T1 Rex's Business Telecom Explainer

$2 Toll Free Numbers Instantly

2009-11-23T00:11:00.003-06:00

Why, oh why, don’t the customers call? Could it be because they hesitate at paying for a long distance call? That’s a good possibility. It’s especially true when they don’t know how long they’ll be on the line. Who wants to call for an inquiry or service and then pay to sit there on hold?

Customers and sales prospects are much more likely to call when they see those magic words “TOLL FREE.” So, give them toll free access and see how much it boosts your business. It won't cost you very much to add this valuable service. In fact, toll free numbers are available right now for $2 each and they’re instantly available for your use. See how much you get for so little by watching a one minute video on $2 Toll Free Numbers. In fact, you can watch it right here, right now:

With all the included features of this toll free service, wouldn’t at least one toll free number be a boost to the business you have now? Order your toll free number, set it up online, and then publish it on your website and your business cards. If it’s important to your business to talk to sales prospects or existing clients, make it easy for them to call you. Get a $2 toll free number and low cost toll free service from Agile Toll Free.

Copper Thrives In The 21st Century

2009-11-20T00:28:00.005-06:00

Alexander Graham Bell loved copper wire. His Bell Telephone Company and others strung it on poles and buried it in the ground until there were thousands upon thousands of miles of small gauge copper wire connecting nearly every home and business. And that’s the way it’s stayed for over 100 years. Now that we’re in the 21st century, all that copper is just another metallic element being reclaimed by nature as we move on to fiber optic cables. Isn’t that the way it is?

Nope. The fiber optic era was fantasized along with flying cars. Fiber technology has advanced farther than George Jetson’s personal vehicle, but it’s still copper that rules. Even the old stuff that’s been in the ground for decades is getting a new lease on life in the digital age.

Copper is so popular because there is so much of it. A century of standardization and build-out makes it very attractive to connect to those copper pair fastened to the plywood sheet in the telephone closet. You could insist on a more modern fiber optic termination, but there are no glass fibers on that plywood. If you want fiber, you have to pay to have it brought in. It probably costs no more than stringing new copper, but the copper’s already there. Somebody else paid to have it installed a long time ago.

But isn’t copper an old analog technology that can’t possibly keep up with today’s high speed network demands?

Well, it’s true that copper telco wiring was installed with analog signals in mind. But a flowing electron is a flowing electron regardless of whether it is part of a 48 volt battery current or a Ethernet packet. The physics of conduction doesn’t know the difference. Where we hit the wall was when we tried to send digital signals down a circuit that was still set up for analog telephony. Those were the dial-up modems that topped out at 56 Kbps. But do you know that those very same telephone wires now carry Megabit per second signals?

In fact, DSL shares the very same wires as analog telephone service. Instead of trying to mimic a phone call the way modems did, DSL sends digital signals on frequencies well above those you can hear. True, DSL signals fade out quickly over distance. But if there is a digital termination nearby you can transport as much as 100 Mbps to the home or business using DSL technology.

That distance restriction is removed if you use two pair of copper telephone wires to deliver T1 line service. The bandwidth is a solid 1.5 Mbps in both directions and is highly reliable. Where can you get T1 service? Just about anywhere you can get a regular telephone installed.

T1 is the most popular form of digital connection for business. It is used for telephone trunk lines with up to 23 phone lines carried by a T1 PRI trunk, also knows as ISDN PRI. Business broadband is provided by T1 dedicated Internet access. You can also get something called Integrated T1 that combines both telephone and Internet on the same line.

As the need for business bandwidth expands, copper remains viable. It’s easy to bond T1 lines together to multiply bandwidth by 2x, 3x, or even 10x. Bonded T1 line service allows businesses to add lines as network activity increases.

A newer and lower cost bandwidth option is EoC or Ethernet over Copper. This technology uses special termination equipment to bond multiple copper pair to deliver Ethernet Internet service at the standard 10 Mbps up to 45 Mbps. You can also order lower bandwidths if you don’t need 10 Mbps at this time.

Standard analog loops, DSL, T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper are extending the useful life for installed copper telephone wiring well into the 21st century. Eventually it will all be replaced by glass fibers, but probably not in this generation.

Do You Need A Special Phone For VoIP?

2009-11-19T00:19:00.004-06:00

I’ve been getting inquiries from people who are wondering if you need to buy a special phone to use VoIP as a replacement for regular telephone service. So, do you?

Answer: It depends.

Here’s why. You have probably figured out that you can’t just take a regular telephone and plug it into your router or broadband modem. The connectors aren’t the same size. That’s good, because you might just cause some equipment damage by plugging these incompatible devices together. What you need is a special phone designed to work on a data network or an adaptor for the phone you have now.

Most VoIP services designed for residential and home business (SOHO) take the adaptor approach. A good example is PhonePower’s VoIP service. You can get residential and small business plans with unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada for $14.95 a month. Your order the service online and they send you a free adaptor for your phone. In this case it’s the Grandstream HandyTone 502 ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor. You plug your phone in the phone jack that’s exactly the same size as the phone jack on your wall. You connect the ATA to your broadband modem or router using a standard Ethernet cable. Voila! You now have a regular telephone that works on VoIP.

But what’s going on in that ATA box to work the magic? There is circuitry that makes the phone connection look like it is coming right from your telephone company. That means generating the standard line voltage and ringing voltage that your phone is designed for. Those are analog signals because the phone is analog. The ATA also has to take care of converting between analog voice signals for the phone handset and digital packets for the Internet data network. This is done with CODECS or Coder/Decoders. In summary, the telephone needs to see its standardized analog signals and the Internet needs to see something that looks like a piece of computer equipment.

There’s a little more to it. Signaling for VOIP uses a standard called SIP or Session Initiation Protocol. SIP handles things like dialing and knowing when the phone is off-hook. SIP data is sent through the network just like other packets so it works just fine on the Internet or a private data network.

Because VoIP has become so popular for business, there are phones you can buy called SIP phones. These phones have the analog to digital circuitry of the ATA built-in. You can tell you have a SIP phone because it has a standard RJ-45 Ethernet jack on the back instead of the RJ-11 telephone jack. A SIP phone will connect directly to a LAN, a router or a broadband modem. It will need to be programmed for the VoIP service you are using. Some providers will give you instructions for how to do this. Others insist that you use their adaptor and an analog phone.

If you take your home phone into the corporate office, you may be shocked to find that there’s no place to plug it in. The company has installed an Enterprise VoIP system so that all desk phones plug into the corporate computer network. There is no separate phone network. All the phones are SIP phones. If for some reason you absolutely have to use your phone in that office, you’ll need to get an ATA and have it programmed to look like a SIP phone.

The bottom line is that regular telephones are analog. VoIP is digital. The way to make everything work is to use a phone that is matched to the network it is running on or use an adaptor to connect them.

Ethernet Internet For Your Business

2009-11-18T00:37:00.005-06:00

There’s a new broadband connection service for business locations, and it’s one that is well worth a look. What is Ethernet Internet? I’ve prepared a short presentation on YouTube that explains the key points. Check out the Ethernet Internet business presentation on the YouTube site, or view it right here:

As the presentation states, Ethernet offers advantages in both price and performance at the same time. That’s nearly unheard of in most business products and services. But this is new technology on a fast moving learning curve. Look for Ethernet Internet to expand beyond its metropolitan roots and permeate every nook and cranny of the country. In rural areas, this may mean wireless delivery. In town, provisioning will be over copper for speeds up to 10 Mbps or so and fiber optics for the higher speeds.

Would you like to get more bandwidth for less money? You may very well be in a position to do so. Take a minute or so to use our GigaTrunks Ethernet Internet Finder to see what services and pricing is available for your specific location. To get maximum advantage, be sure to discuss your needs with a Telarus expert consultant. They have knowledge of the latest short term special offers that may not show up on the automated listings.

DROID is the Woid

2009-11-17T00:44:00.003-06:00

Motorola and Verizon have put their heads together to take on the juggernaut that is the Apple iPhone. The result is the much heralded DROID cell phone that promises smarter than smart operation thanks to it’s Google Android 2.0 operating system. But let’s have a look and see what you get when you pack a DROID.

One big difference between the iPhone and every other smart phone, save the BlackBerry Storm, is a physical keyboard. If you’ve spent years developing texting thumbs, then moving to a virtual on-screen keyboard is understandably uncomfortable. Some people gotta have their little pushbuttons. Others just prefer a physical QWERTY keyboard. The DROID doesn’t disappoint. Slide out the hidden keyboard and text so fast you cause sonic booms.

Those who believe that the Microsoft Windows operating system rules the universe and always will, may not have noticed that there are other players looking to unseat the king of Redmond. Apple is quietly selling premium price and quality iMacs in a recessionary economy. The iPhone is going strong and now making a move into other countries, like China. Meanwhile, Google is stretching its tentacles far beyond search. The Android operating system has only crept into the mobile marketplace, but it’s growing. The new DROID will be a big boost to that initiative. Especially since it’s coupled to Verizon Wireless with their excellent nationwide coverage.

With the DROID comes a tight integration between phone and Google’s online empire. That includes thousands of apps downloadable from the Android Market. Apple has quite a head start in the apps marketplace, but DROID has the potential to make downloadable apps a key advantage of this phone. There’s an onboard eCompass along with the expected GPS to enable Google Maps, geo-location web search, geo-tagging and other location based applications.

You can expect a desktop-like experience surfing the Web from your DROID. That’s thanks to the HTML Web browser and Verizon’s 3G data connection called EVDO Rev A. For even faster performance, you can connect to public, personal or corporate WiFi hotspots running 802.11b or g. That’s pretty much all of them now.

What’s a smartphone today without advanced multimedia support? The DROID sports a 5.0 Megapixel digital camera with geo-tagging, flash auto-stabilization, zoom and editing tools. Do you really need to buy a separate digital camera anymore? For most purposes, I’ll bet not. This high resolution camera takes pix good enough to print, as well as share with friends via multimedia messaging or post to photo sites. The 3.7” light responsive color display that doubles as a touch sensitive control screen offers a great platform for viewing video. It has a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels so your images and videos will have a sharp appearance.

There are many, many other features that make the new DROID all the phone you’ll need for sometime to come. If you agree, then learn more and order your DROID by Motorola for Verizon Wireless at a special online discount price while it lasts. Order a family plan and get special pricing on TWO DROIDs.

Of course, if you would prefer a different model phone or just want to browse all the special offers, including free phones, you can do that with ease at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

When You Call My Equinox I See Purple

2009-11-16T01:20:00.002-06:00

I’ve not only got your number, I’ve got your color. That’s what you’ll be telling people when you start carrying the new Sony Ericsson Equinox Carbon cell phone for T-Mobile. This phone goes beyond Caller ID. It’s got pulsating caller colors.

Anxiously awaiting a call from that special someone? No need to keep the ringer turned up and embarrass yourself in the movies or at dinner with friends. No need to squint at the caller ID hoping to see that magical number appear. Just set your phone on the table and glance at it inconspicuously from time to time. You know how to be nonchalant, right? You won’t miss a thing, because when the call comes through you’ll see a pulsating colored light, perhaps purple, that’s you’ve assigned to that special number. You actually get 5 different colors that include amber, sapphire, beryl, diamond and amethyst. That’s five friends you have color coded. Or, four friends and one person you’re trying to avoid. When that color comes up, just pretend you’ve seen nothing at all.

The Sony Ericsson Equinox has other special features beyond the color coded call alert. The smooth black case of this flip-phone has a disappearing external display. It’s there when you want it, with battery power, signal strength or caller ID. Then it disappears into the background where it won’t distract from the sleek appearance of the outside cover.

You’ll also notice the lens of a digital camera near the top of the case. This is a high resolution 3.2 Megapixel camera that also functions as a camcorder. Sony Ericsson knows that you like to upload your photos and videos to social networking and photo sharing sites. So they’ve made it easy to get your videos on YouTube and other popular sites. Print the pix you want hard copies of using Bluetooth wireless printing. Geotagging is also available so you can identify where your pictures were taken much later on.

The GPS services support for picture geotagging is also used for the TeleNav Navigator navigation service for turn by turn driving directions. This phone also works with Google Maps. Yes, it’s a 3G phone with download speeds up to 3.6 Mbps where available. That means mobile Web browsing and email, along with text messaging, IM, and multimedia messaging.

What else does this sleek and clever cell phone offer? Why, an MP3 player of course. This one includes an FM Radio so you’ll have music or the latest news wherever you go. You can expand memory by adding a Memory Stick Micro (M2) memory card up to 8 GB so ensure that you’ll have plenty of storage for your tune, pix and videos.

Does this advanced phone sound like a perfect match to your needs. Would you be surprised if I told you that you can get it free for a limited time? It’s a great deal, so don’t wait too long. Learn more and order your Sony Ericsson Equinox Carbon for T-Mobile online now and get free shipping included. Order a family plan and get TWO of these new phones.

If you still want to shop around a bit before committing to a particular phone or carrier, there are lots of great deals available right now at Cell Phone Plans Finder. Be sure to click on the button to “View Today’s Special Deals” and see what’s available free right now.

Host Gator Serves The Web On Texas Wind Power

2009-11-13T02:53:00.003-06:00

Are you torn between your need to support businesses that are easy on the environment and the need to minimize the cost of your online services, including Web hosting? Relax. HostGator gives you cheap and green at the same time.

You probably know that web hosting is an energy intensive business. Web servers are like any other computer, except even more power hungry. The more performance you push from your server farm, the more power you pull from the grid and the more heat you generate that has to be removed from the facility. Doesn’t sound very green, does it?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with energy. Energy is what gives us life and makes everything else possible. The problem is that we’re such an energy intensive society that we’re damaging our environment even as we progress in our way of life. The key to living in the kind of technological society we desire while preserving our natural environment is to get our energy from clean sources.

This is what Host Gator has committed to doing. Their first approach was to switch to 36% more efficient servers to reduce the carbon emissions of their shared and reseller servers. But with around 2 million websites to be served, that only went part of the way toward being a truly green business. So, HostGator purchased renewable energy credits for 130% of their server power and cooling.

Why 130%? That covers every watt needed to power the servers, cool their heat output, and operate the rest of the business. They’re effectively paying a Texas wind farm to generate renewal energy on behalf of Host Gator. It’s the next best thing to putting up windmills on their own property and generating the power themselves - except they can’t do that in downtown Houston. The money from renewal energy credits goes to offset the costs of constructing more wind generators, helping this green source of energy get deployed for today’s and future generations.

But doesn’t this green energy approach make HostGator non-competitive with web hosting services that don’t consider their environmental impact? It certainly doesn’t seem to. In fact, it’s a credit to their management that Host Gator features and pricing leave a lot of their competitors in the dust. Are you as astounded as I am to find that you can get unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for your domain name for under $5 a month? That includes a 99.9% uptime guarantee, a 45 day money back guarantee, 24/7 support, and a wealth of web hosting and email hosting features.

The Business package with the ability to host unlimited domains, a dedicated static IP address, and private SSL starts at under $13 a month. Reseller plans are also available for under $25 a month that allow you to start a web hosting company of your own. You set up the accounts and give each of your customers their own control panel. You get to establish your own brand and decide how much to charge. Then keep 100% of the money you collect from your clients. HostGator will even give you a free copy of “The Web Hosting Book” to help you get started.

Does high quality green web hosting at bargain prices sound like the type of hosting you want for your business? If so, learn more and order Host Gator web hosting and reseller hosting services right now.

TelePacific Takes Business Continuity Seriously

2009-11-12T00:41:00.003-06:00

TelePacific Communications, a competitive telecommunications carrier serving customers in California and Nevada, is taking a comprehensive approach to disaster planning and the need for business continuity that follows disasters natural and man-made.

Their Business Continuity Services are focused on maintaining your ability to use voice and data services in the event you lose a trunk line or even your entire facility. But how just how can you do that?

Let’s take a look at telephone first. Most medium and large size businesses, and some smaller businesses that are heavy users of telephone communications, are using digital trunk lines. T1 PRI and SIP Trunks provide one to two dozen outside lines for management by an in-house PBX system. That trunk line offers a considerable cost savings over multiple individual phone lines, but does represent a single point failure risk. With that in mind, you can backup your primary trunk line with a few individual analog POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) lines. The key is to have the phone system programmed to automatically switch over to the backup lines when the trunk goes down. Another approach offered by TelePacific is to have your incoming calls automatically forwarded to the backup lines.

Even smaller businesses using IP PBX systems or Analog Telephone Adaptors may keep one analog telephone line in service as an emergency backup. The idea is that a fault that takes out your digital data line may not affect the analog lines. In many cases, that’s true. But what happens if a construction accident cuts all the underground lines in an area or the ground opens up in an earthquake and breaks every wire in the area?

If all your telecom connections are out, you may have also lost power. In that case, TelePacific has the ability to forward your incoming calls to a number at another business location. You could also choose to have your most important numbers, such as your main phone line and FAX number, forward to a mobile phone or even a residence. If there are too many incoming calls for you to answer immediately, the overflow can be answered by voicemail at the carrier’s facility. You then have the option to listen to and return those calls from another location when time permits.

Data lines, such as Dedicated Internet Access, are subject to the same disasters that befall telephone lines. T1 lines are the most popular connections for business users. If all you have is a single T1 line and it goes down, your connection is broken until it is fixed. But bonded T1 lines can be set up so that if you lose one, the secondary or other T1 lines will keep running. Your bandwidth will be temporarily reduced, but you’ll still have broadband connectivity.

Of course, if all lines are cut you will lose data service coming in and going out of your business location. If you have a second business location you can set up a private IP VPN arrangement so that all traffic can be routed to the secondary location. If you have only a single facility or all of your offices are located so closely together that they might all lose power or communications in the same event, you probably want to think about using a colocation service. A carrier colocation facility is probably more robust than your onside data center. The facilities are built with extensive physical security, fire and flood control, and both battery and generator backup. They also have multiple incoming and outgoing trunk lines going in different geographical directions.

TelePacific offers colocation facilities as do other providers around the country. You can house your application servers there and have an email backup server in case your primary email server fails. Remote data storage is a necessity these days since the most important business documents are now electronic documents.

Do you feel a bit uncomfortable with your ability to conduct business in the event of a fire, flood, tornado, earthquake or other unforeseen disaster? If not, it’s worth your time and peace of mind to talk with an expert consultant who can recommend the most cost effective ways to ensure your business continuity. Find out now what TelePacific and other competitive carriers can do to ensure your voice and data reliability with a toll free call or online inquiry about business continuity options.

MegaPath’s Black Friday Strategy

2009-11-11T00:15:00.003-06:00

Black Friday will soon be upon us. This is the day after Thanksgiving that marks the traditional start to the Christmas shopping season. It’s a day that retailers brace for and depend on. For as Black Friday goes, so goes the profitability of the year.

The name Black Friday is generally attributed to the accounting practice of using red ink to show losses and black ink to show profits. Many retailers struggle all year long just to pay the bills and keep the lights on. Black Friday represents, at least symbolically, the change of the company’s fortunes from red ink to black ink. That’s how important the holiday shopping season is every year. It can be the difference between profit and loss, survival of the business or bankruptcy.

Since Black Friday and its online equivalent called Cyber Monday (The Monday after Black Friday) kickoff the most stressful and highest sales volume month of the year, it behooves retail businesses to have robust processes in place ahead of time. That includes the ability to process credit card transactions rapidly and securely. Lose your connection to the credit card processing companies, even for an hour, and you risk a stampede of irate customers out your front door and directly to your competitor. It’s even worse online. If your site is down or slow or you can’t accept credit card payments, your competitors are just a click away.

With this in mind, MegaPath is asking retailers, “Are You Prepared For Black Friday?” Even with predictions that consumers will be spending slightly less this year than last, there will still be a torrent of sales activity this shopping season. In fact, it might be argued that with less spending each customer becomes more valuable. Anything you can do to give that customer a pleasant shopping experience will work to your advantage.

MegaPath is a major competitive telecommunications carrier and leader in managed IP services. They serve the retail sector with high speed network connections specifically designed to support secure payment transactions. They call their service a “Payment Processor Extranet.” As the name implies, this is a specialized form of connectivity unlike simple Internet broadband. MegaPath’s Payment Processor Extranet connects to your retail site-to-site MPLS VPN service to securely carry credit card and other payment information from your point of sale locations to credit, debit gift and private label card payment and check payment processors. You choose which processors you work with and can and or change them at any time. MegaPath provides a fully redundant proactively monitored communications network to the processors to ensure that your transactions will get through.

For gas stations, convenience stores and other retailers not connected in a MPLS network, MegaPath offers “StoreConnect,” an IPSec encrypted service that works over a wide variety of broadband connections including DSL, cable, wireless and T1 lines. Like the Payment Processor Extranet, this service gives smaller retailers access to the leading payment processors for fast, secure and reliable transactions.

One of the most important processes involved in payment transactions is PCI or Payment Card Industry security. This standard involves a firewalled secure network protected by encryption and strong access control. MegaPath’s retail solutions are designed from the ground up to be PCI compliant.

So, what’s it going to be this year? Will you depend on slow dial-up access from your POS terminals that will likely keep your customers waiting and irritated as they stand in line? Or will you make the transaction process as transparent to your customers as possible with fast and reliable broadband connectivity? If you choose to make your transactions fast, efficient, reliable and secure, there’s no time to waste. Get more information about MegaPath and other retail connectivity solutions and be ready to make the most from the Black Friday weekend and the entire holiday shopping season.

Wireless Business Broadband Available In A Day

2009-11-10T01:14:00.003-06:00

You’re opening a new store this week and everything is all set to go. Construction is done, the fixtures are in place and the shelves are stocked. The announcements have been sent to the media and all that’s left is the ribbon cutting. After that, let the profit making begin. Oh... NO... There won’t be any profit making because there won’t be any sales. The broadband service you were promised won’t be installed for another couple of weeks. Well, that’s what they said anyway. But they said that two months ago. What are you going to do without any connectivity? Is there anything that can jump in and save the day?

Yes there is and you’ll be glad you found out about it. Instead of grinding your teeth or just leaving the doors closed until your DSL or other provider can get around to bringing up your business broadband, get a wireless solution from Accel Networks. It’s highly secure and PCI/Visa compliant, so you can make cashless transactions with confidence. Data rates are typically 768 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps download and 384 Kbps to 512 Kbps upload with solid signals covering 90% of the United States. Best of all, it can be deployed in 1 to 3 business days.

A broadband wireless connection available in as little as a single business day? How come other providers don’t offer that. One word: Wires. No wires means no digging in the yard, stringing pole to pole, or fishing cables through the building. Those are things that take time. Avoid the wires and a good bit of the provisioning time goes away.

Accel offers a wireless solution that cleverly makes use of existing infrastructure. Most WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers are very localized and require direct line of sight to their towers. They likely will have to come out and put a dish or other external antenna on your building even if you can see the tower. Accel Networks doesn’t use proprietary towers like your local WISP. They’re using some or all of those cellular towers you see all over town. That's another reason why they need so little provisioning time.

Accel Networks has made agreements with the cellular carriers to use some of the data bandwidth that is available from every cell tower. But rather than limiting their options to one carrier, they’ve contracted with both CDMA and GSM carriers so that their service footprint covers 99% of business locations in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. Their specially designed “Accelerator” customer location equipment is capable of 99.9% availability and network management from Accel headquarters. Installation takes less than an hour from the time your equipment arrives.

What can you do with a wireless network solution? The quick start option to have your business up and running in days, not weeks or months, is an obvious winner. It’s perfect for point of sale terminals in retail stores, quick service restaurants and hospitality providers like hotels and motels. It’s also a fast solution for disaster recovery in any business that can’t function without an Internet connection. Dial-up was once the answer to backing up broadband. But dial-up is just too slow for many applications anymore. Besides, the same disaster that took out your main wireline service might well have knocked out the phone lines as well.

The low capital and operating expenses per location for Accel Network’s wireless has given many businesses the incentive to upgrade from their old VSAT and frame relay connections or their current DSL and Cable broadband services. Accel is and can be the primary network service for restaurants, gas stations, banks, convenience stores and many other businesses. Some businesses have started with a panic call for quick start service and later decided to keep Accel Networks as their primary broadband connection.

Are you in dire need for fast and effective WAN network bandwidth at a reasonable price for a single or multiple business locations? Perhaps you’re just shopping around to see if you can do better than the high cost and unreliable service you have now. Either way, call the toll free number or enter an online inquiry for wireless business WAN bandwidth to get prices and availability.

Are We In A Balloon Boy Economy?

2009-11-09T00:15:00.007-06:00

Just a few weeks ago, millions of people watched in horror as a saucer shaped silver balloon soared for 50 miles across the Colorado landscape. What made this a nail-biting spectacle was the belief that there was a six year old boy in the gondola of that homemade balloon. At one point it was reported that he may have even fallen out. Then, in a climactic moment, the balloon touched down and a quick inspection showed it was nothing at all - just a big inflated gas bag causing a lot of excitement.

This past Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose above 10,000 again. The same day it was announced that nationwide unemployment hit 10 percent. The market has been climbing steadily for months. We’re getting regular pronouncements that the ugly recession of the past couple of years is over. Even government officials like Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner are cheerleading the return of happy days and economic growth. All that is seemingly needed now is a little mopping up action related to that pesky unemployment number and the economy will be chugging along nicely once again.

Something hasn’t seemed right about all this hoopla, but I wasn’t able to put my finger on it until Rick Santelli showed a chart titled “scary situation?” on his report for CNBC’s Fast Money program on Friday evening. This chart overlays line graphs for the DJIA and Unemployment as a function of time over this year. As Rick pointed out, there is an eerie correlation between the two rising numbers. A rousing discussion followed, related to government policy, corporate earnings forecasts and whether the unemployment figure is or is no longer a lagging indicator of economic activity. But I think they missed the really astounding implication of this chart. Have a look and see if you catch it:

What I’m thinking is that this chart is no anomaly. It’s an accurate representation of what’s playing out in the world of public corporations. It almost begs us to look a little deeper into the tightly coupled relationship between a rising market and rising unemployment. Let’s do that and see what we find.

Have you been watching the earnings reports that have been coming in over the last week or two? There seems to a theme in the reports for this earnings season and last quarter’s. Many companies meet or exceed Wall Street’s estimates for their earnings. They beat expectations and their stock pops. The composite of all these good reports has been causing the DOW and S&P averages to go up. So everybody’s happy and things are great, right?

Not so fast. The same reports that gleefully announce that a company’s earnings meet or beat expectations also tend to report that sales are flat or down for the quarter. The favorable earnings results have come from what is politely referred to as “efficiency improvements.” Sometimes they come right out and say it’s actually cost cutting or even layoffs.

So we have the beaming CEO who delights Wall Street with an excellent earnings report that ensures he lives to fight for another quarter and likely garners a nice performance bonus as well. But lurking behind that rosy facade is the human tragedy of yet more lower level employees stowing their personal belongings in cardboard boxes and heading to Personnel to be processed out of the company.

Is this the mechanism that keeps the stock averages and the employment numbers rising in lock-step? Could the seemingly robust earnings that justify higher stock prices be coming from emptying the desks and factory workstations, driving more and more people into the ranks of the unemployed?

All this seems to suggest that many companies are going beyond mere hunkering down for recessionary times. They’re actually making their performance look good by hollowing out the organization, what used to be called “eating the seed corn.” An easy way to do this is to throw everything overboard that isn’t directly related to achieving the next quarter’s earnings results. Easy targets are research and development, advertising, human resources, education & training, and manufacturing beyond orders for immediate delivery.

Doesn’t this eventually catch up with you? It can, especially when new competitors enter the market. Companies with robust new product development can find market niches wide open. The entrenched dominant company that normally crushes new entrants like bugs is so weakened that upstarts can gain a foothold. Many incumbents are presently gambling that this won’t happen to them. They’re playing a big game of “chicken” with their competitors, betting that everybody will continue to cut staff and other expenses to maximize short term earnings and keep the Wall Street analysts happy.

As business owners and managers, can we gain any insights from this that will help us improve our relative positions? If we really are in a “balloon boy” economy where expectations have become inflated way beyond what is actually going on, then we need to carefully manage our operations so that we can continue to stay in business. But we can also keep an eye open for opportunities to move into areas that may be opening up. One strategy is to test the waters by offering a wider range of products and services to your existing customers, especially when you can do this without incurring additional capital expense. Those once formidable opponents may not be so formidable anymore if they’ve squandered their ability to dominate markets just to look good in the short term.

Go Daddy Gets You Online Right Now

2009-11-06T00:54:00.003-06:00

If you have a nagging feeling that you are being overcharged to put your business online, it’s probably because you are. Prices for domains, hosting and site building vary all over the place and depend on how savvy you are at ferreting out the best deals on the Internet. That’s something of a catch-22, because the people just getting their businesses online are the ones who can benefit most from excellent service and cheap prices. Is there a way for just anybody to get the good deals in online services?

There is, and the name you want to remember is Go Daddy. Seems like a fairly easy task, especially with all the ads you see on TV. My favorite Go Daddy spokesperson is Danica Patrick, who embodies the characteristics you want in a website: high speed and easy on the eyes. But I digress. We’re talking about web resources here.

So, when you go to Go Daddy, what is there to help you get online quickly, easily and at budget prices?

The first thing you’ll want is a domain name. You have your choice of .com, .net, .org and a lot of others. For business, you best choice is something ending in .com. People just naturally associate the Internet with the .com top level domain and will tend to go there first even if you tell them your business is a .net or .biz or .name. Too much talk about the “dot com industry" or "dot com generation", I guess. Some companies go ahead and buy up at least the .com, .net and .org versions of their domain name just to keep competitors from encroaching on their territory. Domain names are so cheap at Go Daddy, you can easily afford to do this. Right now standard dot com pricing is $9.99 a year.

Here’s a little secret you should know if you are involved in affiliate marketing, such as with a company like Commission River that provides you with a customized website. You don’t need web building tools at all. Simply use the URL forwarding feature that Go Daddy provides with your domain name and your Go Daddy domain becomes your website domain. Some people don’t bother with a website at all. They just want an easy to remember email address. You can do that by using the email forwarding feature of your Go Daddy domain name. Just set it up to forward all mail coming into your domain name to whatever email service you have now. They’ve made it so easy that you can be set up and ready to go within minutes of ordering your domain name.

Now let’s say that you do want to create an online presence for your business so that customers can shop anytime 24/7 or find you through the search engines. Go Daddy has everything you need, with pre-built designs that let you pick a template and images and then add some information about your business. There’s a blogging and podcasting service, private photo albums, and even shopping carts so you can sell your own merchandise.

Another approach is to use the Go Daddy Web design services, where professional site builders will create and update a personalized Web site design for your business starting at under $50 a month. Custom logo and web banner design services are also available, as are services to increase Internet traffic to your new site. Before you go and pay a fortune to some local design service, take a look at what Go Daddy has to offer in the way of site building, maintenance and promotion.

Of course, Go Daddy also supports experienced and savvy Internet business developers with a wide range of low cost hosting plans. This includes Grid Hosting that scales automatically to support your business needs with up to 100 GB of space, 1,000 GB of transfer and unlimited compute cycles. Dedicated IP addresses and SSL certificates are available.

No time to waste - there is money to be made online and the sooner you establish your Web presence, the sooner you can be sharing in the rewards. Learn more and order your Go Daddy domain names and other Web resources now.

Fast MEN Available Cheap

2009-11-05T00:21:00.005-06:00

When you’ve got packets to move and lots of them, you need MEN to get them from point A to point B. If your MAN is a sluggish wimp, what you need is real MEN to get things moving. If the cost of your telecom connection has you seeing red, what you need is MEN - fast and cheap MEN.

What this testosterone laden introduction suggests is that MEN are the answer to your telecommunications problems. So they are, as long as we’re talking about Metropolitan Ethernet Networks as the MEN in question. What? You were expecting some guy in a cape?

Metro Ethernet is rapidly becoming the connectivity solution of choice in downtown and suburban areas for two reasons. Compared to traditional telecom solutions, they are fast and they are cheap.

Normally fast and cheap don’t go together, at least in the technology world. If you want more bandwidth, you pay more money. It’s a simple and longstanding relationship. Well, your relationship with MEN is going to change all that. Metropolitan Ethernet offers the connectivity you need from point to point or multipoint to multipoint at prices per Mbps that can be half that of high bandwidth SONET services and even less than T1 lines.

Metro Ethernet is a fairly new business-grade telecom service that has been standardized by the Metro Ethernet Forum, an industry standards group. The move from circuit switched telecom to packet switched networks, such as Ethernet, is based on the almost universal adoption of Ethernet as the local area networking protocol of choice. If every LAN is running Ethernet, then why do a protocol conversion between the local network and the wide area network only to get the packets across town?

Why, indeed? When all inter-location connections were under the control of local telephone companies, then telephone company standards defined the services available. Now that competitive carriers have entered the marketplace with their own networks based on IP rather that telco TDM standards, there’s no good reason not to keep the networks and all their connections as Ethernet. Interfacing is trivial, network efficiency is improved, and scalable service levels are much easier to provide. It’s not unusual to be able to purchase Metro Ethernet services in 1 Mbps increments and add bandwidth when your business needs dictate.

Just how powerful are these MEN? They range in bandwidth from 1 Mbps on up, although 10 Mbps Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and 1000 Gigabit Ethernet levels are very popular as they mirror the standard LAN and network interface speeds. Lower bandwidth services, including standard 10 Mbps Ethernet, may be provisioned over copper as well as fiber to save construction costs for buildings that are not “lit” for fiber service. You need to be reasonably near a carrier’s facilities for Ethernet over Copper or EoC to work.

Would you benefit by putting real MEN to work for your organization? If so, check pricing and availability of Metropolitan Ethernet Network services for your location.

Expand Your Existing Business With Commission River

2009-11-04T00:24:00.004-06:00

We can all use a little more business these days. But do you realize that you already have a way to increase your income without having to chase after new customers? It’s true. The secret is in leveraging customers and prospects you already have by offering them products and services they need but are currently buying from someone else.

Let’s say you sell a business service of some type. Every day you visit with customers and new prospects. Do any of them have a telephone? How about Internet service? Oh, they do? Why aren’t they buying those services from you?

“Because I’m not in that line of business,” is the quick comeback. But why not, when you could so quickly and easily be in that line of business in addition to whatever else you’re doing?

Let’s face it. Anyone who is in business likely has office telephone service, a cell phone, a toll free number, and some type of broadband Internet connection. They may also regularly use a conference calling service, make overseas long distance calls, and have a calling card in their wallet. Medium and larger size businesses have a PBX telephone system and a computer network that both need servicing and may be due for an upgrade.

So, how much trouble is it for you to ask about your customer’s telephone system needs or if you can look at their phone bill and see if you can save them money? If they have a T1 line, an ISDN PRI phone trunk or some other professional grade connectivity, there’s a very good chance you can save them money. Would your prospects go for $2 toll free numbers or international calls at a few pennies a minute? I’ll bet they would.

What makes it quick and easy for you to get a share of the lucrative and always in demand telecom market is a company called Commission River. The name describes what you’ll be getting. That is, a steady stream of residual income and monthly one-time payments for the services that your customers buy through your business.

All the services I’ve described are available through a Commission River public website like the one for Long Distance Rate Finder .com. You’ll get your own version of this, ready to go. Just add your business name and logo and you’re in the telecom business. Anytime someone orders through your website, you’ll get a commission. It only takes a few orders before those commissions become a commission river flowing right into your bank account.

You can see how easy it is to add Commission River services to your product line. Add links or banners to your current business website or buy a new domain name and use your customized Commission River website as a fully featured telecom services store. It’s self-service with online ordering for most services. For more sophisticated services like T1 lines and Ethernet connections, prospects enter contact information and an expert consultant helps them through the selection and contract process. You can also get take their basic information and enter the lead yourself as a service to your client.

If you are interested in boosting your income and you think that these telecommunications services nicely complement the business or consumer products that you already sell, then you should learn more about the Commission River affiliate opportunity and sign up immediately. There’s nothing to lose because there is no cost to join this program or continue participating. You don’t pay for this business... it pays you.

Even If There Is No Global Warming

2009-11-03T01:09:00.005-06:00

Global warming is heating up. Regardless of what the atmosphere is doing at the moment, the rhetoric on climate change is getting hot and proponents on both sides of the issue are getting really hot... under the collar. The irony is that green energy makes sense regardless of whether we’re about to boil over or freeze our toes off.

To be sure, the consensus among the most respected scientific minds worldwide is that the average temperature of the planet is increasing and our industrial age emissions of carbon dioxide are causing it. But for the sake of discussion, let’s say it isn’t so. Let’s say that we’re just riding natural changes in the climate that are driven by subtle variations in the sun’s energy output, wobbles in the Earth’s orbit, a rash of volcanic eruptions or whatever. What if any or all of these influences are really what we’re observing?

The best answer might be: “So what?”

There are really good reasons for us to behave like CO2 is bringing disaster upon our heads, regardless of the scientific connection. We need to change our relationship with energy or disaster will come down upon us and likely sooner rather than later. In fact, we could be in deep trouble long before Florida slips below the waves and it will have nothing to do with carbon-anything.

We are currently in the midst of one nasty recession that has had the side effect of buying us valuable time on both the climate and energy fronts. All those tankers parked in the Persian Gulf and the dearth of oil exploration are evidence that we’re not consuming energy, especially oil energy, at anything like the rate we expected a few years ago. Before people started throwing punches over global warming, the big fight was over peak oil. That’s the prediction that we’re draining old oil wells faster than we’re finding new ones to replace them. The forecaster was M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil researcher, who had the gall to announce in 1957 that U.S. oil production would peak in the late 60’s to early 70’s. A lot of well meaning dissenters thought he was nuts until, right on schedule, our production topped out in 1970.

Well, guess what? There is also a peak oil prediction for global oil production. By some expectations we should have already passed it. Most likely we’ve been spared by those nasty recessions that followed the bursting of the tech bubble and now the housing bubble. It’s just a short term reprieve, however. As soon as business starts kicking back into high gear we’re going to realize that we’re strapped for oil and those $4 and $5 a gallon gas prices will be back in no time. Perhaps worse, as we’re doing nothing to increase the supply at the moment.

To be sure, we’re not on the verge of running out of oil anytime soon. What we’re on the verge of is running out of the cheap, sweet, light crude that we’ve all come to know and love. Half of it is still in the ground, but there are a lot more of us who want it and the price is going to spiral upward as we try to outbid and perhaps out shoot each other to get it. What’s in plentiful supply are the gooey tar sands and other thick sulfur-laden muck that cost a fortune to turn into the nice sweet light gasoline and diesel that won’t clog up your injectors.

The choice we’re facing is to persist in slugging it out over the remaining oil reserves and keep coming up with more and more money to get it one way or the other, or break the cycle by moving off oil and onto something more promising before the situation is totally hopeless. That something is green energy. A generation ago, solar panels and wind generators were scientific curiosities that only made economic sense in unique situations. Now they’re in mass production with costs that can be easily be paid back within the lifetime of the equipment. Are green sources as cost effective as coal, oil and natural gas? Wind is almost at parity, with solar not that far behind. We haven’t even started to tap wave and tidal energy for coastal cities, nor geothermal for areas where it’s boiling hot close to the surface.

Even if all we do is keep squabbling, the production learning curve will continue to reduce the cost of green energy until it becomes the obvious choice. Wouldn’t it be smarter to embrace the change now and gain the advantages sooner? Green energy gives us an unlimited source of power with energy that is naturally provided by the Sun (solar and wind) and the Moon (tidal). There’s no worry about investing in “dry holes.” It gives us national security in that no other country can take away our sunshine and breezes. Any money we invest in the generating equipment and maintenance, we could be paying to ourselves. That’s domestic security, a reduction in our national debt that comes from paying for foreign oil, and employment that is easy to keep on-shore.

Green technology and manufacturing practices also give us efficiency improvements that result in less energy needed for a given process and lower costs through recycling, rather than always starting with mining raw minerals and ending with paying to bury perfectly good processed materials when we’re done with the product.

Green energy production and green product technology complement each other. From an efficiency standpoint, they “pull in the same direction” and accelerate the cost and supply advantages we’d gain over industrial-age technologies based on fossil fuels. It’s a win-win situation and, if we’re smart about it, we’ll be the winners.

Phone Power’s $14.95 A Month VoIP Service

2009-11-02T00:40:00.003-06:00

Are you interested in VoIP phone service, but horrified by the costs involved? What’s that about anyway? The whole idea behind VoIP as a replacement for landline telephone service is that it’s supposed to cost less, not more. Well, there’s still hope. Phone Power is offering their full featured residential and home office VoIP service for just $14.95 a month.

Now that’s more like it. There’s no good reason to reason to pay $25 or $35 a month for local and long distance calling when you can get service just as good or better for $14.95 a month. But is it really as good? Let’s take a look at what you get for your VoIP dollar.

First, you get unlimited calling to the U.S. and Canada. Unlimited, that is, if you are among the 99.9% of users who use less than 5,000 minutes a month. Extra minutes are just 2 cents each, less than you'll pay with just about any long distance service. So go ahead and chat to your heart's content.

You also get to keep your current phone number. Just transfer your number for free for the convenience of everyone who calls you now, or get a new number to start with a clean slate.

Here’s something you won’t get elsewhere. It’s a cloned second line. This included feature makes use of the fact that there are two telephone ports on the adaptor box that connects your phone to your broadband router or modem. You can plug two phones in the adaptor. When a call comes in, both phones ring. If you are on one phone, only the other one rings. But here’s the really cool feature. Two people can call out to different numbers at the same time. You just have one incoming phone number. By cloning, you get to handle two calls at once on that single line.

Phone Power VoIP service includes over 25 other features at no extra cost. You get the expected Caller ID with name support, voice mail, call waiting, call forwarding, and E911. But you also get extras like find me - follow me, voicemail to email, anonymous caller rejection, do not disturb, simultaneous ring to your home, work and cell phones, and specific number block list. Check the complete features list and you’ll be delighted how much you get that you’d pay more for with other services.

Phone Power’s $14.95 a month VoIP service is a real bargain compared to what the telecom carriers or those heavily advertised services charge. This offer is a two year plan that comes with a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. You can also get one year and monthly plans for a bit more. But here’s the special deal for new customers that really can’t be beat. If you prepay for 12 months of service at $199.95, Phone Power will give you a second year free. Divide 199.95 by 24 months and you get $8.33 a month. Yes, it’s fantastic but this is a special promo offer that won’t last long. If you want it, better grab it quickly.

So, does Phone Power look like the VoIP phone service that you’ve been wanting all along? If so and you have DSL or Cable broadband already, then learn more about Phone Power and order your service plan quickly and easily online.

Going Rogue But Not Rouge With Samsung

2009-10-30T00:35:00.004-05:00

Are you a maverick personality who needs a high performance cell phone that won’t quit on you in the middle of its service term? Then consider the new Samsung Rogue U960 Black (sorry, no red) for Verizon Wireless. It’s one hot candidate in a field of competing smartphones.

Does your current phone have one-touch access to your favorite social network apps, like Facebook and MySpace? No? How about the ability to surf the Web, watch YouTube videos and edit high resolution photos on a screen so bright its easy to use even in sunlight? No? Can you stream stereo music to a wireless headset, get driving directions, or message with ease using a real pushbutton slide-out QWERTY keyboard?

Still no? Your phone’s just too out of date to do everything you want to do, with ease, when you want to do it. Well, don’t waste your time trying to put lipstick on that pig when you can trade up to an advanced multimedia messaging-centric phone like the Samsung Rogue. It’s available at an incredible online discount with free shipping right now.

Let’s take a look at this candidate’s qualifications. What the Rogue has that you’ll be hard pressed to find on another phone is the AMOLED touchscreen color display. That stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode. Eventually your TV will have one of these displays, but right now you can enjoy the advantage of this new technology that is incredibly bright and easy to see even in direct sunlight. The Samsung Rogue display measures a generous 3.1 inches with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and the ability to display over 262,000 colors. That gives you a rich, desktop-like Internet experience on your cellphone.

The Rogue’s customizable widget bar enables you to have one-touch access to social media such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and so on. You’ll be able to surf the Web with the built-in HTML Web browser and take advantage of Verizon’s cellular broadband network that’s available in most populous areas. You’ll also have access to V Cast Videos and V CAST with Rhapsody, if you choose to subscribe to these multimedia services.

The vibrant color display will also be appreciated for viewing the high resolution photos you take using the Samsung Rogue's 3 Megapixel digital camera with flash. It has advanced editing tools and zoom capability onboard, plus it runs in camcorder mode so you can make your own videos wherever you happen to be. Share them with your friends using multimedia messaging for picture and video messages. You won’t run out of storage space if you plug in a microSD memory card with up to 16 GB of capacity.

If messaging is a major part of your communications, you’ll love the slide-out full QWERTY keyboard of the Samsung Rogue. No tapping on the screen to compose messages with this phone. You get real pushbuttons with comfortable size and spacing so you can compose text quickly, easily and accurately. Slide it back in when you are done for a smaller profile phone.

So, is this beauty winking at you? You can see it rushin’ to your house at a deeply discounted price when you order your Samsung Rogue U960 Black with Verizon Wireless service. Better order now, deals this good don’t tend to last long.

Of course, there are other candidates who also want to vie for your acceptance. You’ll find them very accessible right now at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

Fiber Is The New Wireline

2009-10-29T01:28:00.003-05:00

In telecommunications the term “wireline” means a copper wire connection. That’s contrasted with “wireless” which means no wires at all. There’s also another delivery mechanism called “fiber optic” which isn’t really a wire, but it really isn’t no physical connection at all like wireless. It may be neither fish-nor-fowl, but it is the likely successor to our copper wired infrastructure.

Fiber optic cable is destined to be the replacement for copper wire cable for a couple of reasons. In fact, they’re more alike than different.

Copper wire cabling is a bundle of twisted pairs of thin copper wires, each coated with a plastic insulating covering. Each wire is a different color or combination of colors for easy identification. They’re twisted together in pairs to reduce the effects of electrical interference. One pair is capable of supporting one telephone service or a DSL Internet service. Two pair will carry a T1 digital phone line. A binder group is a collection of individual twisted pairs bound into a single cable. A small to medium size business may have a 25 pair cable installed to provide telephone service. Larger cables have multiple binder groups, each color coded, in one fat plastic coated bundle. All this copper cabling can be buried in the ground or run overhead on poles. It’s where we get the term “land line.”

Now let’s compare our copper landline with a fiber optic cable. Look inside one of these fiber optic cables and you’ll see that the smallest unit is a single strand of glass fiber consisting of a core and cladding. That’s roughly analogous to the copper wire and its insulation. A fiber cable is like a binder group in that there are many individual fibers, each with a color coded jacket for easy identification. Also like copper cabling, fiber cable can be buried in the ground or run overhead on poles. Each fiber serves the same purpose as an individual twisted pair of wires. The difference is that wires transmit electricity while fibers transmit light.

Now, here’s why fiber is going to be the new wireline technology. The limitation with copper is that it can only transmit digital signals so fast. T1 lines have become the standard for digital telephony and business broadband because they use the same twisted pair copper wiring that's used for legacy analog telephony. It takes two pair to make one T1 line, but most businesses have at least a couple of unused pair available on their incoming telco cabling. A T1 line transmits and receives at 1.5 Mbps. If you have additional copper pairs available, you can bring in additional T1 lines. A process called “binding” couples them so they act like one larger capacity service. Eight T1 lines or 16 copper pair bonded gives you a broadband service of 12 Mbps.

Newer modulation technology can bind those multiple copper pair for a faster service called EoC or Ethernet over Copper. EoC can deliver 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps or even 45 Mbps with one limitation. You have to be within a few miles of the nearest carrier facilities, called their POP or Point of Presence. T1 lines can stretch out into the countryside to reach nearly every business, albeit at lower bandwidths than EoC can provide where available.

That’s it. You may be able to get the equivalent of 10 Mbps standard Ethernet speed and even approach 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet in special circumstances using traditional twisted pair copper wireline facilities. But if you want to get really fast service, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, you’ve got to have fiber optic cabling installed. In fact, each of those fiber strands can provide at least 10 Gbps versus 1.5 Mbps for a copper pair over long distances. That’s several orders of magnitude difference.

The ground is full of copper telecom cabling, as are utility poles. That’s because there was a century of copper build-out by the telephone companies while they enjoyed a monopoly business position. The telcos and competing companies have been filling the ground with fiber cabling in recent decades. But nearly all of that fiber is for long haul transmissions. You are almost certain to have copper telecom connections to your business, but probably don’t have fiber unless you are in a fairly new facility or are large enough to justify the cost of bringing it in.

That’s all changing. The cost of trenching fiber optic cable isn’t that much different from copper cable. For new installations, it makes sense to install fiber as well as copper. Eventually, it will be fiber only as nothing will connect to copper anymore. It’s going back and bringing in fiber to existing buildings that requires a new investment that providers have been reluctant to make, except where demand from the users in the business park or office building has justified the one time construction costs.

Even in residential areas, fiber is becoming the choice of homeowners who can get it. Many individuals are abandoning their traditional landlines as “old fashioned” compared to being able to communicate anywhere using their cell phones. But cellular networks choke on delivering high bandwidth services, such as video on demand or computer operating system updates. Consumers are finding they actually need a wireline service, but one that has the capacity for high bandwidth content delivery. Verizon’s FiOS is the pioneer in FTTH or Fiber To The Home. Where available it is very popular, even as copper wireline service is abandoned in favor of cellular phone service.

Is your business starved for bandwidth? Perhaps a fiber optic connection can give you all the bandwidth you can use at a cost lower than you might expect. Don’t assume it’s too costly or unavailable until you check prices and availability of fiber optic service for your location.

Your Cell Phone Is A Tool For International Business

2009-10-28T01:18:00.003-05:00

Do you conduct business internationally? If so, your cell phone can be the business machine that keeps you in touch with clients overseas.

The first tool you’ll want is a way to make cheap international phone calls from your cellphone while using U.S. mobile service. The cell phone plan that enables you to make local and long distance domestic calls may well prohibit calls outside the country. If you can make them, you’ll pay a pretty penny. So, right now you wait until you have access to your landline or VoIP calling service to make those calls. Sometimes, that’s really inconvenient. So much so that you could lose a valuable customer just because you aren’t available.

There’s a better way. Use a low cost international dial-around service when you need to call overseas. You simply dial a local or toll-free access number to reach the service. Then dial the international number you want to reach. It’s that simple. You’ll pay just a few pennies per minute to call many destinations. With the special promo plan that’s available right now, calls to China are just 1 cent per minute. Call to Canada are less than a penny a minute.

You might not even be able to call that cheaply on your landline or VoIP service. No problem, use the Tel3Advantage international calling service from any phone you happen to be at. The rates are incredibly low and the service is easy to use. In fact, you can download a special app for many cell phone models so that making international calls is as easy as calling the next state.

But what happens when you need to travel overseas and call back home. If you’d like to use your cell phone, then you’ll be accessing the towers and cellular service in the countries you’re visiting. For that you need the right cell phone and access.

In the United States there are two competing cellular technology standards. One is CDMA used by Verizon and Sprint. The other is GSM used by AT&T and T-Mobile. GSM is the global standard, so you need a GSM phone if you expect to use it outside U.S. borders. The best phones for this are called quad-band GSM phones. They can access all 4 international mobile bands, so they work virtually anywhere.

You also need a phone where you can access the SIM card. That’s a tiny circuit card, often located behind the battery, that is removable in many GSM phones. When you travel outside the U.S., you replace your domestic SIM card with an international SIM card. A great value is the OneSimCard prepaid international SIM card. With it in your GSM phone, you’ll save up to 85% on your calls and even receive calls for free in more than 60 countries. If you don’t have a GSM phone or are only traveling for a short time, you can also rent a mobile phone for a small fee from OneSimCard.

With business becoming increasingly more global in nature, these simple tools can give you the capability of being an international player wherever you happen to be. Why, it’s enough to start shopping for a more capable cell phone.

Dedicated Internet Access Via Ethernet

2009-10-27T01:40:00.003-05:00

Broadband Internet access is now almost universal at business locations large and small. But what type of Internet connection are you using? Did you know that your best option might now be Ethernet?

It’s true. Metro Ethernet Networks are not only growing by leaps and bounds, but they offer some valuable advantages for business users that choose this option. Perhaps the least known but most valuable advantage is the cost savings. With an Ethernet access solution, you may wind up paying half or less what it costs you for Internet bandwidth today. That’s a major cost savings without having to give up reliability or dedicated bandwidth levels.

How is dedicated Internet access different from any other kind of broadband service? Dedicated means that you have a certain bandwidth dedicated to your connection. For instance, if you lease a 5 Mbps connection then you can depend on having 5 Mbps available to you at all times. Shared access solutions, typical with consumer grade broadband services, have a pool of bandwidth that is shared among users. Can you afford to have your throughput stifled because someone down the street is downloading HD movies? Perhaps that’s acceptable at home, but in business where time is money? I don’t think so.

Another advantage of Ethernet connections is the wide range of bandwidth options available. Many provider offer everything from T1-level 1.5 Mbps through Gigabit Ethernet. The standard network speeds that run on your LAN are 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps. If you want transparency from the LAN through the WAN, you can match your connection speed to your local network speed. But if you want to save money and don’t need massive bandwidth right now, then pick a service level that gives you the throughput needed to support your applications. You can upgrade later. Ethernet services tend to be more scalable than traditional telecom services, so a simple upgrade request may be all it takes to double your bandwidth when you need to.

Dedicated Internet access via Ethernet also gives you a simple connection to your internal network. The handoff from your service provider is a standard Ethernet jack. The provider usually installs a managed router at your location so that they can monitor the link to their network operations center and catch problems before they impact your business.

Are you required to have fiber optic service to your building to take advantage of Ethernet Internet? Only if you need or want the higher service levels of Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps), Gigabit Ethernet (1000 Mbps) or 10 GigE (10,000 Mbps). For bandwidths up to the DS3 level of 45 Mbps and maybe even higher, you may qualify for delivery over already installed twisted pair copper bundles. Ethernet over Copper, or EoC, is a popular way to increase your business bandwidth while perhaps also enjoying a cost savings. You do need to be reasonably close to a carrier office to take advantage of this option, but it is generally available in high density business locations downtown and in suburbia.

Would switching to Metro Ethernet Network service be advantageous to your business? Check availability and pricing for Ethernet Internet access now.

Toll Free Number Includes Conference Calling

2009-10-26T00:38:00.003-05:00

Are you on the lookout for cheap and easy toll free conference calling? Why not just use your toll free number to host a conference call anytime you want?

Can you really do that? You can if you happen to have a Kall8 toll free number . They start at $2 each with a $2 service fee per month plus the cost of incoming calls. For most calls that will be 6.9 center per minute.

What? Even the cheap conference calling services want more than that. Plus the old-line providers want you go through some rigamarole to schedule your conferences in advance. Does Kall8 really offer this type of conferencing service at such low rates?

Yes, they do. There’s no big fanfare about it. Toll free conference calling is just one of the many features already included in your toll free service. You may not have even known it was there. But it is, and it’s available for your use anytime.

What can you do with Kall8 toll free conferencing? You can call a conference anytime you want. It’s almost as simple as making a telephone call and using a speakerphone at each end. Only with this feature, you can have up to 25 participants located anywhere in the country. They simply dial your toll free number and enter a password that you have sent them. With that, they join the conference.

How much does all this cost again? For each participant calling your toll free number in the continental 48 states, you’ll pay 6.9 cents per minute. Calls coming in from Alaska and Hawaii pay an extra surcharge. If you want people to call for your special training, sales program or other event, you’ll find the total cost is way cheaper than specialized conferencing services that charge 10 to 25 cents per minute for the same service.

Oh, do you want a recorded copy of your conference call? No problem. Just select that feature on your control panel and a link to your recorded conference will be sent to you. The cost is just 5 cents per minute for this additional feature.

Let’s face it. If you’re in business and want to encourage prospects or customers to call you, one of the best ways to do that is by offering a toll free number. Kall8 toll free numbers start at $2 each with instant availability. Then you pay only $2 a month to maintain your service. If nobody calls, that’s all you pay. For each caller, the charge is the same 6.9 cents per minute quoted for conference calls.

Your Kall8 toll free number also has some nice features beyond conferencing. You can change the ring-to number (which phone rings) for your toll free calls anytime you wish. Voice mail is included and can be picked up by calling in, listening online in your account, or having the message sent to you as an email attachment. Inbound FAX messages can also be read online or sent as an email attachment.

What are the extra charges for these deluxe features? There are no extra charges. Those features are included, as are others such as call blocking, custom call forwarding, maximum call length selection, Caller ID display, and calling out on your toll free number as a virtual calling card. All this for a couple of bucks per month plus the cost of the calls.

Is this the best deal in toll free service you’ve ever heard of? Then why not have it for yourself right now? Learn more and order your Kall8 toll free number w/ conference calling feature now.

Greening The Product Life Cycle

2009-10-23T00:17:00.003-05:00

Time was when the life cycle of a product consisted of completely disconnected phases. It was designed, manufactured, shipped, sold, used, and discarded with little or no connection between these activities. That era is coming to an end. We’re entering a new era where every life cycle activity will be coordinated and, in many cases, optimized for least impact on the environment.

Remember the mantra of agricultural America? It went “use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.” That philosophy stands in stark contrast to industrial America where planned obsolescence and disposable everything was in vogue. But as we enter what might be called the age of environmental concern, we may well return to those rural values of century ago.

The beating we’ve given Mother Earth is starting to come back on us. There are real safety issues associated with our food and water. We’re running out of acceptable places to throw our trash. Oh, and have you noticed that sea ice is melting, oceans are rising, and even local climates are going a little weird?

Even if global warming wasn’t coming to cook us or that the price of oil is going to make our eyes bug out as soon as the economy picks up again, it would still make sense to address the way we make, use and dispose of products before we wind up poisoning ourselves.

First and foremost, we’ve got to stop making stuff that tries to kill us. That includes anything that runs on hydrocarbon fuels. As it turns out, most of what we make will try to kill us if we make large enough quantities. For instance, consider the humble cell phone. They may seem benign, but when you throw them in the trash bad things start to happen. There are all sorts of toxic chemicals, such as cadmium and arsenic, that leach out as they decompose in the landfill.

There are a couple of ways to avoid this problem. In the short term we can send cell phones and other electronic gadgets to a recycler instead of tossing them in the trash. That way the materials will be kept out of the waste stream and used in future manufacturing. A longer term solution is to identify troublesome materials and substitute others that aren’t toxic or much less so. One example is the solder that fastens components to circuit boards. It used to be full of lead. Now more and more circuit boards are being made with lead-free solder alloys. CRTs are also full of lead. But flat screen displays aren’t.

Material selection is critical to making environmentally safe products, but the manufacturing process is also important. A key element is the amount of energy used to create a device and where that energy comes from. The degree of future climate change that is caused by manufacturing one more item today can be cut dramatically by using green energy in the manufacturing process and using materials that have been recycled, especially metals such as copper, gold and steel. Getting new metals from ore costs much more in energy terms that simply re-melting and purifying already refined metal.

Product design itself is a major influence on how much damage a product will do over its lifetime. Circuits designed to minimize power draw mean less demand for power stations. Products designed for easy disassembly and recycling save energy downstream when they’re useful life is over. The fact is that most things we use are not heirlooms. We’re likely going to buy and replace a dozen or more personal computers in our lifetimes. The old ones have to go somewhere. Apple Computer is particularly sensitive to this issue and offers to pay for the return and recycling of your old computer when you buy a new one. Perhaps the day will come when all products are treated this way.

It’s easy to see now that the energy that a product draws from the grid while operating is just a fraction of the energy involved in its life cycle. So, too, the materials used to create one product can come from the remains of a previous item and live on as they are recycled to build the next model. The incremental cost of transforming products to incorporate technology innovations is far less than the cost of starting from scratch with raw materials each time.

Better life cycle planning for all the products we use has the potential to dramatically reduce our need for new energy sources as it simultaneously saves us from chemically polluting our environment. All of this without having to sacrifice the progress we’ve come to enjoy.

The Stunning Truth About Metro Ethernet Prices

2009-10-22T00:16:00.003-05:00

Over the last couple of years, a new type of network connection has become available. It’s the Metro Ethernet Network also called MetroE. Metro Ethernet services have defied conventional telecom pricing models by offering more bandwidth for less money. That’s right, MORE bandwidth for LESS cost.

Really? Is this true? If so, how can it be that way?

The answer breaks down into two primary drivers. The first is technology. The second is aggressive service providers. This double-barreled business advantage gives you something that you may desperately want in this depressed business climate. It’s an opportunity to get more for less. Alternatively, keep the bandwidth that works for you now and really pay less. By shaving your monthly telecom service expense without requiring any counterbalancing expense or capital investment, this savings is pure profit. It's just what the beaten-up bottom line has been waiting for.

Let’s take a closer look at the forces that result in lower Metro Ethernet prices. If you have a outside data connection, such as a dedicated broadband Internet service or a point to point data line that connects two business locations, you are most likely using a traditional telecom service such as a T1 line, DS3 bandwidth, or fiber optic SONET service. These are telephone company inventions that have been gradually offered to businesses as well as telco offices.

There’s nothing wrong with digital telco services. They’ve matured over the decades into reasonably priced and highly reliable connectivity. They’ve also been deployed far and wide so that today you can get a T1 line just about anywhere you can get phone service.

But there are two limiting factors related to telco services. The first is that they are deployed using local telephone company owned copper and fiber cables. Part of the cost of every T1 line, and the other mentioned services, is the last mile connection known as the local loop. The cost of this connection will only be as inexpensive as it is available from the incumbent local telephone company.

The other limitation lies with the technology. Telco services are based on a standard called TDM or Time Division Multiplexing. It partitions the bandwidth of a digital line into small channels capable of supporting one phone conversation each. For instance, a T1 line consists of 24 of these channels. This is an ideal arrangement when you are transporting telephone calls, but it introduces some inefficiencies when you want to bundle a lot of these channels together to make a big data pipe.

Computer networks are not TDM. They have standardized on a packet switching technology, which is Ethernet. Every LAN runs Ethernet. So does every switch and router. If you need to interconnect far-flung equipment using TDM communication lines, then all this equipment needs to covert between TDM and Ethernet at every node.

Metro Ethernet may use fiber optic or copper based connections, but the network is running an Ethernet protocol known as Carrier Ethernet. This is a standardized protocol that is rapidly expanding in metropolitan areas. One reason that it is called “Metro” Ethernet is that you’ll only find it areas where there are lots of business users.

Connecting everything with Ethernet offers a number of advantages for network managers. You have the choice of using either switches or routers connect separate site networks. Ethernet services also tend to be scalable. That means you can order bandwidth incrementally, sometimes in 1 Mbps steps. Traditional telecom services require a major provisioning effort to change bandwidth. With Ethernet, a simple call to your provider may be all you need to add bandwidth to your service.

The other piece in the puzzle of plummeting bandwidth prices for Metro Ethernet is the emergence of new competitive carriers with their own networks using the latest technology equipment. With no tie to traditional telephone company operations, these providers aren’t burdened with legacy costs or equipment that is too entrenched and expensive to update at this time. They can focus their efforts on offering a suite of high bandwidth Ethernet services for businesses that need just this type of connectivity.

Is Metro Ethernet the right network service for your business operation? Find out by checking availability and pricing of Metro Ethernet services in your area.

Comprehensive Network Services From Telarus

2009-10-21T00:58:00.003-05:00

Building and managing a network for your business can be problematic. For smaller businesses, it’s a distraction from the main focus of the company. For medium and larger operations, it can be a money pit and either a boost or a hinderance to productivity. What can really get painful is integrating your LAN and WAN networks to create one smooth running entity. Is there anything that can help?

You bet there is. There’s a service that can help regardless of whether you are a small office with no tech support to a major corporation with international operations. Imagine getting the hardware, software, installation, maintenance, operation, upgrades, plus connectivity from switched circuit analog telephone right on up to gigabit Ethernet, all from one source. Now, THAT’s comprehensive service!

The service I’m referring to is actually a family of services under one umbrella called Telarus. I first became associated with this company when they launched their groundbreaking “Shop for T1” service over 6 years ago. The revolutionary idea was that you could get T1 line pricing for your business location in under a minute on your Web browser. You still can. Just use the Shop for T1 real-time quote engine on our T1 Rex site.

Competitive T1 line pricing soon expanded to a wide variety of telecom bandwidth services that now encompass DS3, SONET fiber optic connections, Metro Ethernet, MPLS networks, wireless point to point and Dedicated Internet service, colocation servers, ISDN PRI, SIP trunking, and managed routers for everything.

When it comes to WAN services, Telarus offers one-stop shopping for nearly every business bandwidth service you can get. What’s more, being a telecom brokerage service means they can often offer you multiple competitive quotes for the service you need. The Telarus bandwidth consultants can help you weigh the tradeoffs among an often staggering amount of options so you can get the service that meets your business needs at the best price. The cost of all this to you? Zip. It’s free to any organization with serious professional requirements.

But you know that bandwidth is only one piece of the puzzle. How about all that internal infrastructure that keep the packets flowing?

This is where the complementary Telarus VAR Network service comes into play. What’s a VAR? That means Value Added Reseller. It’s an industry term for independent business telephone and computer network companies that specialize in sales and service. VARs will take your business requirements and offer you a package deal for PBX phone systems, routers, network switches, fiber optic cabling, copper wiring, connections and whatever else it takes to build your telephone, data or converged network.

VARs often offer turnkey solutions that include both the equipment and installation. Since the VAR Network is part of the Telarus family, participating VARs also have access to the complete range of bandwidth solutions that Telarus offers. This gives you the advantage of one-stop shopping and a single point of contact for any issues that arise. Accessing the VAR Network is as simple as entering a quick summary of your business needs using the VAR Network online request. That triggers the automated database to alert qualified VARs in your area to contact you for complete details.

Can you do any better than this? I doubt it. If you are not familiar with these Telarus services, go ahead and give them a try. The cost to you is zero, the time required is minimal, and the cost savings can be way more than you might think.

Residential and Small Business VoIP Rates Crushed

2009-10-20T00:47:00.004-05:00

VoIP telephony, sometimes called broadband phone service, has gone from a geeky computer app to full-fledged competition for mainstream telephone service in the course of a few years. The enablers for this have been the widespread replacement of dial-up Internet access with broadband services and the installation of Internet connections in small businesses. But just as ample rain leads to bumper crops, ample broadband has led to a bumper crop in VoIP providers. One of the most aggressive in this space, Phone Power, is now tweaking the industry by causing rates to plunge to less than $15 a month on unlimited residential and small home-based business service plans. That cost plummets even lower to just over $8 a month when you prepay for a year.

Granted, you can still pay even less for specialized services such as MagicJack and Skype. But both of these require you to use your computer as part of the phone system. When the computer is off, so is your phone. Plus you’ve got to deal with potential contention for processor resources when you try to use the phone while you are actually using the computer.

Phone Power and many other VoIP services that vie for your telephony dollar don’t work that way. They share your broadband connection in lieu of a traditional telephone line but don’t have any connection to the innards of your computer. Instead, they use a hardware device called an ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor to turn a phone jack into an Ethernet jack that connects into your router or broadband modem. Phone Power gives you the adaptor free while you are using their service. Some other vendors also do that or you can buy an adaptor at your local electronics outlet.

The cost of VoIP phone services seems to have settled into the $20 to $30 range for aggressive services that you see heavily advertised and somewhat more for some of the familiar name bundles. That’s not unreasonable, considering that VoIP has typically offered both unlimited local and long distance calling. A traditional landline plan is local service only with an additional per-minute charge for long distance calls. Additional features, such as Caller ID, are usually offered as ala-carte add-ons to your basic service.

The big telephone carriers also offer competitive bundles of local and long distance minutes or unlimited calling plans with popular features included. But at $14.95 a month? Try twice that. When you look at Phone Power’s 12 Month Prepay option, the difference is even more pronounced. This is a new customer promotional rate for $199.95 prepaid for a year’s service. But as part of this special promotion, Phone Power will include a 2nd year’s service for free. That brings your equivalent monthly rate down to about $8.33 for unlimited calling to US and Canada numbers and free lease of the telephone adaptor.

This offer is intended for residential addresses, including home office users and home-based businesses. If your business is large enough to have its own physical address, there are also business packages available for single and multi-line users, with a wealth of add-ons and upgrades to give you the power of a on-site PBX phone system without the capital expense.

If you are considering switching your residential or business phone service or are just feel you are paying too much for the service that you have now, you should take a look at Phone Power Residential and Business VoIP before you commit to buying any other service.