Best VoIP Providers For Business

Have you been thinking about making the move from multi-line analog or PRI trunk phone service to VoIP, but unsure about how well it will work? Here are some ideas and recommendations about what you can achieve and how to proceed successfully.

VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is also called “network voice” to distinguish it from traditional wireline phone service. The key word is “network.” VoIP is designed to run on computer networks rather than the proprietary telephone technologies we’ve been using for the last century. In fact, on the network, voice is just another service running along with data, video and streaming audio. Every service generates packets that are transported from source to destination using routers and switches on the network.

This presents a huge cost savings opportunity for larger businesses. Having one network to carry all traffic saves over having to maintain separate telephone and data networks. It’s less of an issue for smaller companies, although there are also cost savings in having one service provider connection instead of different telephone and broadband lines.

Where VoIP has gotten a dicey reputation is from using the Internet as both a telephone line and a broadband data service. The Internet wasn’t designed for high quality two-way voice conversations, so it’s a hit and miss proposition as to how good the voice quality of your conversations will be. Some calls may sound as good or better than the best analog line. Others will sound distorted and slightly delayed so that you and the other party cut off each other’s conversations. Residential users may not find this variable performance all that annoying, so they’re happy with the savings they get from dumping their analog landlines in favor of using their broadband Internet connection for both phone and computer service.

Business users who want clear conversations with their customers at all times have some better performing options available. Medium and larger companies will opt for a private line or MPLS network connection to their phone system provider. This is also called a SIP Trunk after the Session Initiation Protocol standard used for VoIP switching. A SIP trunk can support multiple simultaneous phone conversations, similar to an ISDN PRI trunk that is used with in-house PBX telephone systems.

Note that the type of VoIP service we’re talking about here is remotely hosted telephone switching at a service provider’s location. This is also known as Hosted VoIP, Hosted PBX, or communications in the cloud.

Small companies can also benefit from Hosted PBX service even if they have only a few to a few dozen telephones. In this case, the SIP Trunking provider supplies your business with an Integrated Access Device (IAD) that uses the SIP trunk to deliver both telephone and broadband Internet service. Unlike residential broadband phone service, the SIP trunk keeps the voice and data packets from interfering with each other. That maintains your voice quality on telephone calls. The phones have priority. Any bandwidth they are not using is automatically assigned as broadband Internet bandwidth. With some providers, you may also elect to plug existing analog phones into the IAD. This is called an analog handoff.

Another service that can provide both Internet and telephone service is Cable business broadband and telephone bundled service. You have one line coming into your office in the form of a coaxial cable. This cable carries telephone, broadband Internet and even television. Quality of service is maintained by keeping the telephone, television and Internet services in their own channels on the cable. Your phone service is VoIP technology, but your phone calls never touch the Internet. They just ride their own channel of the cable to a switching system that connects to the public telephone system. Note that to make this work, you need to get both your business broadband and phone service from the same Cable provider, like Comcast.

Are you interested in learning more about the advanced features and quality of service protections for VoIP service? Get features and pricing from the best VoIP providers for business telephone service now.

VoIP Trunk Service Providers

Any business with more than a few outside phone lines knows that trunk lines are the way to go. The next question is what type of trunk service to get. You might think that with a VoIP telephone system, the obvious choice is SIP Trunking. But is it? Take a closer look at what’s available and then decide.

The idea of telephone trunking originated with the phone companies back when Ma Bell ran the industry. When phones were new, a couple of wires were all you needed to connect from your location to the local phone company. Then everybody wanted a phone and businesses started installing switchboards to handle all the lines they needed. You know those old-timey photos of phone line congestion in the cities. That’s what happens when you build out one line at a time.

The mass of subscriber lines was gotten under control using multi-pair cable, often buried. But long distance lines between switching offices were another matter. The more simultaneous calls you carried, the more wires were needed. That gets expensive fast when you’re talking about dozens or hundreds of miles. Wouldn’t it be nice if one pair of wires could carry multiple conversations?

That’s the origin of the trunk line. The early systems were set up like radio stations on the dial, except over wires. Each call modulated its own carrier frequency that was spaced far enough in the spectrum from adjacent carriers so that they wouldn’t interfere. This was analog carrier telephony. The switch from analog to digital technology came with the T1 line. It’s been around for at least half a century and is still going strong.

T1 telephone trunks are divided into 24 separate channels, each transporting one two-way telephone call. All the dialing and switching is done on these channels, just as it would be on analog phone lines. You can get devices called channel banks to convert T1 to and from 24 analog phone lines at your office. The T1 line itself is two twisted pair running from your building to the nearest phone company central office.

The advantage of T1 lines as telephone trunks is that save a lot of wire and can save cost, too. There is no economy of scale when you buy your phone lines one at a time. Soon you have a dozen or two at the price of a dozen or two times the cost of one line. If you convert all those lines into a T1 telephone line (trunk), you’ll generally save money even if you only use half the capacity of the T1. If you need dozens of lines for your call center, T1 can save you a bundle.

Chances are that you won’t need a channel bank unless your phone system is completely analog. Most PBX systems have T1 ports already installed. Even the new IP PBX systems designed for VoIP telephones usually have T1 ports where you just plug in one or more T1 lines for your outside telephone service.

A closely related service that is even more popular than T1 telephone trunks is ISDN PRI. This service runs on a T1 line and is very similar to a T1 trunk. The difference is that only 23 channels are used for individual phone lines. The remaining channel is used for all the dialing, switching and data such as Caller ID. The switching is faster than with T1 telephony and most everyone wants Caller ID anyway. The port for this is called a PRI, ISDN PRI or T1 PRI an it is likely installed in your system now.

The other digital trunk option that is becoming popular thanks to VoIP is the SIP Trunk. SIP is the switching protocol used with IP telephones in a VoIP system. A SIP Trunk, which might also be carried on a T1 line, is not broken up into channels. Instead it is more like your local area network that transports Ethernet packets.

This is one of the big advantages of a SIP Trunk. It can connect directly to your network without having to convert from one protocol to another. In fact, just like your network carries both VoIP phone traffic and computer data traffic, a SIP Trunk can provide both telephone and broadband service from your service provider. This is the preferred arrangement, as it allows the provider to establish class of service controls to maintain voice quality regardless of other network traffic.

As you might suspect, an IP PBX system works well with a SIP Trunk. But SIP trunks can also be ordered with customer premises equipment that offers a T1 or ISDN PRI digital handoff or even analog phone lines.

Which type of telephone trunking service is right for your business? Compare prices, availability and options of T1, PRI and SIP Trunks to see what makes the best economic as well as technical sense for your particular situation.



Etching of phone lines in New York City circa 1890 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

PRI Phone Line Connections

Traditional analog business phone lines are useful in very small retail and office locations and any business where just a few outside lines are all you need. Once you accumulate more than half a dozen, it’s time to look at a telephone trunk like option like ISDN PRI.

ISDN PRI stands for Integrated Services Digital Network Primary Rate Interface. Now you know why they abbreviate it. ISDN is a set of standards for how to transmit phone calls digitally on ordinary telephone wire. PRI is the larger of two major options. The other, BRI or Basic Rate Interface, provides two telephone lines, one telephone and one 64 Kbps data line, or a 128 Kbps data line. It’s mostly used for low speed data connections or to transmit high quality audio for broadcast and production.

PRI is the business telephone trunk service that is highly popular for use with PBX phone systems. PRI is transmitted on a T1 line using two twisted copper pair. Chances are you are already familiar with T1 lines for dedicated Internet access at 1.5 Mbps. ISDN PRI, also called T1 PRI, uses the same T1 line technology. In fact, T1 lines were originally designed to transport telephone conversations in bulk between telco switching offices.

What do you get with ISDN PRI service? A single trunk can support up to 23 separate phone conversations, each in its own time division multiplexed channel. Think of these as the equivalent of 23 outside lines. Each line can be set up for local, long distance, incoming only, outgoing only, toll free or some combination. There are actually 24 channels on the T1 line. The last one is reserved for switching signals to support the other 23 plus data such as Caller ID.

ISDN PRI lines almost always plug into an interface card made especially for this purpose. There’s at least one in most PBX phone systems. Some have four or more ISDN PRI connectors so that you can add dozens of outside lines if your operation is large enough to need them. Call centers are big users of ISDN PRI, as are large business offices.

PRI pricing has been getting better over the years, following the declining cost of T1 lines. A few years ago, PRI became more cost effective when you exceeded 10 or 12 outside phone lines. Today, that number is more like 6 or 10 lines, depending on where you are located.

Other than analog phone lines, the direct competitor to ISDN PRI is SIP Trunking. PRI is a traditional telephone technology that connects your PBX system to the public switched telephone network. SIP Trunking is a packet based technology originally designed to support enterprise VoIP telephone systems. SIP Trunks connect directly to converged networks for enterprise VoIP support and can supply both phone and Internet service for smaller companies. SIP Trunks can also be ordered with analog, IP or PRI handoffs to connect to any PBX telephone system.

What type of telephone trunk line is best for your particular situation? Consider the interfaces you have available and get competitive prices and availability for business telephone lines and trunks to make a good decision.

Virtual Hosted PBX VoIP

There are various ways to implement VoIP. Some of them are excellent, others fall short of the mark. What you had in mind for VoIP in the first place was to save money and gain features. What you want to ensure is that the quality of your voice conversations will not suffer in the process.

That’s a tall order, but the technology is available to do exactly what you have in mind. The problem is that it can be a little tricky to get working properly. You can greatly increase your chances of having a successful implementation by getting some help with the installation. Not just by hiring a consultant, mind you. Move the tricky and expensive aspects of VoIP telephony to an expert provider and avoid the engineering and maintenance nightmare completely.

That’s the idea behind Virtual PBX systems, also called Hosted PBX. The PBX system itself has long been a fixture at most medium and larger size companies. There may not even be anyone on staff who remembers the day when all you had was a few phones and the telephone company took care of all that fancy switching. In a way, we’re moving back to that model of having just phones within the company and doing the connections elsewhere. The difference is mostly in the technology.

The first thing to know about virtual phone systems is the disappearance of the traditional telco wiring. That was the standard connection for analog telephones. Digital phones don’t need their own separate telephone network. They can ride along on the Ethernet LAN, along with all the computing equipment.

Phones do need a connection to your telephone service provider. That’s called a SIP Trunk. A SIP Trunk works like the ISDN PRI or T1 Phone line that connects to an in-house PBX system. The advantage of the SIP trunk is that it transports packets of all types. These can be voice packets from a telephone or data packets from the Internet. Some of the packets are switching signals for the telephones. They use a standard called Session Initiation Protocol which is where the term SIP comes from.

The phones that you use on the network are called IP phones. They look like a standard business phone with an RJ-45 network connector on the back in place of the usual telephone line jack. They are either powered by AC adaptors or over the network itself. This is called POE for Power over Ethernet. Some Ethernet switches offer this capability and save you the trouble of using AC adaptors. The switch can also provide battery backup so you can use your phones during a power outage.

The PBX system itself is located at the service provider. A hosted PBX or cloud PBX system is much larger than anything you’d buy for your own use. It’s operated and maintained by a dedicated staff so you don’t have to worry about outages, repairs or upgrades. What you have is a portal to that PBX system so that you can register your phones and decide on how the features work. All the in-house conversations are on the network so there aren’t per-minute charges. For calls that go outside, the hosted PBX has lines to the public telephone network. The economy of scale is so large that you can often get unlimited local and long distance calling as part of the per-seat monthly charge.

Are you considering a phone system installation, replacement or upgrade? Before you simply go the traditional route, check Virtual Hosted PBX VoIP service prices and see if it makes a lot more sense to rent rather than buy your business telephone system.

Why NOT to Buy a New PBX

For decades, the standard answer to a failing business phone system or one that had run out of capacity was to install a new PBX in a process known as a “fork lift upgrade.” A new PBX is something like a new car. You get higher performance, greater reliability and more capacity. So now that you are in the market for a shiny new PBX or IP PBX, the best one to buy may be none at all.

What? You mean hang on to that old junker that’s almost impossible to keep running? No, not at all. Don’t go out and spend a thousand dollars or much more on yet another PBX box. Instead, look at a hosted PBX solution.

Hosted PBX, also called Hosted VoIP or PBX in the cloud, is a service rather than a product. You simply remove your old PBX and don’t put anything in its place.

Oh, then what do the phones plug into?

The phones will plug into your computer network. Nearly every company has a LAN with Ethernet jacks for each desk and office. You are used to having two separate networks in your company. One for the telephones and one for the computers. A hosted solution is based on a converged voice and data network, which is the Ethernet LAN that you have now. Larger companies have long ago converged their voice and data networks to take advantage of enterprise VoIP solutions. Small and medium size businesses can do the same. What’s important in a converged network is that voice packets have priority over data packets so that phone call quality is maintained regardless of the load on the network.

Clearly, you can’t just plug your old telephones into the LAN. The connectors are different sizes. That’s for good reason. Standard analog telephone equipment is completely incompatible with computer networking standards. There are two ways to resolve this. Either put network adaptors on each phone or replace the phones with newer IP phones that already have standard network interface cards built-in. You’ll probably want to use IP phones because they support more features over the network.

What do the phone lines connect to? There won’t be any outside lines connecting to your building like there are now. In other words, no analog business lines and no ISDN PRI. All the outside lines are connected to the hosted PBX at the service provider. You connect to that service provider using a line called a SIP Trunk. This can be a T1 line or Ethernet over Copper configured for SIP Trunking service.

I should mention that SIP Trunking can be setup to support your current analog telephones and wiring directly. In this case, the provider installs a piece of equipment called an IAD or Integrated Access Device. The IAD splits the SIP Trunk into telephone lines and broadband Internet service. In other words, it supports the two separate networks that you have now.

The whole reason you installed a PBX in the first place was to gain control of your internal calls and manage the sharing of multiple outside lines. The hosted PBX does the same thing from afar. Your internal calls stay on the network so that you don’t pay for office to office calls. Outside calls connect to the public telephone network at the cloud service provider.

A hosted PBX does some tricks that your old PBX doesn’t. You can have offices in many different cities all on the same phone system. You can also have local phone numbers in cities where you have customers but no physical office. Callers may dial a local number in Bangor, Maine and you’ll answer it in Phoenix, Arizona.

A major advantage of hosted telephone services is that you don’t have to come up with large amounts of capital to purchase a PBX system nor hire the staff to maintain it. That’s all handled for you by the service provider. They buy a much larger PBX system and have the staff available around the clock to maintain it and handle any problems that arise. You pay by the month for service, which often includes unlimited local and national calling plus a wealth of features to make office operations efficient. Some providers even include the IP phones in your service plan.

Are you getting ready for a telephone system upgrade? Don’t go out for a bank loan yet. Instead, get a quote for cloud hosted PBX telephone service and see if paying by the seat per month rather than making a big investment makes more sense for your business.

SIP Trunking and Internet On a T1

Lots of smaller companies have T1 lines for dedicated Internet access. They installed these lines after frustration with consumer-grade broadband options didn’t perform well enough or were unavailable due to location. T1 gives them highly reliable, rock solid bandwidth at prices that have declined steadily over the years. They love their T1 lines. What they may be unaware of, however, is that they could be getting both broadband and telephone service over that same T1 line.

Traditional T1 line service comes in a number of flavors. The original implementation for the telephone industry consists of 24 channels of digitized telephone service on two pair of twisted copper phone wires. A device called a channel bank converts the multiplexed digital signal to and from 24 individual analog business phone lines.

A more popular version of the T1 telephone line is called ISDN PRI. It’s very popular with companies that have their own in-house PBX telephone system. With ISDN PRI, you get 23 outside lines plus a switching and data channel that speeds up connections and provides Caller ID for the phones.

Yet another implementation of T1 is the T1 data line. This version supplies point to point data connections between business locations or dedicated Internet access. The bandwidth is 1.5 Mbps for a single T1 line, but multiple lines can be bonded together to increase bandwidth to as high as 10 or 12 Mbps.

Most companies have a T1 line for data or Internet access plus separate telephone service, or one T1 for broadband Internet and a separate ISDN PRI to run the phone system. Smaller companies don’t get involved with multiple T1 lines because they only have a few office phones and don’t need 23 outside lines. They simply pay one phone bill for the number of business lines they have and a separate bill for their T1 service.

An option that may work just as well and save small businesses money is to have both the telephone service and Internet broadband on the very same T1 line. A conventional T1 line isn't intended to do this. It is set up to work as a telephone trunk line or a high speed data line. The configurations aren’t interchangeable. However, there is another flavor of T1 service that does provide the dual function of voice with data.

The traditional name for this service is Integrated T1. The latest offerings are called SIP trunking or SIP trunking with Internet.

What’s the difference? Actually, they are more alike than different. The way it works is that the service provider installs a device called an IAD or Integrated Access Device at each end of the T1 line. This device combines voice and data by converting them to a common protocol, which happens to be IP packets. Once in packet format, the IAD can manage line bandwidth to ensure that voice packets have priority over data packets so that telephone call quality is maintained no matter what sort of Internet activity is taking place.

Line bandwidth is shared. If there are no calls in progress, all 1.5 Mbps is used for broadband Internet. When a phone is picked up, bandwidth for that call, typically 90 Kbps or less, is reserved for that call. The rest is still used for the Internet. Note that the phone calls don’t actually go over the Internet. They simply share the T1 line connection to the service provider. The more calls that are simultaneous in progress, the more bandwidth is reserved for voice packets and the bandwidth for Internet access is proportionally reduced.

This process is sometimes called dynamic T1 or dynamic line service to reflect that the proportioning between voice and data is handled automatically. So, where does SIP trunking come in?

SIP is the switching protocol for VoIP phones. SIP trunking is a process of providing public phone system lines to a VoIP telephone system using the native Session Initiation Protocol. A SIP trunk will connect directly to your IP PBX for IP phones. It can also be configured to offer an analog handoff so you can use the analog business phones you have now.

What’s exciting about SIP Trunking and Internet on a T1 line is that it can often be less expensive than buying a T1 line and phone service separately. One company that specializes in this product is Vocal IP Networx. They can save you money by providing a single telecom bill each month at a cost that may well be less than what you pay now for the same quality of service.

Do you suspect that you might save money by consolidating your telephone and Internet service with one provider? If so, get competitive pricing for SIP Trunking and Internet on a T1 line and similar services and see if this option makes sense for you.

Business Broadband and Phone Comparison

Small and medium size businesses have a need for both broadband Internet access and business telephone service. Years ago, the answer was easy. Order a broadband service from an Internet Service Provider and then go visit the telephone company and order your business phone lines. These are still viable options, but today you have much more to choose from.

Most smaller businesses have limited bandwidth requirements, a fairly small collection of phones and very limited budgets. What often makes the most sense is a bundled service that includes both telephone and broadband service from the same provider. There are two primary bundled services that both offer a cost savings compared to buying your phone and Internet service separately.

The first is the integrated product known as Integrated T1 service or SIP Trunking. They both use the same technique of line sharing but differ in the connection method. Depending on your location, you may get a T1 line or an Ethernet line service.

Integrated services are based on the principle that one incoming line is cheaper than two. Unlike consumer broadband phone services that combine voice and data packets willy-nilly, Integrated T1 and SIP trunks use integrated access devices at each end to keep the voice and data separate. Both give priority to voice packets. When someone picks up a phone or answers a ringing line, the bandwidth to support that phone call is reserved for the duration of the call. When the phone hangs up, that bandwidth is released to the pool.

What’s is the bandwidth pool? That’s what’s used for your broadband Internet service. Let’s say you have an integrated T1 lines and no phones are in use. The full line bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps is used for broadband access. If nobody is using the Internet, say in the middle of the night, that line just runs idle.

The flip side of the coin is when you have a dozen phones in use. Those consume half the bandwidth of the T1 line. Your broadband speed sags to 750 Kbps, which can be no trouble at all for smaller companies using the Internet for credit card verification, email, Web browsing and online ordering.

SIP trunking works like Integrated T1 in that both manage the line bandwidth and prioritize telephone calls over Internet access. That way your phone quality is maintained and the variations in broadband bandwidth may not even be noticeable. If they are, you are simply trying to do to much with too small a service. T1 lines can be bonded and Ethernet based SIP Trunks offer a wide range of bandwidths to speed things up.

You might think that SIP trunking implies a VoIP phone system. Actually, you can configure the handoff to your internal phones to be analog, SIP based VoIP or ISDN PRI for a PBX telephone system. Similar handoff options are available for Integrated T1 lines.

A competitor to the integrated services of Integrated T1 and SIP trunking is Cable broadband. The Cable systems is organized differently, with everything assigned to channels. That’s because TV stations have always had assigned channels. Now there are channels on the Cable system that carry stations that have no over the air presence. Other channels can be assigned to carry broadband Internet or telephone calls.

The channelization of cable maintains the separation of voice, data and video so that they don’t interfere. You can order telephone and business broadband from your Cable provider. You can also include TV if you have the type of business with a public waiting room, like a auto service center or doctor’s office.

Which option is best for your company? Compare business broadband and phone options for pricing, features and availability to make the best decision for your particular needs.

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.

What Is a PRI Line?

PRI lines are popular for providing multi-line phone service to businesses. But just what is a PRI line and what options are available?

PRI is part of a telephone technology standard called ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network). It was envisioned as a digital line service that would replace analog telephone lines for both residential and business users. At the time that ISDN was being introduced, connections to the Internet were mostly dial-up using 56 Kbps modems at best. Many of those 56K modems really connected at something around 30 to 40 Kbps due to noise and other limitations on most phone lines. All-digital lines offered basic ISDN service with 64 Kbps data plus one standard telephone service on a single line.

This basic service is called BRI for Basic Rate Interface. It consists of 3 channels. There are two “B” or Bearer channels at 64 Kbps each that can be configured as either voice or data. That can be a 64K digital Internet connection and a phone line, 2 phone lines, or 2 combined data lines for 128 Kbps Internet. The third channel is called a “D” or Delta channel. It has only 16 Kbps, but is used for signaling and control.

If you’ve never heard of ISDN BRI it’s because it never took off. By the time it was starting to be deployed in a big way, technology had moved on and broadband over DSL and Cable was taking over the role of Internet access.

The second standard introduced with ISDN is PRI for Primary Rate Interface. This much higher bandwidth service offers 24 channels configured as 23 B + D. In this case the D channel bandwidth has increased to 64 Kbps just like the B channels. Why stick with 64K channels? It’s because 64 Kbps is just the right amount of bandwidth to transport one digitized telephone conversation using the industry standard G.711 coding standard.

You can configure a PRI circuit to carry voice, data or a combination. Some ISPs used these to connect to modem banks in the dial-up days. Today, the most popular use of ISDN PRI is for PBX telephone trunking with 23 outside voice lines and one control channel that also handles Caller ID for the other 23. Most PBX switches come already configured for at least one PRI line or can be interfaced with a plug-in card.

BRI was designed to be provisioned over the same twisted pair cable that brings in analog phone service. PRI is provisioned over T1 lines because of its higher capacity. T1 was designed to use 2 twisted pair of telco cable and is almost universally available as a standard business-grade digital telecom service.

Recently, another PRI option has become available. That is business grade telephone trunking provided by Cable companies, such as Comcast. The coaxial cable used to bring in television has tremendous capacity and easily supports broadband services up to 100 Mbps. The same cable can transport individual analog telephone lines or ISDN PRI to support a business PBX phone system. With Cable PRI, you may have the option to order fractional PRI service with as few as 6 phone lines. You can then add more, even one at a time, as your business needs increase.

Are you interested in lower cost multi-line business telephone service to support your in-house phone system? If so, get prices and availability for PRI line service options. Single line service and VoIP SIP trunking are also often available.

SMB Phone System Needs Only Phones

Anyone who wrestles with programming and maintaining an in-house phone system occasionally longs for the days when you just plugged in the phone, lifted the receiver and there was dial tone. Those days have returned with the rise of cloud communications systems.

The magic is in moving the complicated switching equipment to a service provider who keeps it up to date, well maintained and easily expanded when your needs change. The name of this service is Hosted VoIP or Hosted PBX. The hosted part means that someone else provides the bulk of the telephone system and the connectivity to the public switched telephone network. What you have in-house is the telephones.

These aren’t just any phones. They are IP phones designed to connect to computer networks rather than plugging into a phone outlet. The electrical signals are completely different, but then so are the connectors. That little RJ-11 telephone plug? It’s been replaced by a fatter RJ-45 plug. Does it look familiar? That’s because this is the same connector used by most computer equipment. In fact, your telephone has become a networked device, just like a PC or printer.

In a typical hosted VoIP system, you have a converged voice and data network that connects to both your telephones and other computer equipment. There are no separate telephone wires. Convergence is the process of making sure that one network can handle the very different requirements of data and voice. Phone conversations are very sensitive to network limitations such as latency, jitter and congestion that don’t bother data transfers or Internet access.

Does that mean that there is a problem with having broadband Internet access on the same network with your telephones? Not necessarily. In fact, the best enterprise VoIP solutions have voice, video, Internet, file transfers and other processes running simultaneously without conflict. The trick is engineering QoS or Quality of Service into the network so that different classes of packets don’t interfere. Just plugging everything into the LAN and hoping for the best is going to cause problems.

One trick in making VoIP work for business is to keep the telephone service off the Internet but allow the two to co-exist otherwise. Why? Because the Internet is great for data connections and one-way downloads of media such as audio and video. It’s the instantaneous two-way nature of phone conversations that can get compromised on a network designed for one way transfers that take whatever time is required to ensure every packet is sent and received correctly.

There’s a service of special interest to small and medium size businesses called SIP Trunking. A SIP trunk is the broadband connection between you and your service provider. This is a private line connection that is engineered to carry both phone service and broadband Internet. The two share the line but don’t Interfere. They are split at the service provider’s end, with the phone lines going to the hosted PBX and the broadband routed to the Internet.

Would you like to have only telephones to deal with in your business and leave management of the telephone system to someone else? If so, then it pays to look into Hosted VoIP Solutions to get the features you want without the cost and complexity of an in-house phone system.

More MPLS For MPLS

XO Communications, a major provider of Multi-Protocol Label Switching network services, is expanding network services in Minneapolis (MPLS), MN.

The Minneapolis-Saint Paul metropolitan area will benefit from a 190 route mile expansion of the XO metro network into the northern and eastern suburbs of Anoka, Blain, Crystal, Fridley, Maplewood, New Brighton and Shoreveiw in the Minnesota Twin Cities. In addition to more points of presence, XO is deploying its Ethernet over Copper (EoC) technology more broadly to make this scalable, high speed bandwidth service available to more businesses.

XO has been aggressively building out its 19,000 mile nationwide fiber optic network and promoting some of the hottest communications services, including Ethernet over Fiber (EoF), Ethernet over Copper, MPLS IP-VPN, Ethernet VPLS, Cloud Communications, Hosted VoIP and SIP Trunking solutions. Their capability includes speeds up to 40 Gbps to support the most demanding enterprise applications.

MPLS networks and Ethernet over Copper offer an especially cost effective way for businesses to link multiple branch offices, warehouses, retail outlets and headquarters operations within metropolitan areas and even nationwide. MPLS provides point to point or mesh networking with inherent security. EoC offers fast access over already installed wiring.

MPLS IP VPN networks are built on a technology quite different from what’s used on the Internet. The Internet is all about a public network with net neutrality, ease of access for all, and robust routing to work around equipment and line failures. Security is pretty much “bring your own.” MPLS networks are designed for limited access, quality of service controls and careful engineering of parameters such as latency, packet loss and jitter. Security is a feature of limited access and proprietary switching technology that makes outside intrusions much more difficult.

While the Internet is a wonderful resource for low cost connectivity from anywhere to just about anywhere else, it can fall short of the performance required for latency sensitive applications such as enterprise VoIP, video conferencing, financial trading, and mission critical business processes. XO’s MPLS network is fully managed to provide the required bandwidth and class of service needed to transport voice, data, video and converged network services.

Where Ethernet over Copper shines is in local point to point data links or last mile access to MPLS networks. Carrier Ethernet services like EoC and EoF provide a simple standardized Ethernet interface to company networks. Ethernet services tend to be more scalable than T-Carrier or SONET telecom connections, giving you more bandwidth options and faster provisioning on upgrades. Ethernet over Copper has the advantage of being able to be brought in on existing copper pair telco wiring at speeds from 2 to 20 Mbps. Finally, Ethernet connections are more often than not considerably less expensive that equivalent traditional bandwidth services.

Are you a Minneapolis-St. Paul area company, or a business located anywhere else, looking for a bandwidth upgrade or better pricing on the service levels you have now? If so, have a look at competitive pricing and availability of Ethernet and MPLS IP VPN network services. There are major savings to be had right now.



Note: Photo of downtown Minneapolis courtesy of Susan Lesch on Wikimedia Commons

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.

Managed IP Services Cloud

Cloud services are seeing a lot of interest lately, as companies look to reduce their capital expenditures for IT and gain capabilities they couldn’t otherwise afford. But did you know there are a wide range of IP services available in the cloud?

Cloud services can be in-house or private, or they can be purchased from a cloud services provider. Providers have a wide range of specialties. Some offer only remote storage. Others specialize in high performance computing. Still others offer alternatives to in-house telephone switching systems and even network security. What they all have in common is that their services run over IP networks. Hence, IP services or managed IP services.

The idea of managed services involves letting the carrier or services provider take over the job of making sure that everything is running correctly. Traditionally, that’s the job of the on-site IT staff who monitor what’s going on at all times and swing into action to make repairs whenever a fault occurs. Not every company can afford a 24/7 staff or even a full-time IT employee. Others may have a small staff that has gradually become overwhelmed as more and more applications have been turned up on the network. Managed services offer a way to offload some of this responsibility.

One basic managed service is the network WAN connection to the Internet. This could also be a private line between facilities or connections to an MPLS network to link multiple geographically diverse business locations. You often have the option of simply ordering a line service and then monitoring it yourself to ensure proper operation. The alternative is to have the carrier provide a router that allows them to monitor the line right up to the connection with your LAN. This is called a managed router or managed line service. Often you can get this management feature at no extra cost by shopping around.

The beauty of a managed router is that the carrier’s network operations staff is far larger than yours, available 24/7/365, and has the expertise in their own systems to rapidly troubleshoot and correct problems. It’s not uncommon to have a line failure in the middle of the night and have it back up and running before business hours commence. You may not even be aware than a fault occurred.

A step up from the managed line service is colocation of your servers and the bandwidth that feeds them to a carrier hotel or colocation center. You can elect to manage everything yourself or let the colo center staff handle server maintenance and repair, including any network connections.

Recently, Managed IP Telephony has become popular as an alternative to in-house PBX systems. Instead of a dedicated piece of switching equipment that you have to program and maintain, the telephony switch resides at the service provider. You connect by means of a network connection called a SIP Trunk. This assumes that you have converted to IP telephony or SIP phones and have converged your LAN for both voice and data.

SIP Trunking providers often go the extra step of providing both broadband Internet and telephone service on the same SIP trunk. This is a perfect interface to a converged local network that already transports both voice and data packets. Because the services and trunk line are fully managed, you are ensured that voice quality won’t suffer due to conflicts with data packets on the same line.

Would you like to ease the burden on your IT staff or avoid the capital expense of in-house facilities that may be more affordable in the cloud? If so, investigate Managed IP Services to see what’s available and compare costs.

2x2 Ethernet Takes on T-1

T1 lines have been the go-to commercial telecom service for small and medium businesses over the last decade. Now a challenger is taking on the venerable T1 line. It is a brand new service called 2x2 Ethernet that’s just been launched by MegaPath, a major nationwide competitive carrier. Let’s see what 2x2 Ethernet has to offer.

You might not think that T1 lines were subject to much competition. After all, the technology is half a century old and heavily entrenched. T1 was the first broadband digital line connection readily available to businesses. It came out of telephone company research and was used as a trunking system to transport telephone calls between switching centers long before it was offered to commercial companies. With repeater technology and the ability to be deployed over two unshielded twisted pair telco wires, T1 has risen to become dominant for digital telephone, point to point connections and dedicated broadband access.

Ethernet came out of the computer industry rather than telephony. Ethernet has grown to dominate local area networks for most companies. Until recently, Ethernet was considered a LAN technology and T1 was considered a WAN technology. There’s not much chance that T1 will move into the LAN, but Ethernet has been steadily encroaching on the metropolitan and wide area networks over the last few years. Now, it’s ready to make its move to take over the role that T1 lines still serve. But why?

Part of the answer is bandwidth. T1 lines offer a fixed 1.5 Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth. You get the same line speed in both the upload and download directions. Ethernet offers a variety of line speeds over both copper and fiber optic cables. The MegaPath 2x2 Ethernet runs at 2 Mbps for both upload and download. That’s a bit faster than T1, although the bandwidth increase alone isn’t what makes this service so attractive. In addition to the 33% increase in capacity, 2x2 Ethernet is easy to interface. The handoff from WAN to LAN is a standard Ethernet connector. No extra CSU/DSU interface circuitry is required, like you have with T1 lines.

What really makes the MegaPath 2x2 Ethernet service compelling is that it is priced less than a T1 line. Ethernet has enjoyed a per Mbps cost that often beats traditional telecom services, especially at the higher bandwidths. But this is a 2 Mbps service that costs less than a 1.5 Mbps service. Not only that, but you have a choice of configuring this service for either data only or voice plus data. With at least five lines of digital, analog or SIP trunking telephone service, the 2x2 Ethernet line cost is reduced even more. It would appear that we are in the twilight era of T1 dominance.

But what about availability? MegaPath has addressed this with Ethernet over Copper connections through 1,900 central offices nationwide. They estimate that over 90% of small and large businesses are within the footprint of one of these COs. MegaPath is actually a super CLEC or Competitive Local Exchange Carrier. The company is a merger of MegaPath, Covad and Speakeasy, all significant carriers in their own right.

Is your business in need of new connectivity or are you simply interested in seeing if you can get a better deal that what you’ve been paying for your existing T1 line service? If you have an older contract, that T1 might be costing you twice as much as it should. Find out for sure with a quick pricing and availability inquiry for Ethernet over Copper services. Higher bandwidths are also available for your more demanding applications.

Business VoIP Solution Options

You may be considering a move from a traditional analog or PBX business phone system to VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol telephony. Before you jump into a major “forklift upgrade,” you should know that there are a number of good business VoIP solutions to consider. Which one you pick will depend on your particular situation. Pick the right one and you’ll get the most for your telephony dollar.

Why even consider VoIP in the first place? The reason is to save money, add calling features or both. Let’s start with the needs of very small businesses and work our way up to enterprise solutions.

The smaller businesses will have one to four outgoing phone lines and under 10 handsets. This is typical of small sales offices, retail stores and independent professionals. You may well be using individual analog phone lines and perhaps 2 or 4 line phones that you can buy at office supply stores.

A system this small doesn’t justify a PBX phone system or PRI digital trunking. But you do have the option to change to a broadband phone or SIP trunking solution. Broadband phone is typified by the Phone Power VoIP service. You connect a device called an ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor to your broadband service, typically Cable Internet, and plug one or two telephones plus your computer or router into the ATA. You no longer need an analog telephone line because your broadband connection is used for both phone and Internet. A typical small office VoIP service plan costs $14.95 a month, but temporary special offers can make this even cheaper.

A step up from single phone number VoIP is called SIP trunking. This service uses a T1 line or other business grade private line to provide multiple line telephone service plus broadband to a small to medium size business. By using dynamic bandwidth management, phone calls have all the bandwidth they require for maximum call quality. Remaining bandwidth is assigned to Internet access. As calls hang up, the bandwidth they were using is automatically or dynamically reassigned for Internet service. This way the full capacity of the line is always put to good use.

Companies large enough to have an in-house key telephone or PBX system generally have many handsets and at least 6 to 10 outside lines. If your system is getting to the end of its useful life, you have the choice of replacing it with a newer IP PBX system or going with a hosted PBX solution. Hosted PBX means that you don’t have any PBX equipment in-house. Your service provider connects to SIP telephones or analog phones with adaptors on your LAN and performs both the internal and external call switching.

Enterprise VoIP telephony also consists of using SIP telephones in place of regular telephone handsets. These SIP phones allow you to converge your telephone and computer networks into a single LAN for both voice and data. You can choose to host an IP PBX system in-house or elect to go with a hosted PBX solution. The tradeoff is capital equipment cost and online maintenance versus paying a monthly fee to a service provider. Think of hosted PBX as a cloud service for business telephony. Even if you install and operate your own IP PBX system, you still have the option to use SIP trunking to connect with a service provider that will terminate outside calls to the public telephone system. The more traditional solution is to use ISDN PRI telephone trunks for the same purpose.

Which VoIP solution, if any, make the most sense for your organization? There are a lot of variables involved and many suppliers. Why not let an experienced Telarus telecom consultant help you compare costs and features of business VoIP solutions? Then make an informed decision to get the most for your telecom budget.

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.

What Leased Line Service Providers Offer

Most businesses get their telecommunication services from leased line service providers. That includes telephone, Internet, and point to point line services. You probably have some of these contracts yourself. But do you know about the cost reductions and all of the new services that have become available recently?

The nature of telecommunications services has changed dramatically in recent years. The two biggest changes are cost savings that come from a flurry of new competitive service providers and the introduction of new technologies that offer additional services.

You can still get most of the telecom services that were available a decade or so ago. The most popular line service is T-carrier, especially the T1 line. T1 is a telephone company technology and comes in several flavors. The original use was a digital trunk to carry multiple phone calls between telco switching centers or into a multi-line business phone system. An upgraded version of the T1 telephone line is called T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. It gives you up to 23 outside phone lines plus a data channel for dialing, switching and Caller ID. Nearly every PBX phone system and many key telephone systems can be easily configured to use T1 PRI.

Another use for T1 lines is to provide point to point connectivity between two business locations. A point to point T1 line offers 1.5 Mbps in both directions simultaneously. If you need more bandwidth than this, you can get bonded T1 service that combines multiple T1 lines up to about 10 or 12 Mbps total.

A related service is the T1 access line. This is a last mile connection to a larger network. At one time, the larger network was called Frame Relay. Nowadays, MPLS networks have taken over this role of connecting business locations on a regional, national or international basis. MPLS networks have the advantages of nearly unlimited bandwidth that can transport just about any voice, data or video protocol.

T1 Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is the choice for broadband Internet access for many smaller businesses. The cost is only a fraction of what it was a decade ago. As a professional grade telecom service, you enjoy a reliability and constant bandwidth not typical of consumer oriented services like DSL and Cable.

The new competition to T1 lines is coming from Carrier Ethernet services, including Metro Ethernet. Like T1, Ethernet is a wireline service. Also like T1, it is delivered on multiple twisted pair copper wiring for lower bandwidth services. That copper wiring is generally already installed for multi-line telephone service. Ethernet offers the same point to point and Internet connections you may be using with T1 lines now. But Ethernet can also give you layer 2 switched network service between several or more locations around town or over a wider area, including overseas offices.

Ethernet is gradually taking over from T1 in metropolitan areas where it is most available. A popular service is 3 Mbps Ethernet for about the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. For more demanding uses, 10 Mbps Ethernet is becoming a popular standard.

Once you get into the higher bandwidths, 45 Mbps and above, fiber optic cabling takes the place of twisted pair copper. DS3 is the T-carrier upgrade to T1. It is now delivered over SONET fiber optic services at 45 Mbps. The Ethernet equivalent is 50 Mbps Ethernet service, although Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps is an industry standard and the speed of many local networks. Like copper-based Ethernet services Ethernet over Fiber tends to offer much lower costs per Mbps than equivalent traditional SONET telecom services.

You should also know that both T1 and Ethernet services have an option to get both telephone and Internet over the same line. Integrated T1 is the legacy wireline service. SIP trunking is the IP service that gives you VoIP telephony and broadband Internet access.

Have you been wondering if you are paying too much for the wireline services you’ve just kept renewing over the years? Find out by getting up to date quotes for both Ethernet and T1 or SONET wireline services from dozens of competitive service providers. The range of services and their current costs may astound you.



Note: Photo of multipair cable courtesy of Wikimedia Commons