IP Exchange - The Final Piece For VoIP

It’s no secret that the world’s telephone communications are on a fast path from circuit switched to packet switched networks. Large businesses have embraced enterprise VoIP as a way to improve productivity, reduce costs and future-proof their in-house telephone systems. Small and medium businesses are taking a close look at SIP trunking as a way to get high quality telephone and broadband service as a bundle. Consumers have taken matters into their own hands by moving to Cable broadband-telephone bundles or third party VoIP services. Yet, the PSTN persists.

What’s holding up this house of cards? Right now every VoIP system and service is an island unto itself. You’ll more often than not find that on-net calls for any particular VoIP service are free. On-net means on that particular service, unrelated to location. This is because the provider owns the network and doesn’t have to pay anyone else to handle the traffic. They are making money through the monthly fee they charge their customers for the VoIP service itself.

The same is true for large companies with their own enterprise VoIP systems. One of the big cost advantages of VoIP is that you can eliminate the separate telephone network and use your data network to transport voice, data and video. Another savings comes from keeping your voice traffic on your own network, not just within an office but also between locations. Avoid the public telephone network and you avoid the per minute charges to use it.

Therein lies the rub. The only common link between all telephones on Earth is the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network. Its legacy is based on switching analog phone circuits to make the phone to phone connections. Long haul circuits have long since gone digital, but a very special type of digital. The phone conversations are digitized according to an international standard, G.711, and packed into rigidly synchronized channels called DS0s. A DS0 is 64 Kbps and is the same whether being transported on a T1 or PRI trunk line right on up to a fiber optic OC-768 cable. Cellular phones have their own network standards, but are designed to interface with the PSTN to hand-off traffic.

The heart of the PSTN is both its technical specs for connecting analog and digital conversations and its switching systems called SS7. Nowadays the switching signals have their own separate paths between switching offices in a hierarchy consisting of local central offices and tandem offices that connect the local offices into one large universal network. If you want to connect with any phone on the PSTN, you need to send the signals according to the SS7 protocol.

VoIP comes as an outgrowth of the computers networking industry rather than the telephone industry. Its technology is based on IP packets and SIP switching rather than pulse code modulation channels and SS7. As you might expect, you can’t directly connect one system to the other. Analog and VoIP phone systems, including business PBX systems, connect or “terminate” their calls to the PSTN. The PSTN SS7 switches take care of getting the conversations connected from one proprietary network to another. Each time a call has to traverse the PSTN, there is a small but significant per minute access charge.

TW Telecom, a major competitive carrier, is looking to give the telephone system a nudge in the direction of eliminating the SS7 switching step. According to a recent report in Connected Planet, they are asking the FCC to classify voice calls over IP as a telecom service rather than the current status as an information service. That would get incumbent telephone companies, the heart of the old Bell system, to connect phone calls on an IP to IP basis. The benefits would include higher voice quality by eliminating the protocol conversions and lower network compensation costs.

TW’s actions are the first step in a process of creating IP Exchanges, similar to Ethernet Exchanges that share traffic between network providers and extending the reach of all Ethernet networks. It’s a matter of standardizing protocols and fees so that you have a level playing field without technical hiccups. It’s not the end of the beginning, but the beginning of the end for SS7.

VoIP Phone Service Provides Flexibility

Small to medium size businesses may be thinking about upgrading their aging phone systems, but uncertain about which way to go. Do they buy a modernized and expanded version of the Key Telephone or PBX system they are using and keep everything else the same, or make the jump to VoIP phone service? What many may not realize is the flexibility of options you gain with VoIP solutions.

What differentiates VoIP from traditional telephone equipment and service is that it is network based. True, even a single line analog desk phone or cell phone is part of a network - the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). The public telephone network is a very specific network that does one thing really well. It connects one telephone to another or perhaps one phone to a group of other phones for a conference call. It has its own technology and wiring standards. VoIP, on the other hand, is designed to share standard packet based computer networks.

There-in lies the flexibility of VoIP. You plug an IP phone into a network jack, just like you’d plug in a PC or printer. No separate wiring scheme is needed. It doesn’t even matter where the phone is located. IP phones are known by their unique addresses, not which pair of wires they happen to be connected to.

With analog telephones, you have a choice on whether to connect each of your phones to the telephone company on their own line or to install an in-house phone system to connect the phones and share the outside lines. With VoIP, you can also install an in-house phone system called an IP PBX or extend your network with all the phones to a service provider. This approach is called Hosted VoIP or Hosted PBX. The connection is called a SIP Trunk.

SIP Trunking gives smaller businesses the option of getting both their phone service and broadband service from the same provider. The SIP trunk can be divided so that voice packets and data packets don’t interfere. Your phone calls are never interrupted by someone download data at the same time. Using one trunk for both voice and data often results in a cost savings over having separate telephone lines and broadband connections.

Hosted PBX services give you the flexibility of locating your phones wherever you want them. This goes beyond just moving telephones around the building. You can have one phone sitting on a desk in New York and other in Seattle, both connected by SIP trunks to a hosted PBX in Dallas. From the caller’s perspective, all of this equipment could be in one building. They have no perception of how geographically spread out this operation is. This capability is also known as a virtual office.

For larger companies, enterprise level VoIP systems handle hundreds or even thousands of phones located at headquarters, regional sales offices and branch offices nationwide. Private SIP Trunks securely transport voice and data among the locations, avoiding telephone company toll charges for in-house calls. The PBX switching system can be located at any particular location or can be a hosted solution. The beauty of hosted VoIP is that you pay as you go. There is no need for an expensive investment in telephone switching equipment nor the staff to maintain and upgrade it. That’s all handled for you.

Can your company benefit from a more flexible communications system, perhaps including mobile phones as well as desk sets? If so, get pricing and features quotes for competing VoIP service providers. Then compare with what you have now and see if you can gain flexibility and perhaps cost savings as well.

Where Hosted PBX Solutions Save

Business telephone systems range from the very simple with a few phones and a few lines to complex private branch exchanges that support multiple sites. The new approach is a hosted PBX that makes things simple again. But do hosted PBX solutions really save anything and can they maintain voice quality?

With the simplest arrangement of a single landline phone connected to the local phone company, there really isn’t much to manage. You pay so much per month for “dial tone” that makes your phone work and gives you typically unlimited local calling. You have the option to switch to a different provider for long distance service or use a dial-around service for international calling. These are options to save you on the per minute calling rates.

The basic analog or POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) phone service seems simple because all the complexity is at the other end of the wire. What you don’t see or have to deal with is the intricacies of connecting your line to any of billions worldwide or to even more billions of wireless callers. If you have, say, 3 business locations with 1 phone each, they talk to each other by dialing up the desired location just like any other phone number.

Businesses found out just how complex the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) was when they got big enough to have lots of desk phones and a dozen or more outside lines. What many companies did was to buy their own telephone switching system called a PBX (Private Branch Exchange.) The advantage of having your own PBX system is that calls within the company stay on your own wiring and you don’t have to pay the telephone company to connect them. That includes more complex PBX arrangements with digital tie lines that connect multiple locations in a private network. Once again, the motivation is to keep as many calls as possible off the public network to avoid “toll” charges.

Many companies have rued the day the got into the telephone business. PBX systems are expensive to buy and need constant updates as employees move within the company. There is also maintenance activity for both the PBX and its telephone network wiring.

Hosted PBX is a fairly new service that offers to offload the expense of in-house phone systems. It only became possible when most companies installed Local Area Networks for their computers and the price of private digital lines became affordable. The enabling technology is VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol. In this case, Internet refers to the technology standard and not necessarily use of the public Internet.

Hosted PBX refers to using a large PBX telephone system that is located or hosted by a third-party service provider. This PBX is big enough to handle the telephone traffic of many different companies to gain an economy of scale. In a way, this is similar to going back to the days where each phone was individually connected to a local telephone company that took care of call switching.

So, where does the cost savings come from? Network consolidation is one area. Both telephones and computers run on a single converged voice and data network. There are no separate telephone wires. This network is extended to the hosted PBX provider using a private digital line called a SIP trunk. You are not tied to a particular service provider. There are many competing hosted PBX solutions and that competition is another way that cost savings can be offered.

The private SIP trunk helps to maintain high voice quality because it provides the characteristics of low latency, jitter, packet loss and congestion, along with quality of service mechanisms that keep data packets from interfering with voice packets. You can also buy Internet based hosted PBX services at lower costs, but the vagaries of the public Internet can introduce distortion and clipping in the conversations.

Do hosted PBX solutions offer a real cost savings for your company? It depends on how many seats you have, what features you want and what your existing system is costing you. If you are close to replacing an aging PBX or one that has run out of capacity, the economics highly favor hosted solutions. To decide for yourself, get competitive pricing on hosted PBX solutions for business. It may come down to whether you want to pay as you go versus investing in your own in-house phone system.

Enterprise Cloud Communications Arrives

Cloud computing has been in the headlines as the next generation of information technology. What’s breaking out now is cloud communications, a move to make telephony as well as number crunching and file serving available as cloud services. You know it’s arrived when a provider the size of XO Communications launches an enterprise level cloud communications service.

In an odd way, what’s new is old. The origin of telephone services is in a cloud called the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network. Your basic phone is simply a client that derives its functionality from the massive telco switching network.

Then came in-house phone systems in the form of key telephone systems and PBX or Private Branch Exchange systems. These are essentially small phone companies that you own and maintain. All calls within the company stay on the internal system. It’s only when you need connectivity to the outside world that you have to rejoin the PSTN.

Telephone services are now moving back to the cloud, but with a difference. This time it's IP communications rather than switched circuits. It’s also not about a monolithic public network but private networking services with competitive features that go way beyond what the original telephone network was engineered to provide.

The new cloud communications offerings also go by the title of hosted PBX. The idea is that it is more efficient to establish a large IP switching center with a dedicated expert staff than for every business to be its own telephone company. The business users need only have the telephone handsets, speakerphone and similar desk equipment connected to their local networks. The large, expensive and hard to maintain switch moves out to the cloud.

Therein lies the key to cloud communications. It’s the rise of converged IP networks to handle voice, video and data, replacing separate dedicated networks for each. Once you’ve installed SIP phones on your LAN, it seems a bit inefficient to send that traffic to an in-house IP PBX system that connects to the PSTN with specialized analog and digital trunk lines. Why not keep all of the traffic on the converged network as long as possible?

That’s what XO says. They’ve built their business by creating an enormous fiber optic network footprint to provide digital connectivity to both businesses and other service providers. With an extensive converged network already in place, it’s logical for XO to add value by providing telephony solutions in their cloud. This way you have only one supplier for both network connectivity and the communication services running on that network.

The enterprise cloud communications model works especially well for companies with more than one business location. XO can tie your headquarters, regional offices and branches together as if they were in a single large facility. The converged WAN network give you all the standard calling features you expect in an enterprise telephone system plus high definition video conferencing and the ability to include mobile phones in a unified communications system. These communications services are priced on a per-seat-per-month basis.

Are you interested in upgrading your business communications while avoiding a massive capital investment? Look into future proofing your voice, data and video with hosted services in the cloud. Get pricing, features and availability on SMB and enterprise cloud communications services now.



Note: Photo of clouds and building courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Ethernet Exchange For Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles

It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the replacement for the Public Switched Telephone Network may well be Carrier Ethernet. More evidence for this is the expansion of Ethernet Exchanges that allow carriers to transport each other’s traffic. Telx, a major colocation and interconnection service company, has just added Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles to its suite of Ethernet Exchange facilities nationwide. Let’s take a look at why Ethernet Exchange matters and how it influences the direction of international wide area networking.

The century long dominance of the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network can be attributed to its universal acceptance. Every phone can connect to every other phone in the world and work correctly. This network has been adapted for data and well as voice service for worldwide connectivity. It’s a circuit switched rather than packet switched network, but with proper interfacing and protocol conversion it gets the job done.

Another model of universal connectivity is the Internet. The Internet is an IP network that is based on packet switching rather than circuit switching. Isn’t the Internet the model to emulate for the next generation in commercial connectivity?

Actually neither the PSTN nor the Internet are ideal for high performance network services. The PSTN has a telephone legacy and is organized around small independent channels bundled together to create larger amounts of bandwidth. It’s also a different set of protocols than are running on a majority of the world’s data networks. The Internet was designed by the government for survivability in the event of war or natural disaster. As such, it’s so autonomous that routes can change spontaneously and there is no such thing as class of service or guarantee of bandwidth, jitter, latency or packet loss.

Carrier Ethernet seems like the ideal protocol for today’s metropolitan and long haul networking. After all, the network most likely to need transport is running Ethernet in the LAN. More and more, that’s converged voice, data and video over Ethernet. When you go to the trouble of carefully engineering your internal networks, it only makes sense to expect to link those networks transparently.

The only fly in the ointment has been network reach. The companies most active in deploying Carrier Ethernet services have not had protected monopolies like the old telcos nor government R&D like the Internet. These are commercial companies, some with legacy telco assets and some with all-new IP core fiber optic networks. While each competitor may have thousands of buildings on-net, nobody blankets the Earth.

Here enters the Ethernet Exchange. The idea is a facility that enables Ethernet network operators to exchange traffic. By doing this, each carrier increases the reach of its network into the footprint of other carriers. Even Ethernet Exchanges can partner. Telx has a partnership with Neutral Tandem to provide access to each other’s exchange locations.

With demand for Ethernet services growing rapidly each year, cooperation benefits all parties involved in transporting high bandwidth Metro and Carrier Ethernet services. Ethernet connections are now available in metropolitan areas throughout the US and in many countries around the world. The cost advantage, scalability and portfolio of services available with Ethernet is working to establish Ethernet as the new WAN networking standard at the expense of legacy telecom services.

Have you been missing out by not taking advantage of Ethernet connectivity for your business? Get pricing and availability for Ethernet network services now. You may be surprised by what’s become available only recently.

Smoothstone’s Converged IP Cloud Expanding To Europe

Smoothstone IP Communications, an innovator in the new field of cloud-based unified communications, is expanding its service portfolio to include European locations. Could this be the start of a cloud that covers the Earth?

You bet it is. Thanks to international MPLS connectivity, it is now feasible to port any IP service to anywhere on Earth. That’s the beauty of MPLS networks. They take whatever you’ve got and transport it anywhere users can connect to the network.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. There’s a matter of scaling involved. Servers that easily handle the load for a limited universe of users in a regional area can become quickly overloaded when a tsunami of new users joins the network from a global footprint. Likewise, the core network has to have the bandwidth needed to handle the increased traffic without degrading latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics.

Smoothstone has addressed these issues, partially by expanding their cloud-based applications platform into several European data centers. That removes a potential bottleneck that could form if all packets needed to be processed through a single U.S. data center. It also makes call termination to off-net European phones easier and less costly.

One of the advantages that Smoothstone touts for moving enterprise voice services to their IP cloud is that internal phone calls stay on the network even when those calls are transatlantic to the UK, France, Germany or Switzerland. It’s only when calls need to be terminated to the PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) that connection costs are incurred. The more local the call termination, the cheaper it is. That argues for geographically diverse data centers and central office equipment to support telephony in the cloud.

What is also significant is that Smoothstone is not merely another VoIP service provider. The heart of their competitive portfolio is unified IP communications services. That means converged voice and data services to gain the cost advantages that come from deploying one network among business locations rather that separate telephone and data networks. Convergence can be a tricky proposition for time sensitive applications like network voice. If not done properly, VoIP calls can degrade into clipped and garbled conversations. Calls can even be dropped in extreme cases.

MPLS networking is especially suited to supporting converged voice and data. Not only are multiple protocols supported, but these privately owned and operated networks are carefully managed to ensure Quality of Service (QoS) at all times. For companies that want to unify their communications among multiple locations, it’s hard to argue against a solid MPLS core network. Now smoothstone is taking a leadership position to expand the very same converged services to include European cities. By the end of 2010, they expect to be providing applications and services across Europe.

Is your company still suffering from last century’s networking solutions? Have you been stymied by the process of creating unified communications that delivers the quality of service you require? What you need is the right provider with assets and resources to deliver the right solution for your size of operation and be able to seamlessly scale up as your business level increases. See how Smoothstone and other cloud networking services can provide the connectivity you need at a cost that makes sense.

How Voice over MPLS Expands Enterprise VoIP

Medium and large enterprises have been converting from traditional telephone and computer connections to VoIP over converged networks. The reasons are higher productivity and lower costs. But what happens when you connect your phones and computer network to the outside world? Do you lose the advantage of your enterprise VoIP technology?

Sadly, for some businesses, this is the case. Everything is efficiently connected over a high performance local area network. That network stops at the edge of the premises. In order to connect with other business locations, both voice and data must be transmitted over common carrier telecom services. This is true for each location. There is one architecture for the internal network and quite a different one for the transport service.

Typical interfaces include a PBX telephone system that connects to multiple outside telephone lines. These may be individual analog business lines or a digital ISDN PRI trunk line. In either case, the PSTN or Public Switched Telephone Network is used to make calls to both outside phones and the phone systems of the other company locations.

Computer networking is handled with point to point dedicated lines, often set up in a star network with headquarters doing the routing for all locations. This works well, but can be quite expensive when locations are on different coasts or in nearly every state. Add international locations and costs skyrocket.

What’s a better solution? The latest technology is MPLS networking. An MPLS network is a privately operated “cloud” network that uses a special tag switching system instead of IP routers to manage traffic. MPLS networks offer quality of service mechanisms so that real-time traffic, like voice and video, are unaffected by simultaneous data file transfers. That makes MPLS networks ideally suited to extending converged networks among as many locations as needed.

How can this benefit your organization? By interconnecting all of your locations through an MPLS network, you can create a seamless internal voice and data network for telephones and computer connections. Using an MPLS network to carry telephone traffic is known as VoMPLS or Voice over MPLS.

With VoMPLS, all of your internal telephone calls stay off the public phone network and you avoid toll charges. Only when you need to make an outside call do you need to connect to the PSTN. This can be an enormous cost savings compared to your monthly phone bill now. Similarly, the cost of using an MPLS network for file transfers can be considerably less than the cost of all those dedicated lines and the effort it takes to maintain a proprietary network. Plus, any productivity enhancements you’ve achieved by converging your voice and data networks can be shared among your other business locations.

Can Voice over MPLS technology offer you a significant cost reduction? Why now get cost quotes for a VoMPLS networking solution to links all of your business locations? The savings and performance can be impressive.

What is a PRI in VoIP?

We tend to think of VoIP as a “new generation” phone service based on IP technology unrelated to the historical public switched telephone network. Well there’s some truth in that, but no matter what you implement you’ll still be dealing with the good old PSTN. The bigger your company or organization, the more “outside” phone lines you’ll need. You should take a close look at ISDN PRI to make the connection to all the phones that are not part of your enterprise VoIP telephone system.

What is a PRI? It stands for Primary Rate Interface. That’s telephony talk for a particular standard related to another telephone industry term, ISDN. ISDN is the Integrated Services Digital Network. There’s a history to the development of ISDN that relates to the once lofty ambition of replacing all analog home and business phone lines with digital versions. You may not have heard of this, as it fizzled when broadband Internet came along and usurped the data role intended for ISDN. Even so, the business version persists and is more popular now than ever. That’s what’s called PRI or ISDN PRI or even T1 PRI.

Why T1 PRI? It’s because ISDN PRI is physically transported on a T1 line. T1 is another telephone industry standard widely used in business for dedicated Internet and point to point data connections. T1 lines have the advantages of being provisioned on copper wires so you don’t need fiber optics installed. They can be extended to nearly any distance, are highly reliable and reasonably priced. The pricing has gotten really attractive lately due to all the competition in the industry. With all this going for it, T1 makes a great choice to carry PRI.

What’s different between a regular T1 line and a T1 PRI line? The line speeds and voltages are the same. What differentiates a PRI is how it is organized. Instead of a big chunk of bandwidth, ISDN PRI is set up as 23 channels that each represent one digital telephone line. A 24th channel is used for signaling and data such as Caller ID. It’s an upgrade to an older T1 telephone standard that was set up as 24 phone channels and no Caller ID.

The beauty of bringing in an ISDN PRI line or “trunk”, as it is called, is that you get 23 outside phone lines coming in on a single digital line. It’s a lot more compact and is almost always cheaper, usually a lot cheaper, than dealing with 24 individual analog business lines.

The interface is also generally very easy. Most PBX and IP PBX telephone systems either come with ISDN PRI capability or offer it through a plug-in module you can buy. All the circuitry to convert between 23 individual phone lines and the PRI digital trunk are implement on that circuit board. You simply plug-in one or more ISDN PRI lines and you have outside phone lines and a lot of them.

But why would you connect a T1 PRI to a VoIP phone system rather than keep it 100% VoIP? The simple explanation is that the rest of the world isn’t serviced by VoIP or at least the same VoIP provider. The only thing universal is the PSTN, where you can dial any number and get connected to any telephone in the world. Your enterprise VoIP phone system can save you a bundle on internal calls that stay on your own network. You can also buy a SIP Trunk that connects you to a telephone service provider completely in IP or Internet Protocol. But, guess what happens at that service provider when you want to call an outside number? That’s right. You’ll be switched through to the ISDN PRI lines that connect them to the public phone network.

Which is the best deal for your company when it comes to analog (POTS) phone lines, ISDN PRI or SIP trunking? Why not let an expert consultant get you competitive quotes for these various options so you make an informed decision? The service is fast, easy and free.

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.