I know that this saying is quite cliche, but it’s been on my mind lately as I think of the amount of time and money that businesses spend to evaluate their telecom (voice) and data cost(s).

Today there are more businesses that want to charge you money to evaluate what you have than ever before.  If you’re a government entity there are companies that want to help you write your RFP, there are also many call accounting groups that want to audit your telecom and wireless expenses.  They’ll plug in all of your numbers to make sure that you’re not paying too much and compare that against what the proper rate structure is.  If you have an abundance of time and you want to talk things out with each of the carriers to see what their most current promotions are, you can contact each one individually and get quotes for each of your locations.  Below are links to some of the more well known carriers:

CenturyLink – AT&T – TW Telecom – Integra – Paetec - Level 3 – LightYear – XO Communications

Call accounting software, RFP audits and working with the carriers directly are all good things to consider depending upon your situation.  My point in this posting is to let you know that there is an option to spending tons of upfront money and time in evaluating your current telecom and data costs, especially if you have a multi office environment.  Work with a carrier agnostic agency that already has relationships with all of the carriers and access to many additional resources that you might be seeking to save yourself time.  In most cases these individuals or agencies will charge you nothing upfront, they have extensive industry experience, and they make their money once they place you into a service or product that works best for your business.  After many years inside the direct channel for a number of carriers and now 6 years with the indirect side of our business it’s important to know that you will not pay more money when you buy through an agency vs. buying direct.  The cost model is identical regardless of who you sign an agreement with.

Save time and money and seek these consultants out.

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It’s great having choices, but many times it seems like there are too many choices.  If you’re a business owner or executive tasked with opening a new office, the decision and choices that need to be made about phones, phone lines and Internet service is a headache.  Here are a few ideas to consider before you head down this road:

VOICE LINES

1st you need to determine how many voice  lines you’ll need.  Most in our industry use a 2:1 or 3:1 ration of people to lines.  In other words if you have 10 employees working in your office, you’ll want 4-5 voice lines.  If you have 20 employees you’ll want about 10-12 lines etc….  Some might confuse voice lines with phones.  Keep in mind that it’s not a bad idea to have a phone in the waiting area of your office for your patrons to use, or in the lunch room.  This being the case, you might actually end up having 12-14 phones if you have 10 employees.  It’s doubtful that everyone in your company will be on the phone at the exact same time – unless you’re a telemarketing group or call center business.  This is boring stuff to most of us, until you’re the one tasked with having to set this up.  Then you need some serious help!  No one wants to make a stupid, expensive wrong decision about these things.

On this front you can decide to go with a more traditional set up (the classics) that would include separate voice lines and a DSL for Internet – companies that would offer this would be, Qwest, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast.  The other option is to look at Integrated T-1′s or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) T-1 service.  With this service both your voice lines and your Internet access is delivered over a T-1 or business-class facility.  These take a while to install (30-60 days) compared to a traditional setup (10-14 days), but tend to have a lot of flexibility.  Companies to consider for this service are: XO Communications, Qwest, Integra, and Paetec.

INTERNET SERVICE

Next, figure out (on average) how many of your employees will spend time on the Internet?  What types of sites will they visit, or maybe better, what types of sites do you want them to visit?  Many employers have strict firewall policies about this as the sites most of us want to visit are generally very bandwidth intensive – but this is for another blog posting.  If you’re a doctors office, or an architecture firm you may be sending very large files via e-mail so you’ll want to take this into consideration.  In most cases if you make a wrong decision about your Internet bandwidth, the carrier you’re working with is more than willing to increase the size of this pipe.  Generally they are not big fans of reducing your bandwidth without some sort of penalty – so be careful here.  For more on Internet, go here.

There are many options for Internet access – above I discuss differences between a traditional vs. an Integrated Access set up.  There are arguments for and against each of these, but in general this is my opinion:  If your office is small and you’re on a small budget, go with a traiditional setup of voice lines and a DSL.  This will be less expensive and you’ll be able to get things in place quicker.  If you have 10 or more employees and you’re quite sure things will ramp up over the next year take a serious look at an Integrated T-1.  If you need more voice lines in the future it’s easy for the carrier to turn these up quickly.  T-1′s tend to be more and better monitored than POTs lines (Plain Old Telephone Service) by the carriers.  Often if there’s a problem with your service the carrier knows about it before you do – this is not the case with plain old service.

PHONES

As for phones, one can go in numerous directions depending upon budget.  If you’re working on a shoe string consider getting something from one of the office stores (Office Max – Best Buy), then work with your carrier to make sure the proper features are part of the offering so that these basic phones will work properly.  Over the next few years you can consider upgrading to something more robust when the need for additional phones exceeds your existing system.  Another option here would be to go to E-Bay and buy a system thats 2-3 years old.  The software release would most likely be outdated, but at least you would have a business class solution until you were ready to make a larger/newer investment.  If it’s only 2-3 years old you should be able to find a company locally that will help you install & maintain it.   If you have the budget for a new system talk to the individuals supporting you with your Internet and phone service – generally they’ll have a couple groups for you to consider.  Confirm with the local BBB and always check references before you move forward with a vendor.

ALL IN ONE SOLUTIONS

Telesphere offers a hosted phone solution that we believe is fantastic.  They’ll provide you a true one stop solution for your new single location business or all of your offices nationwide.  All handsets and features would be the same nationwide and you’ll have one bill for all of your voice, data and equipment.  Check them out here.

Ultimately there are many choices, but if one takes the time to research the various options available you should be on track to business success.  Get with a carrier agnostic agency for help.  These groups have relationships with all of the carriers, they’ll be the best group to assist you or give your company a tune up.

If you own a company or are responsible for managing the voice and data at your company, you have to know about the Integrated T-1.  VoIP or Voice over Internet Protocol circuits (also called Integrated T-1′s) are a great option for many small and medium sized businesses.  Many have heard of getting a VoIP phone system, but how about a VoIP circuit?  Different from a traditional configuration where you have 2 separate circuits, a T-1 to the Internet and a PRI T-1 for all of your voice traffic, a single VoIP T-1 can handle both your voice traffic and your Internet (data) traffic all with a single T.   For those businesses that have many lines or need bigger pipes to the Internet, this type of service is offered from 1.5 Mb up to 10 Mb depening upon the carrier you get the service from. 

Go here for additional explanation on VoIP.  Many people don’t like Wikipedia but I think it’s quite valuable for those of us in technology.  It seems that those contributing to the site in our industry are quite specific and detailed about the terms we use.  I find them to be about 95% accurate with regard to the terms I’ve seen.

Here are a few reasons a business should go with this product for their voice and data service:

1.)  Price is the first advantage of going this route.  Where the traditional 2 circuit option will usually run about $800-1,200/month depending upon carrier, many offer their dynamic voice over IP T’s for under $600/month.  You’ll have the option of ordering this service with either an analog or PRI interface.  If you only need 4 lines you’ll go with the analog line option, but if you currently have a PRI voice T-1 with DID numbers, you’ll want to go with the PRI interface when you order a VoIP dynamic T-1.

2.)  Convenience.  Instead of having two circuits to manage, you’ll only manage a single circuit.  One throat to choke often makes one’s life easier.

3.)  Bundle is good and easy!  Integrated T-1′s are usually offered as a bundle.  You’ll get local, long distance, toll free and some form of web based management tool to control feature capability and gain access to bandwidth reports. 

Above I mention “dynamic” T-1 a few times – I want to explain what that means, because VoIP T-1′s haven’t always been dynamic.  When a carrier tells you that their service has this quality it means that whatever isn’t used for voice will automatically be available for data or Internet access.  Each phone call will eat up a certain amount of bandwidth – multiple calls eat up more.  The more voice calls are taking place the less bandwidth you have to get out to the Internet.  As it should be, voice is always the priority. When this service first came out, these “fixed” T-1′s automatically had a certain amount of bandwidth carved out for voice and some carved out for data.  Today that has changed, most all carriers now offer dynamic VoIP T’s.   

Although many of the carriers today offer dynamic T-1′s (including the big guys) I’ve found that only a few are able to do a good job at providing these: XO Communications,  Integra Telecom, and Paetec.  Verizon, AT&T, and Qwest came into this game a bit late.  I’ve found their VoIP offerings to work well once they’re installed, but there still seems to be pain on the front end to get these services into place.  The CLECs have been provisioning these for more than 8 years so they really have it down.  If you own a small or medium sized business or carry the responsibility for managing the voice and data service at your company, it’s worth your while to learn about VoIP Integrated T-1′s.

10 years ago most businesses could get away with having just 1.5 Mb of bandwidth to the Internet.  Today that doesn’t touch the surface on what is needed, particularly if you’re utilizing your connection to access many of the applications now available.  As SaaS (Software as a Service) models continue to grow and more and more businesses reach outside of their LANS for dial tone, CRM, ERP, PLM, SCM, SRM type applications, the need for bigger and better bandwidth will always be needed.  I stuck dial tone in the list above because now more than ever more and more businesses are looking to get a hosted PBX – Telesphere is a company that seems to have a grasp on this technology.

With cloud computing software designers can design, build, and deliver services that allow clients to easily access their applications from virtually any location.  IBM seems to be positioned extremely well to assist many of the large software providers with implementing a SaaS strategy.  Today, increased demand for Internet access is directly driven by the need for business applications.

Most of the carriers will bond T-1′s to provide their customers 3.0 – 9.0 Mb of access, but most have realized that to be positioned for the future they have to provide ethernet grade Internet access.  Qwest has led the way in their 14 states providing ELA (Ethernet LAN Access) to the Internet over their QMOE (Qwest Metro Optical Ethernet) backbone.  TW Telecom, Integra, and XO offer great pricing on their EoC (Ethernet over Copper) offerings.  Be patient when you’re working to check availability and get quotes for this service as it can sometimes be a lengthy process.  As always, make sure that you’re working with a carrier agnostic agency so that you can get multiple pricing from one source.

Happy Surfing!

I get sincere, WOW excitement when my customers say “yes – we’re ready to go with that” – whether that product is a regular old DSL line, a 30 Mb ethernet pipe to the Internet, or a 40 locations MPLS WAN solution, there is genuine excitement that we can implement new toys/CPE and a technology that’s going to make this company or County work better, faster, smoother than it did before. 

We also get to work with some really smart people in technology.  Su Hawk is one of those people that I get to work around from time to time.  The things she’s done for Colorado technology are awesome!  If you’re in the technology and telecom world and your not part of CSIA, you need to be.  In the last year I’ve had the pleasure to work with Laura Luchini, and Bill Nixon, both are experts in their fields.  Eric Schulz and Matt Otis are a few other guys I know that are really sharp – they were doing things with their business long before anyone else in telecom.  Their success with Allied is awesome.  Qwest Engineers like Bob Steurer, Tom Rossignol, and Renee Carroll at Paetec embody the knowledge and upbeat attitude that keeps technology moving forward. 

I get up every day with an extra hop in my step because of what we do, and the industry that we work in.

The problem as I see it in the United States is that we are so spread out geographically.  In many of these country to country comparisons a measure is taken across the entire land mass.  Of course a customer with an office in Denver, CO is probably going to have a larger pipe to the Internet than someone from Palestine, TX.  Not that Palestine wouldn’t be a wonderful place to own a business – it’s just west of one of the most beautiful towns in Texas – Nacogdoches.  What’s crazy is that I can get a 20 Mb Ethernet pipe to the Internet (provisioned on fiber) in Downtown Denver, Fort Collins, Greeley, and Colorado Springs at this point in time.  Many of the towns and cities in between these major metro areas are somewhat out of luck.  At that point we need to look for Ethernet delivered on copper for a large pipe to the Internet.  Integra just threw their hat in the ring and started offering this as a product set.  Going with an Ethernet offering greatly reduces the cost on the equipment end so it ends up being very attractive to our friends that manage the equipment for our businesses.

If all else fails on the Ethernet front then a customer can begin looking at bonding multiple T-1s for a large connection (1 T = 1.54 Mb, 2 T’s = 3.0 Mb, 3 T’s = 4.5 Mb, etc….).  Most of the carriers offer this as an option in either a DIA (dedicated Internet Access) option or can deliver it with their VoIP offering which would provide both voice and data delivered over the same T-1 facility. 

VoIP T-1′s are becoming the first solution for many over going with a line + DSL option, or lines + Comcast option.  Costs are finally starting to level out so that even the small business customer that wants 3-4 lines with a broadband connection can go this route.

Ted out – have a great week!

Kevin Walsh covers the topic (or lack) of broadband penetration well in his GIGAOM blog.  If you could imagine climbing up a ladder then realizing that one of the rungs is missing you’ll understand how many business owners feel when they realize they either can’t get a high speed connection at their new office, or can only get something resembling 256Kb.  What options does a business owner have at this point?  They are some what limited, but companies like Integra have begun to lower their price points on their data T’s to bridge this gap.  You can now get a data T-1 from Integra for $299.00.  Although still painful for a small business owner to make the $240/month jump from the DSL to a comercial grade offering – it’s more bearable.

Wireless Internet was an interesting option for an international corporate financier that had no other options.  I believe that wireless options have to be considered to fill the “missing link”,  but from what I’ve seen it doesn’t have the same throughput that you get with a land based offering. 

My suggestion for any business owner looking for new digs is to check with their “carrier person” to find out what addresses would be best for large bandwidth considerations.  In this day and age having a high bandwidth Internet connection is critical to excelling in business.  Although you would think that a commercial realestate group would negotiate with the carriers to insure their properties are covered by a variety of providers, this is not always the case.  Many find themselves in the “missing link” with no options or very limited options for bandwidth.  Get with a carrier agnostic agency in your town to determine where you should position your office for maximum bandwidth.