Telecom Sense!

Yes you can! It is very simple on our Hosted PBX System. By simply utilizing Hunt Groups or Call Centers you can easily do this.

Here is an example:

I will name one Hunt Group “CompanyABC” and assign it its own phone number (DID) and extension. I will then name a second Hunt Group “CompanyXYZ” and assign it its own phone number (DID) and extension.

I will then place a call to the phone number assigned to “CompanyABC”. This is what you will see on the Call manager and the physical phone.

Here you see on the Polycom Phone display the company that is being called (Hunt Group Name) followed by the Caller ID of the person calling in.

On the Call Manager POP UP you can see the Company name that is being called (Hunt Group Name) followed by the caller ID of person calling in.

Here is the second example:

I will place a call to the phone number assigned to “CompanyXYZ”. This is what you will see on the Call manager and the physical phone.

Here you see on the Polycom Phone display the Company that is being called (Hunt Group Name) followed by the Caller ID of the person calling in.

On the Call Manager POP UP you can see the Company name that is being called (Hunt Group Name) followed by the caller ID of the person calling in.

This is a very common request.  Most people don’t realize that this is possible without spending enormous amounts of money to purchase hardware.

The Hosted PBX will allow you to avoid having to spend money to buy equipment upfront.  This is a very good solution for most.

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

There are three generic deployment scenarios to consider. You will have to do some homework to determine which one is best for you. You will need to know what features you need and how many users you will have on your network. With this information, you will be able to determine which method will work for you. The preferred method is the Hosted PBX. With this method you will not have to worry about purchasing equipment, maintaining it or hiring staff to manage it. The other two methods may be needed only if your required features are not available in a Hosted PBX platform.

Hosted PBX:

1. With Today’s technology it is very common for a Phone Service provider to Host the phone system on their network. This is a Hosted PBX or as some people would know it as VoIP Service. You would essentially be outsourcing your Phone System.

Pros:
• You have a flat monthly cost.
• You don’t have to buy any equipment.
• No Startup Costs.
• No Installation costs.
• No need for qualified technicians to manage and maintain equipment. (Provided by Service Provider)
• No equipment warranty or extended warrantees are needed.
• No equipment installations at remote locations.
• Fast and simple web-based administration
• Large numbers of Features are available
• Advanced call and messaging functionality
• Reduced Operating costs
• Reliable, carrier-grade service
• Unlimited scalability.
• Office-to-Office calls are free.

Cons:
• Some Specialized Feature may not be available.

IP-PBX:

2. Second method if you have a need to physically own or if you have specific requirements, which can only be obtained with specific equipment. This method requires that the PBX (Phone system) support IP Stations.

Pros:
• You own and operate all equipment.
• You will have access to specialized features that may be vendor specific (Rare) and have determined the need for this specific phone equipment vendor.
• Only one PBX (Phone system) needs to be installed.
• No equipment installations at remote location.
• Reduced Operating costs
• Fast and simple web-based admin
• Office-to-Office calls are free.
• Scalable limited by the Phone System.

Cons:
• You own and operate all equipment.
• Large equipment Start-Up costs.
• Large Installation costs.
• Qualified technicians are needed to manage and maintain.
• Equipment warranty or extended warrantees are needed.
• High Performance IP WAN network must be implemented between remote sites to assure quality calls for all remote locations.

Traditional TDM PBX:

3. Last is the old method of deploying a phone system. This will require the installation of a PHX (Phone system) at each location.

Pros:
• You own and operate all equipment.

Cons:
• You own and operate all equipment.
• Large equipment Start-Up costs.
• Large Installation costs.
• Qualified technicians are needed to manage and maintain.
• Equipment warranty or extended warrantees are needed.
• Equipment needs to be installed at every location.
• Office-to-Office calls are not free.

All three scenarios are still viable today. With new technology the last scenario is hard to imagine for much longer. Most PBX’s sold today have some IP Station support. As the Hosted PBX platforms continue to develop and add features it wont be long before scenario one becomes the only viable option based on cost, functionality and ease of use.

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

Absolutely!  The Technology is awesome.  The horror stories come from the companies that deploy it.

VoIP is an IP service that is delivered over IP.  This means that the company that provides this service to you must be able to deliver IP at the quality level that you would expect to receive voice serves at.  Well, if you are thinking any old traditional phone company can do this you are very mistaken.  Most phone companies don’t have a clue how to deliver high quality IP services.  I have worked with a few companies that started out as ISP’s who have deployed the service successfully.

There are a few obvious deployment errors.  Anybody who will sell you VoIP services without you buying a link into their network doesn’t know what they are doing.
Ex. If you buy Internet access from one provider and VoIP service from another, you will have your own horror story.  Everybody assumes the Voice Over IP means “Voice over Internet”  Voice Over Internet doesn’t work.  There is not quality control.

The other major problem out there is the big names in Telecom don’t have the intellectual property to do it and especially don’t have the networks or policies to execute it.  They will sell you the services but you will experience the same issues and more than you did when you had traditional phone service with them.  They built out their IP Networks for low cost, NOT high performance.  They never intended or wanted to put voice on their IP networks.  This is why they are struggling today to provide VoIP quality products.  Some small providers wholesale these services and utilize these same networks.

Many IP providers are aggregating heavily into Frame Relay networks.  You will see the same performance on their T1 networks that you see with their DSL services.  What you want to look for is a provider that will drop your T1 circuits into the POP that delivers you to the Internet and links you to the VoIP switch.  This is the best scenario, But hard to find.

If you are considering VoIP you should only talk with providers than can give you both Internet and VoIP products.  Ask them how they will guarantee the quality.  Then consider whom you are doing business with.  If you ask them for VoIP and they don’t know what you are talking about you should move on.  Small companies are the best positioned to provide these services at high levels of quality.  The problem you will see here is that most of the small companies are startups that are operated by Traditional minded personnel.

Traditional Telecom mentality is what has un-necessarily dragged the VoIP products from taking off.  VoIP has been the clear choice for at least a decade.  Dealing with sub pare IP Networks and providers lead by the Telco Industry has really been a struggle.

You can take the telco worker out of the telco but you cannot take the telco out of the worker.   Well, not unless you have a little more than a decade to do it;)

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

No, not to the end user. Technically the T1 line is the connection between the Local Central Office and the Customer location and should all be the same. When you add services to the T1 line such as Internet Access then they differ greatly by providers.

T1 lines can provide a reliable connection between the customer building and the local central office, but that is all the T1 line does. From the local central office, the T1 is carried on a DS1 path to somewhere in the providers network.

Telecommunications providers have traditionally treated their IP networks as a secondary non-critical service. When they invested into their IP infrastructure they looked to save money and keep costs low. The problem they are now struggling with is that their IP networks perform poorly and the services that their customers are demanding will not work. By aggregating traffic into frame relay clouds they introduce latency fluctuations. It is very difficult to utilize these infrastructures to provide quality service for services such as Voice or MPLS services. An Internet T1 line on these networks is essentially “Reliable DSL Service”, high cost connection with cheap low quality bandwidth.

A high quality Internet T1 line will not have latency fluctuations. Since all T1 lines theoretically run at the same speed the bandwidth is not the issue. All T1 lines will give you 1.5Mb/s. In fact you can get more bandwidth out of a DSL line than on an Internet T1. But because DSL is unreliable and low cost they will not provide you quality bandwidth.

There are very few Telecommunications Providers that will give you a good quality Internet connection that will not experience large latency fluctuations. Their network designs are the key to performance and will usually cost a little more than your low cost Internet T1 providers. You will notice that when you add additional services such as voice or MPLS the costs for these services is less. It is easier to provide these services on a network that performs well.

Unfortunately the big names in the industry are the high priced service provider and are the biggest quality offenders. I would say you get what you pay for but that doesn’t seem to apply here. You just have to understand how the providers operate in order make an educated decision.

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

Satellites are very limited in their usability for business purposes. If you don’t have any other choice, it is a great alternative. You cannot do anything on it that is interactive, specifically video or voice. Anything that is session oriented (RDC, CITRIX) will be sluggish and could frustrate you to death.

If you are just moving files, email and web browsing it is fine. For customers who can’t afford to have service interrupted it is not a good option.

I think you can put Satellite ahead of dial up for sure. I would rather have xDSL (or Better TDM services) from a reputable provider than dial up or Satellite. Even though you have to deal with the aggregation points with DSL and some T1 providers (who aggregate into frame relay clouds) that create fluctuations in bandwidth and latency through out the day. You will experience much lower latency than a Satellite and have much more bandwidth than dial-up.

If your budget limits you to DSL pricing, I would recommend it over Satellite and Dial-Up.
Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

I have spent many years working directly within many of the big name Telecommunications Providers and I think there are many factors that contribute to a service declining trend.

First I think that 99.999% is hard to do even in traditional TDM deployments. It requires a lot of discipline and planning in operations to do this, and let’s face it many cLEC’s don’t have it.

Many providers are deploying VOIP services over old IP networks that were not designed to give 99.999% availability. IP was always a secondary non-critical service by many consumers and was not considered a critical service by Telephone companies. The IP networks need to be able to provide 99.999% availability before any service riding on it will be able to.

Consumers should also know that VOIP does not bring about lower prices. It facilitates some additional features, functionality and design benefits. You get more but you don’t necessarily pay less. In some instances it does save money. But I have seen many in which it costs more.

Many large VOIP providers are providing VOIP services over the public Internet. This just doesn’t work for large deployments. Many of their customers are deploying low budget communications systems for their business. On top of the fact that the traffic transverses the Internet they are usually running this over a DSL circuit which cannot provide consistent IP quality to the Internet. So a low budget deployment such as this is where you get the horror stories. These are really horror customers. The best deployment here is a couple of LAN lines and their DSL.

If you want to benefit from VOIP and experience high availability you need to step up to a TDM link to the same provider who is also hosting your VOIP service. Yes this costs a little more but that is why it works. You may also be surprised to see that this costs less than your DSL and traditional analog lines that you currently have.

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

Yes! Most problems and outages are due to the condition of the existing IP networks that the service is riding on. Data transmission over IP networks is very robust and can still function on poorly designed networks because it doesn’t matter how the packets arrive, just that they get there or can be resent without any interaction from the user. When you put a service such as voice, which requires high quality networks that can stay up for very long periods of time and maintain very stable latency rates, these existing IP networks just don’t cut it. This goes for both the customer’s network and the ISP (Providers). The problem is not how much bandwidth is available but the performance of that bandwidth. Fluctuating latency is a major problem for most of the high bandwidth providers. They give you a lot of bandwidth but latency fluctuations are huge and cannot support a good quality VOIP deployment.

Most of the IP Networks the large Telecommunications companies currently operate were designed and operated by groups of engineers who never expected or wanted Voice to be transmitted over IP. Remember these were phone companies and they already had a voice product that they wanted to sell you. The IP networks were designed to provide Data access (Internet) and they never and some still do not consider IP to me a critical service. This is why it is very difficult to sell VOIP over Internet. The quality is not there unless you pay a little more money for quality Internet access.

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

Yes you can! You can us a shared call appearance. It is quite simple. I have several customers doing this as they like to have their office phone at both their home office and on their desk in the office.

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

Both have their pros and cons. These are the most common considerations that I see when discussing these services with clients.

• Adds moves and changes will be easier to execute. (Both Systems)

Onsite VOIP-
• There will be a large cost savings if your company has multiple locations. You can service all or most locations from one central phone system. You will not have to purchase a Phone System for each location if your offices are interconnected (Becoming very popular). (Onsite VOIP)
• If you lose your local communication links to your building you will be completely down. (Onsite VOIP)
• Larger CAPEX investment. (Onsite VOIP)
• You will have to manage and maintain hardware at your office. (Onsite VOIP)

- Hosted VOIP
• If your communication links fail to your building the system will still be up. So all your voice mail, Auto Attendant and call forwards will continue to run and each phone station can be forwarded to cell phones for the duration of the outage. (Hosted VOIP)
• Monthly Costs will be a bit higher. (Hosted VOIP)
• Low or NO initial CAPEX Investment. (Hosted VOIP)
• You will NOT have to manage or maintain equipment at your office. (Hosted VOIP)
• If you move office spaces you will not have to move your phone system. (Hosted VOIP)

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs

I have been in the Collocation/Telecommunications Industry for some time now. Customers seek collocation services because they want to reduce their costs on Bandwidth/Power/Air Conditioning/Space. These services get expensive outside of Data center space. Collocation facilities are equipped to offer more robust and redundant services than standard office spaces.

I have seen many collocations struggle to keep adequate services up and running due to lack of expertise and integrity. I would look at the following when selecting a collocation provider.

1. Bandwidth is very important because without it you are not doing business. Have your network engineers evaluate the provider’s network. If you move into a collocation space where you can buy bandwidth from multiple providers, look for the following.
• Make sure that the collocation space provides a few options for Bandwidth.
• Make sure you fully understand the costs and methods used to connect with these bandwidth providers. Check their pricing for bandwidth. Check their cross-connect charges.

2. Power is very important. You do not want to have your equipment repeatedly going down due to power outages or surges. This is very challenging for many collocation facilities today. Some facilities will offer multiple power sources for you. This is great if there is a failure on one system and your equipment can take in multiple power sources. Also if you will be using AC or DC make sure you take this into account.

3. Space is expensive so make sure you will be able to grow within the facility. If the provider is running out of space you may want to consider other facilities. I have seen many frustrated customers having to move equipment from one facility to another just to accommodate growth. This can be a major headache for some.

4. Make sure their facility is secure. You should not be able to walk in and out freely. You should not be able to access other customer’s equipment freely. I would recommend you make sure everybody in the facility is in view of a camera (by Design). You want to be sure that you authorized personnel (You) can access your equipment when you need to.

5. One major problem I see today is adequate cooling. I would tour the facility on the weekend on a hot day to make sure the collocation space is adequately cooled. This is one of the biggest problems facing most providers today. As equipment gets smaller more is crammed into smaller areas. These facilities very quickly have to add air conditioning and most fall behind. Your equipment is at risk.

6. None of the services above can be provided at an exceptional level at a bargain basement price. You will get what you pay for and many times less. All this is very expensive so when you are looking keep this in mind. You will see what I mean when you tour an expensive facility compared to a low budget one. You will notice a big difference in appearance and I guarantee you will notice it in their service.

There are additional services outside of these basics you may want to consider. Remote hands from onsite technicians may be very useful to you. Some facilities will even store replacement hardware for you. There are many services that can make the facility more attractive for you.

Ask for a few referrals. They will give you insight to the operations and may even be able to expose some other options for collocation in the same area.

I hope this helps!

Carlos Barron

Carlos Barron Reducing your Telecommunication Costs