cloud, schmoud,” you say? I can see how you might feel that way, especially if you’ve been burned by a poor implementation of VoIP technology. VoIP isn’t a particular product or even standardized methodology. It’s a general class of voice communication based on packet switched network technology. VoIP runs the gamut from software running on a laptop computer at the coffee shop, to dongles that let you plug your telephone into a PC, to broadband phone that shares an Internet connection, all the way up to enterprise and even carrier level solutions that are indistinguishable from traditional phone systems to the caller.

What successful enterprise implementers of VoIP telephony know that others don’t realize is that you need a carefully engineered network from the telephone handset to the service provider to protect fragile voice packets from being crushed by more numerous and robust data packets. In most cases, that means stay off the Internet except when you absolutely have to in order to include a remote worker or someone traveling. One reason is that the Internet does not support Class of Service controls to ensure the integrity of voice packets. Other parameters, such as bandwidth, latency, jitter, packet loss and out of sequence packet arrivals are uncontrollable on the public Internet. All of these are readily managed on private lines, MPLS networks and SIP trunks.

With the connectivity issue solved, there is still the issue of reliability. Won’t an in-house hardware solution that’s been proven over years of operation be inherently more reliable than “something out there, somewhere?” Not when you realize that the “something” you are referring to is the latest high quality servers set up for redundant protection with multiple levels of backup power and complete environmental controls. Like everything else in the cloud, there is a lot of virtualization involved so that resources are available in depth and instantly scalable.

The hosted solutions provider absolutely must provide high quality service or they’ll go out of business. After all, this is either a major part of their business or all of it. They almost always have technical staff on duty 24/7 and keep up with maintenance activities. How about at your company?

This is where the superiority of in-house PBX starts to become suspect. First of all, is your system really that rock solid? Parts never fail? The power never glitches or goes completely off? You may have duplicated the security, environmental control and power backup of a SAS 70 Type II data center, especially if you need this facility for your IT equipment. On the other hand, if your PBX is simply sitting in a “telephone closet” or maintenance room where the phone and data lines come in, you may not be all that well protected against disasters.

How about the age of that machine? We know that computers go obsolete almost before they are unboxed. PBX phone systems aren’t quite that bad, but they do start to degrade as the years go by. At some point, it’s hard to find replacement parts or even someone knowledgeable to maintain the system and make repairs. New features are introduced into the telephony marketplace, but you can’t take advantage of them. Your system is just a bit too old to be upgraded. This is how obsolescence begins. Pretty soon, you’re patching together a dinosaur that should have been hit by a meteor years ago.

It is being recognized that hosted VoIP solutions can be as reliable and even more reliable than in-housed PBX telephone systems. You need to pick a quality supplier and install highly reliable network connections to gain the benefits of high reliability in the cloud. If you do that correctly, you’ll enjoy reliable communications, access to the latest productivity features, integration with mobile devices, and the cost savings of paying by the month only for what you need.

Has this discussion piqued your interest on how hosted solutions might be a better choice than what you have now? If so, get pricing and features for Hosted VoIP solutions that meet your particular requirements. See if you can’t get more value for the same or less cost than your current business telephone system.

Enterprise Communications Services To The Cloud

There’s a great migration underway. This is a technical migration, from the public switched telephone network and private branch exchanges to cloud based communications services. XO communications is a leader in cloud communication services. Here’s why they predict that in the next few years 60% of companies will move close to a third of their voice communications to the cloud...



If you would like a complementary consultation and competitive quotes for your enterprise communication needs, we can offer you prompt and courteous service through our affiliated Telarus product specialists.

So, is it time to rethink your approach to voice communications, such as business telephone? You know that the upgrades you want to make are going to cost a fortune in up-front capital at a time when big capital outlays are frowned upon. You could just let the whole thing go until the economy picks up steam and money flows like water. But...

Here’s the problem. You want and need the productivity improvements you can get with unified communications right now. You may also suspect that you are spending too much on operations and maintenance, and rightly so. The dilemma is that with traditional approaches you can’t afford to make the changes that will give you the available savings.

Now, here’s the solution. It’s called communications as a service. Instead of trying to be in the telephone business yourself, turn that over to experts in enterprise level VoIP over MPLS networks. That way, you can get all of your many business locations on the same network using the same equipment with the same connectivity. You can get niceties like HD voice and video, mobility integration, plus calling features you don’t have now. Best of all, you pay as you go with a predictable per-user monthly cost.

No need to stay mired in limbo. XO cloud communications and other competitive carriers offer migration paths where you can integrate what you have now while you gradually shift to the new cloud solution. Eventually, you just pull the plug on the old PBX and PSTN trunk lines when you no longer need them.

Does pay as you go sound like a better business model for these days than invest and wait years for a payback? If so, you owe it to yourself to take a few minutes and get a complementary consultation and competitive quotes for enterprise services in the cloud.

Ethernet Service Providers Offer Cost Savings

One technological revolution quietly underway is the transition from circuit switched to packet switch WAN protocols. Many businesses first become aware that something is happening when they go to get price quotes for bandwidth upgrades or new line services. They expect to be buying a T1 line and find themselves ordering Ethernet over Copper instead. Why is this and what can you get for your bandwidth dollar these days?

The shifting ground of the telecom industry is being driven by a move to all-IP networks. The root cause is that computing devices, such as PCs, web servers, wireless access points, tablets, smartphones, telepresence, and IP PBX systems are generating network traffic that far exceeds traditional telephony. I included IP PBX in that group because an enterprise VoIP system with SIP phones connects via the LAN and uses Ethernet packets, not analog or proprietary digital signals. In most businesses, the common denominators are the LAN and the telephone network, with the phone network on the way out.

We’re now at a point where the crying need is to connect LANs together and to the Internet. We’ve been doing that with traditional telephone technologies such as T-Carrier and SONET for decades. If you were designing a comprehensive networking approach, would you pick one technology for the LAN and something completely different for metro and long haul networks? Wouldn’t you try to have a common protocol that runs everywhere for efficiency and ease of connection?

That’s what’s behind the rise of Carrier Ethernet. As more competitive carriers enter the market and older networks are upgraded, IP core networks are becoming more and more the rule. These are high speed fiber optic networks that have regional, national or even international service footprints. The last link in the chain is appropriately called the last mile connection. This is the wireline, fiber or wireless link that connects you to the service provider point of presence.

Ethernet services are available at every level of networking, from simple Internet access through international MPLS networks that link hundreds or thousands of sites. Most companies will want some type of dedicated Internet access. A 2x2 Mbps or 3x3 Mbps Ethernet over Copper line is a direct competitor to T1, at about the same price. It’s not uncommon to get twice the bandwidth for the same cost by choosing Ethernet rather than T-Carrier T1 or T3.

Ethernet is also more scalable than other telecom services. Typical bandwidth options include 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50, 75 and 100 Mbps. Other increments between these levels may also be available, depending on the carrier. Those are just Ethernet over Copper offerings. Ethernet over Fiber takes you to 250, 500, 750 and 1,000 Mbps or up to 10 GigE.

You may want to install Ethernet Private Line or Ethernet Virtual Private Line service for a point to point connection between two business connections, like headquarters and a branch office. This replaces T1 or DS3 private line service at a better price.

One service that Ethernet offers, that you won’t find with traditional point to point connections is E-LAN or Ethernet LAN Service. It connects multiple LANs in a mesh topology at the layer 2 level. This lets you build one giant LAN that includes all of your remote location LANs.

Would you like to expand your service options and save 50% or more on line pricing compared to what you have now? Get instant online Ethernet service pricing up to 1 Gbps now. More complex multi-site networks need a bit of manual work, but will be quoted promptly.

Hosted VoIP Solutions Include New Phones

When we think of cloud services, it’s fairly easy to imagine the server racks down the hall being replaced by a much larger set somewhere out there. Similarly, it’s easy to see that the PBX in the telecom room disappears one day to be replaced by a much larger hosted PBX system in the cloud. But what about all those phone wires that used to plug into the PBX FSX and FSO ports? What do they plug into now?

They need to do what the network connections do. Moving data servers outside is made easier by connecting the LAN to an edge router that has a high capacity WAN line to your cloud service provider. When you outsource the PBX, the same thing needs to happen. In this case, the connection is called a SIP Trunk. Yes, it’s possible to terminate the SIP trunk into a myriad of analog phone ports so you can just plug in the phones you now have and keep going as if nothing has changed. But if you do that, you’ll miss out on one of the big advantages of upgrading to Hosted PBX service. That’s all the special features enterprise VoIP has to offer.

A big cost saver with VoIP, especially for medium and large organizations, is the consolidation of the separate phone and computer networks into one converged voice and data network. The phones are now like computer peripherals. There’s an RJ-45 jack on the back that connects to the network just like a PC. The phone has its own MAC address. You can move it around on the network and still have it ring at the same phone number. Forget rewiring or reprogramming like you have to do with standard phones when you make changes.

Analog phones can be made to work like IP phones by using an adaptor box called an ATA (Analog Telephone Adaptor). This is something of a kludge because the phone still has only the rudimentary features it had before. That’s why the ATA approach is only used for residential, home office and very small business situations. For every other application, the right thing to do is bite the bullet and move up to IP phones, also called SIP phones. These are telephones designed to run on the converged network and make use of productivity features you can get with networked telephony.

If you are designing your own in-house enterprise grade VoIP telephone system, you’ll need to budget for new phones as well as the IP PBX equipment. Count up the number of desks and wall phones, multiply by the cost of each IP Phone at several hundred dollars per, and your eyes may pop out at the total investment required. You can put together a capital investment plan and go face the bankers or take the alternative approach of pay-as-you-go.

Who let’s you pay by the month for your complete telephone service? Hosted PBX providers, that’s who. The pay for usage model is what’s making cloud computing such a hot service these days. There’s no reason telephony can’t be put on the same basis. The one variable is the telephone sets that remain at your business, not in the cloud. You can buy those, of course, or you can have the lease cost included in your per-seat pricing for the system. That way you get brand new sophisticated desk phones that are guaranteed to be compatible with the hosted phone service. You also have one provider to deal with for everything. If you’ve ever had to referee between phone set manufacturers and carriers blaming each other for something not working, you’ll recognize the advantage of having “one neck to wring.”

Would you like to avoid the never-ending capital appropriation and procurement cycle in favor of just paying for what you need as you need it? Hosted VoIP may be the way to go for your business. Get competitive quotes and features for hosted VoIP telephone systems and compare with the what you have now.

T1 Line Cost At A New Low

Over the years, most companies have come to own T1 lines either sooner or later. Larger companies got them for dedicated Internet connections back when business was just getting acquainted with the Internet. Small operations often get into T1 lines after becoming frustrated with shared bandwidth information services, such as DSL and Cable. There’s only one thing not to like about T1 lines and that’s the cost... or is it?

If you think that T1 lines cost a small fortune, you probably remember getting a quote some time ago. Yes, less than a decade ago it wasn’t uncommon to pay $1,000 a month for a typical T1 line. I say typical because there are different flavors of T1 service and pricing has been very location dependent. Today, you might pay about a third of that in most locations nationwide.

Costs have plunged due to maturity of the service, deregulation that has opened the market to many more competitive carriers, and new technologies that now compete directly for your bandwidth dollar.

It’s never been a better time to get into T1 line service if it will meet your needs. Let’s take a look at how T1 lines work, what you can use them for, and how to decide if T1 or something else is the right service for your company.

T1 is one of the most mature telco technologies, developed by the Bell System for telephone trunking. T1 formed the basis of digital telephone service and later was pressed into service to transport data also. A half-century of experience means that T1 is well understood, almost universally available and well supported. As a tariffed telecom service, carriers take T1 seriously. Most are sold with an SLA or Service Level Agreement that spells out what you can expect in the way of availability, time to respond to an outage and mean time to repair.

T1 lines were designed to be provisioned on two pair of ordinary telephone wire. One pair is for transmit or upload. The other is for receive or download. This is a symmetrical bandwidth service. You get the same bandwidth in both directions and it is full duplex. You can transmit and receive at the same time. That was designed-in to support telephone conversations that are also full duplex.

The original use for T1 lines was telephone trunking. A trunk line supports multiple phone conversations. A T1 telephone line supports up to 24 separate conversations, each with its own synchronized channel. Think of these as individual business phone lines. A device called a channel bank can convert the 24 channels back and forth to 24 analog phone lines.

A more popular configuration of T1 telephone line is called ISDN PRI or T1 PRI. This also divides the T1 line into 24 channels but only 23 of them are used as phone lines. The last one is reserved for switching signals and data, such as Caller ID. ISDN PRI is very popular as a telephone trunk line that plugs directly into many PBX phone systems.

When used to transport data, the idea of channels is dispensed with and the entire payload of the line service is used to carry data packets. T1 has a payload of 1.536 Mbps. The actual line speed itself is 1.544 Mbps. The difference of 8 Kbps is overhead used to keep the line synchronized and for maintenance. A T1 line is typically said to provide 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth.

That bandwidth can be used to connect to the Internet in what is called DIA or Dedicated Internet Access. Dedicated means that you have exclusive use of the bandwidth at all times. Use as little or as much of it as you need. The remainder will still be available and not shared by other users.

T1 lines are also popular as point to point connections to link two business locations. A specialized use is to transmit digitized audio from radio station studios to rurally located transmitter sites. T1 is also the most popular backhaul technology that connects cellular wireless towers to telephone switching systems.

Has the cost of a T1 line come down enough to make it attractive for your business use? If so, you may also want to compare T1 against the newer Ethernet over Copper that typically offers twice the bandwidth for the same money. If EoC is available, it's an even better bargain. Get quotes now for EoC and T1 line services at your business locations.

PRI over Cable Cost Savings

Many businesses use ISDN PRI trunking to provide phone service for their organizations. The original motivation to move from analog business lines to PRI was the cost savings that T1 technology offered. Now there is a newer and even better cost option called PRI over Cable.

Regardless of the delivery technology, ISDN PRI is a well-established standard for bundling up to 23 business telephone lines on a single digital cable. Why 23? It’s because T1 lines were designed to have 24 channels, each capable of transporting one high quality digitized telephone conversation. One channel is reserved for signaling and Caller ID, leaving 23 channels available for phone calls. Each channel is equivalent to one analog phone line. By bundling them, you can almost always save money over ordering 23 individual phone line.

What’s more, nearly all modern PBX telephone systems and many key telephone systems support the ISDN PRI standard. There is a PRI jack on the back of the system or a plug-in accessory card. Many larger business phone systems accommodate multiple PRI lines so you can have 46, 69, 92 or more outside phone lines if your company is large enough to need this many.

ISDN was designed around T1 lines, but there is no reason that more modern packet switched networks can’t also provide phone lines to meet the ISDN specification. It’s all a matter of hardware and firmware on circuit cards to get the signals formated properly.

Comcast, the largest cable operator in the US, is now offering PRI telephone trunking over their Hybrid Fiber Cable (HFC) system. If you are only familiar with Comcast as a provider of Cable TV service or broadband, you may be surprised to learn that Comcast is the third largest telephone company in the country. The other possible surprise is that Comcast is a business as well as residential service provider.

Coaxial cable has bandwidth capabilities far beyond those of twisted pair copper telephone wiring. This is especially true when most of the network is built on fiber optic cabling and only the last mile or less uses coax. Coax is cheap, reliable and well-proven technology. There is plenty of room on that coax to delivery television, broadband and telephone services, including ISDN PRI.

But isn’t broadband telephone fraught with performance issues? The Internet often isn’t up to traditional telephone standards when it comes to voice distortion and latency, the annoying time delay that makes you pause during two-way conversations. That’s why Comcast keeps their broadband and telephone signals separate. They’re both riding the same cable, but in different channels so they don’t interfere. TV signals are also on the same cable in their own assigned channels.

What makes PRI over Cable a great option for a small to medium size business? Consider that you can get a 6 channel telephone trunk capable of serving up to 24 employees plus 22/5 Mbps broadband Internet service for less than the cost of many T1 lines. Most companies need both telephone and Internet service, and Comcast’s business class Business Class Trunks and Internet with broadband speed up to 22 Mbps download easily fits the need.

Do you need a larger phone system capacity or are concerned that you will in the future? No problem. Comcast lets you add to your PRI service in single channel increments. Many ISDN PRI services now come with a full 23 lines even if you don’t need that many. Having a system that is scalable for both phone lines and Internet bandwidth gives you the ability to buy just what you need now and be able to easily upgrade in the future.

Could you benefit from the flexibility of business telephone service that will grow with your business or just want to see if you can save on ISDN PRI over Cable with or without bundled broadband service? If so, get pricing and installation times for ISDN PRI and bundled services for Comcast Business Class. There are also attractive voice and data plans from competitive carriers where cable services are not available.

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.

Types of Business Telephone Lines

Business telephone lines, once available in only a single analog version, have proliferated over the years. You can still get the legacy analog subscriber loop. You can also get a variety of digital lines and trunks that may offer cost and performance advantages.

The basic business telephone line is little changed from its invention over a century ago. It consists of a single small gauge twisted pair copper wires that carry all the necessary signals. This is an analog telephone line. Analog phone service is also known as POTS for Plain Old Telephone Service. Many businesses have multi-line phones, but all they do is connect to multiple POTS lines. One to four lines is typical of a small office phone system. If there are lighted pushbuttons for each outside line, this may be called a “key” telephone system.

POTS telephone lines generally include local and long distance calling, features such as Caller ID, 3 way calling, and perhaps a toll free number. One POTS line may be connected full time to an office FAX machine. Some companies that have digital telephone systems may still keep a POTS line for the FAX machine, as not all digital services support FAX.

The simplest digital phone line is a single VoIP or broadband phone service that uses the Internet as a substitute for the twisted pair analog phone line. The cost savings realized is due to the fact that most businesses need broadband Internet access as well as telephone service. Using the Internet to connect the phone to the service provider avoids the charges for a separate telephone line.

The main limitation to broadband phone service is that the Internet was never designed to support high quality two-way real time voice or video services. It is critical to have enough bandwidth to support all the voice and data traffic on the broadband connection and to give voice packets priority. When bandwidth becomes restricted, voice quality starts to get garbled and the call may even be dropped. Another factor is latency or time delay between source and destination. The longer the latency, the more the phone starts to act like a two-way radio where only one person can talk at a time. Latency is seldom, if ever, a factor on analog lines or carefully engineered private networks.

Enterprise VoIP systems, consisting of many telephone sets connected to a converged voice and data LAN, avoid the limitations of the Internet by using dedicated circuits transport calls between internal phones and to the connection point or termination with the Public Switched Telephone Network. That termination may be within the company, where the connection is to multiple POTS lines or a digital trunk line. It may also be at a service provider connected to the enterprise by a converged voice and data line called a SIP Trunk.

A “trunk” line is simply a bundling of multiple telephone lines in one cable. That may be a fat cable with many analog copper pair or it can be a digital trunk line with few wires that transport many telephone calls in channels or packet streams.

The most popular digital trunk line is called ISDN PRI. This is also called T1 PRI because it is carried on a T1 digital line. What a PRI digital trunk gives you are up to 23 outside telephone lines plus a dedicated channel for switching signals and data such as Caller ID. Some PBX telephone systems have provisions to connect to two or more PRI trunks. This is especially true for call centers and large corporate office buildings. Note that each of the business lines in the ISDN PRI trunk can be configured as local, long distance, inbound only, outbound only, toll free or some combination of these per customer requirements.

The newest business telephone trunk is called SIP Trunking. SIP is the control and signaling protocol for VoIP telephone systems. One SIP trunk can carry dozens of phone calls, even more than a PRI trunk. The other way SIP trunks can be configured is for both voice and data on the same line. This is especially valuable for companies that have converged networks shared by both computers and telephones. The SIP services provider brings in both broadband Internet access plus business telephone lines on the same SIP trunk.

What type of service will work best for your company? There may be a range of options to choose from. Get prices and availability for business telephone service now, so you have up to date information to make an informed purchasing decision.

PRI Lines For Domestic Call Centers

Domestic call centers have become a popular option for many companies. These range from in-house customer contact centers to independent call centers that contract for the customer service of other businesses. One thing that is common to all call centers is telephone service. The most popular option in telephone service is PRI lines. Let’s see why.

PRI stands for Primary Rate Interface. It is part of the ISDN or Integrated Services Digital Network specification. ISDN was envisioned as a way for all telephone lines to move from analog to digital. The basic service is called BRI or Basic Rate Interface. It offers two phone lines, a phone line and a 64 Kbps data service or a 128 Kbps data service.

ISDN BRI never took off to become the popular small business and residential service that was intended. What happened is that DSL and Cable broadband emerged to deliver much higher bandwidths. Telephone service has made a major transition to cell phones and VoIP. Even so, BRI is still popular, where available, for radio station remote broadcasts & interviews.

ISDN PRI, the big brother to BRI, is now the most popular way to connect to a PBX telephone system for businesses and other organizations. As a digital phone service it is configured into 23 separate digital telephone lines plus a data channel for switching and Caller ID.

PRI service is available just about everywhere. That’s because it was designed to ride on a common 24 channel T1 line provisioned on two twisted pair copper wires. Nearly all businesses have bundled twisted pair cables already installed for multi-line telephone service. A couple of extra pairs can easily be put to use to bring in ISDN PRI, also called T1 PRI.

When businesses get to a size where they need 10 or 12 outside phone lines, it generally makes sense to replace all those separate lines with a single ISDN PRI digital trunk. You don’t need to run a PRI at full capacity. You can save money over analog service by using only half the 23 line capacity.

Most call centers can easily use 23 phone lines. So what do you do when you run out of capacity? That’s easy. Just install a second PRI line and get 23 additional outside lines. The PBX phone equipment used to manage those lines for the agents comes with ISDN PRI connectivity already built-in or easily added with a circuit card. Many circuit cards can handle up to 4 PRI lines for a total of 92 outside lines. Larger systems can handle multiple interface cards.

How can those lines be configured? That’s up to you. The lines can be set up to handle any combination of local, long distance, incoming only, outgoing only, incoming & outgoing calls, toll free numbers, and DID or Direct Inward Dialing that gives every phone its own unique number.

The competition to ISDN PRI lines is SIP trunking. Both types of line services will work with either conventional PBX or the newer IP PBX telephone systems. Which is optimum for the call center connectivity you need? Get customized pricing and availability of digital phone line service for your business location so you can make the best decision.

Reduce Expense of T3 or DS3

You currently have or are considering 45 Mbps service using T3 or DS3. Before you re-sign or initiate a new contract, take a look at how you might save considerable expense in the process.

T3 and DS3 are often considered to be identical. They’re not, but they are very close technically. T3 refers to a specific T-carrier system created by Bell Labs. It can transport 45 Mbps of data in both directions (full duplex) or 672 telephone conversations. Do you have a T1 line now? It is part of the same T-carrier system. A T3 line can carry 28 T1 lines, to give you an idea about how much bandwidth 45 Mbps represents.

DS3 is the digital signal that rides on a T3 line. It is the specification that describes how you get all those telephone calls or T1 lines worth of data into that particular format of data stream. In other words, a physical T3 line transports a DS3 formatted digital signal. Sounds almost redundant until you learn that there are other ways to transport that DS3 signal. Most important is using a compatible fiber optic SONET connection. OC3, the lowest level of SONET fiber service generally available, runs at 156 Mbps and can transport three independent DS3 signals. A service provider might drop off one at your locations and another down the block. Or you might order an OC3 and break out the 3 streams yourself if you need that much bandwidth.

How, exactly, you get DS3 service to your PBX phone system or network router depends on what service providers in your area are offering. In dense metropolitan locations you may be able to get DS3 service via fixed wireless microwave connection, as well as fiber optic cable and perhaps coaxial copper wire. You’ll connect from the carrier’s termination to your DS3 router using a pair of copper coaxial jumper cables.

The fact that there are different delivery mechanisms for DS3 is one key to being able to reduce your telecom line expense. Not too long ago, the local telephone company was the only one offering this service. Now there are competitive carriers, each with their own fiber or wireless networks, who aggressively pursue high bandwidth customers. That has tended to drop the cost of DS3 service dramatically in recent years.

If you don’t specifically need DS3, but only the bandwidth level that DS3 can provide, there is another option you should seriously consider. That is metro or carrier Ethernet. At the 45 Mbps level, Ethernet may be delivered to your location by either fiber optic line or bundled copper pair. The copper solution only works within a short distance of the carrier’s nearest point of presence. But not everyone needs the full 45 Mbps. If your requirement is, say, 20 Mbps, then you may be able to get EoC or Ethernet over Copper over a wider area than is available for 45 Mbps service. You’ll also pay less, since Ethernet is priced per Mbps.

Ethernet is also a good choice for companies that have an immediate and anticipated need for more than 45 Mbps. It is a scalable service, so you can get 50 Mbps now and upgrade to 100 or 200 Mbps later without a major effort. Ethernet at these levels is delivered by fiber optic cabling. Fiber support an almost unlimited bandwidth capacity. Ethernet services are readily available at 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1,000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE.

Does your organization have a need for increased bandwidth or would you like to check competitive prices before you commit to a new contract? Our Telarus consultants will be happy to get you a listing of bandwidths and pricing for DS3, Ethernet and other bandwidth services available for your location. As a bandwidth broker, Telarus works with dozens of carriers and can get you more competitive pricing than you could hope to get on your own. Best of all, this is a complementary service for all serious business applications.

Managed Voice over MPLS For High Quality Enterprise Telephony

Companies with multiple locations are rapidly discovering the cost and performance advantages of MPLS networks. MPLS VPN networks are becoming the preferred way to interconnect multiple sites around the country and around the world. But what do you do about your voice services?


The traditional approach is to keep voice and data separate. The telephone system has a proven legacy based on switched circuit analog and digital trunking. Most PBX systems are set up to interface to standardized copper pair analog business lines or ISDN PRI digital trunks. These are your portal to the worldwide PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network that links every telephone set on Earth.

This traditional approach to business telephony has the advantage of guaranteed connectivity and proven voice quality. The incentive to change to something more advanced comes from potential cost savings and productivity features.

There are huge cost savings possible if you can combine your voice and data networks and keep your internal phone calls off the PSTN. Isn’t that what Enterprise VoIP about? That’s exactly what many major corporations are doing. But only well-healed companies can afford to manage their own nationwide converged private line networks. When it comes to international connections, the costs can go up dramatically. Is there a more cost effective option?

Why not use the same MPLS networks that provide data connectivity for your many geographically diverse sites to also carry your voice traffic? Well, why not? MPLS networks already have the requisite quality of service controls to ensure that voice packets won’t get trampled by data packets. The entire network is managed to ensure low latency, jitter and packet loss. It seems like a good match for IP telephony.

Indeed it is. That’s what VoMPLS or Voice over MPLS is all about. With VoMPLS, your internal telephone traffic stays on your own network. In fact, it’s the same network that interconnects all your PCs and other network device. You’ll only pay per-minute telephone charges when your calls have to go “off net” to the public phone system. You can make that connection yourself with ISDN PRI trunks connected to your company PBX or you can outsource call termination to a SIP trunking service.

Does VoMPLS make sense for your company or organization? New services, including one just announced by AireSpring, are making this option the best cost/performance choice more and more. Find out with a quick inquiry about Voice over MPLS network options.

The Importance Of Buying Ernest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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