What image do you come up with when you think of the term “classic”?

In the telecom world, the classics are POTs lines or plain old telephone analog service and business lines, Long Distance and conferencing.  How often do you use these services?  I think most business professionals forgot that this is the basis of what they use every single day.  I know that most companies today use VoIP, SIP and T-1′s for their voice and data, but there are still millions of businesses in the USA that use 3-4 business phone lines and plain-Jane long distance for state to state calls.  Last I checked, DSL is a booming product set for the big three (AT&T, Qwest and Verizon).  The classic set up for small business today is a few analog phone lines + a DSL line.

Analog Business Phone Lines

Many of the carriers have stopped selling analog phone lines and DSL.  The Big 3 LECs (Local Exchange Carriers) have to continue selling this service due to demand.  On the business side of things the profit margins for these lines must be huge.  Those same large carriers are attempting to get these customers onto their VoIP T-1 offerings, but they still have many customers on the “classic” offerings.  The copper they ride has been in the ground forever, and usually once they’re in place, they just hum along day after day.  I have peers that have attempted to go wireless 100% for their companies, but the problem comes down to wireless reception.   Is your reception outstanding in your office?  If your office is downtown in your chosen city, maybe it is good enough to rely on, but for those of us that are 20 or even 40 miles outside of the city center we live near you might be out of luck and still need your business land line to insure call quality.

Conference Calling

When people think of conference calling they usually think of being in one room with 10 other people, not able to hear what the other person is saying from a single speakerphone on the table.  In the early days of my sales career this technology was nerve racking – if you weren’t within 4 feet of the handset and speaker phone on these nationwide sales conference calls you missed parts of the conversation – and sometimes this came back to bite you.  Have you ever been on a conference call where backround noise and discussions ruined a presentation?  If you can’t mute all lines with the exception of the moderator, or at least follow the call on a web portal so that you can mute the “idiot”, then you shouldn’t host a conference call with more than 5 people – EVER!

Most of the carriers offer conference calling options, but for better rates you might look at some of the companies that have made conferencing their specialty: The Conference Group, or ReadyTalk.  Often your carrier agnostic communications agency will have offers which include voice, data, plus a certain number of long distance and conferencing minutes included.  You might want to check these offers out first.

Classics can be beautiful and sometimes are just what the Doctor ordered.