It’s unusual that I’ll write a post about a single carrier – but I thought it made sense since Telesphere was doing a few things better than all of the others.  They are better at providing a hosted phone solution that anyone else out there.

If your organization has between 5-75 employees they present a nice bundle that includes, phone equipment, phone service, and Internet service all in one.  Taken directly from their website below is a definition of Hosted VoIP – (their sweet spot):

Hosted VoIP is an advanced technology that allows your business to have phone service without the phone system. Instead of purchasing and maintaining a PBX phone system that sits in your office, you connect to a powerful nationwide platform hosted by Telesphere. With hosted VoIP, you can resign the hassles of confusing phone systems and multiple vendors to history, giving you time and capital to focus on the future of your business.

The benefits of the Telesphere solution are simple:

If you own a business with 10 locations around the country it has (historically) been a nightmare coordinating phones and phone and Internet service.  Most companies had multiple phone companies, a different equipment vendor in each city – and God knows what the remote offices/stores were doing for Internet.  Because Telesphere has national reach you can now use them nationwide for each of your offices.  One throat to choke – really!   Check out this quick video if you want to learn more.

If you own a single location business, a Telesphere offering will still give you just one throat to choke and provide you with a single point of contact for your equipment+phone and Internet service - not a bad way to go.  Don’t you have enough things to think about when you open a new office?  What do you think?  Have you had experience with these guys?  Find a carrier agnostic agency to help you with this offering or to discuss whatever other options you might be looking for.

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.

As a WAN technology it seems that the curtains are beginning to close on frame relay.

Qwest Communications recently eliminated it’s promotions on this technology – making the cost of frame relay almost cost prohibitive for customers.  Today you can get an MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching) T-1 with a new programmed Adtran router, installed (or delivered to you for a self – plug and play install at the very least)  for about the same price as you can get a frame relay T-1 (no router).  This was bound to happen, as many companies have already migrated their frame relay networks over to the newer MPLS networks over the last 4-5 years. 

With many now using IP PBX phone systems the requirement of a packet switched network with prioritized label capabilities has been essential to running voice as an application on the network.  There are many providers of IP PBX solutions, here’s one I like in the Rocky Mt. Region.  Another option is to look at a hosted IP PBX from Teleshere.  For those of you that read the first sentence in this paragraph and shook your head, it’s OK – it’s taken me 20+ years to grasp some of this stuff.  If you ever want to have fun take a look at all of the crazy terms in Newton’s Telecom Dictionary.  All the acronyms will make your head spin.  The telecommunications and IT industry are number one when it comes to acronym use – it’s really another language.

If you have a frame relay network it might be time to analyze and compare cost.  It’s been my experience that when older technology begins to die, the support for those technologies dies with it.  It’s no fun to be caught with an old network that’s not working – then when you need support the one person that gets it is on vacation.  Get with a good carrier agnostic agency and begin the process to migrate away from Frame Relay - now’s the time!

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!