Any new business, in the course of getting their new facility operational, must do a host of things to prepare to get themselves up and running.  One of these important things is to purchase a phone system, as this will be your primary means of communication with the world (if you’re like most businesses, anyway).  One of several choices that comes along with a new phone system is what type of dialtone you will order.  Choosing the right type of dialtone for your needs can save you headaches (and money) in the long run, and make your staff more productive.

The most common type of dialtone is the analog line.  This is known by several names: a BBL (”Basic Business Line”), 1FB (”1 Flat Business” line), or POTS line (”Plain Old Telephone Service”), among others.  It’s the same type of line that is commonly delivered to residences.  Normally, a business using analog lines will order several of them, each having its own telephone number.  Usually, most or all of these lines will be placed in a “hunt group” so that you can publish a single telephone number in the phone book, but allow multiple people to call you simultaneously (if the published phone number’s line is in use, other calls will “wrap” to the second line, third line, and so forth automatically).  A fax number is usually ordered as a separate analog line and not placed in the hunt group.

With analog lines, there are usually a number of features available to you via the dialtone provider (the company that delivers the lines and actually provides your dialtone service).  Features like call waiting, Caller ID, conference calling, and many more features are available as either part of the standard package offered by the provider, or via an additional monthly fee.  Some of these may also be available as features on the phone system itself (such as conferencing), in which case you may be able to save money by using them via your phone system rather than through your dialtone provider.  We have seen that in terms of ordering time, about two weeks is standard in the Phoenix area with most carriers.

Another type of dialtone available to businesses is a T-1.  A T-1 always features multiple lines, or channels, up to 24 for a full T-1 circuit.  Most providers offer the choice of a partial T-1 to those customers who do not need a full 24 lines (usually a T-1 is provisioned in 4, 8 or 12-channel increments).  Rather than being analog, a T-1 line is digital, which gives some advantages.  First, the quality tends to be better as you don’t get as much background “hiss” or static.  T-1 technology also allows for special phone numbers called DID, or Direct Inward Dial, numbers. These are numbers that, in conjunction with your phone system programming, allows for an outside caller to call directly to specific desks within the office.  In this manner, you can provide a direct phone number for as many of your employees as you wish.  Unlike with analog lines, where you will pay a set amount (say, $40 or so) for each phone number, with a T-1 you pay for the lines (talk paths) each month, and the phone numbers themselves are practically (but not quite) free.  This can be done because, unlike with analog lines, where each line must have its own phone number assigned to it, lines on a T-1 do not have specific phone numbers assigned to each line.  This actually makes a T-1 much more efficient in terms of being able to route calls.  As for other features, it should be noted that, unlike with an analog line where there are many features offered by the dialtone provider, most features on a T-1 are expected to be provided by your telephone system.

One special type of T-1 is called ISDN PRI (or just PRI for short).  This has all the advantages of a normal T-1, but unlike with a T-1, which does not offer Caller ID service, a PRI offers Caller ID.  With a PRI line, you can get a maximum of 23 calls occurring simultaneously, instead of 24, because the 24th channel is used as a data channel; it’s how your phone system communicates with your dialtone provider, and it carries information on the setup, progress and teardown of all calls taking place on the circuit.  This is extremely helpful at times for troubleshooting purposes.

One popular type of PRI is a Dynamic PRI, in which your phone lines and Internet are shared.  Your Internet has a base speed of about 1.5 Mbps, and for each voice line that is in use at a given time, your Internet will go slightly slower.  Lots of businesses like this type of PRI because it allows them to have a full PRI circuit and Internet for essentially the price of a PRI circuit alone.

Traditionally, T1/PRI has been something that smaller businesses could not afford.  This has changed a bit in the last few years, and now it is commonplace for even small businesses to have this type of circuit (especially now that Dynamic PRI is available in most markets).  If your business has 8 or 10 lines or more, you may find it cost-effective to go this route.  With any type of T-1 (or PRI), it normally takes longer to be delivered.  6 to 8 weeks seems to be standard turnaround time for ordering.

The last type of line that is common in the United States is a VOIP, or Voice Over IP line.  This is where calls, rather than being routed over a dedicated line from end to end, travel over an IP network (maybe even the Internet, depending upon who your provider is and their offering).  Without going into detail, VOIP technology allows dialtone providers to be much more efficient, and VOIP lines are becoming a very popular option both for dialtone providers and consumers.  For dialtone consumers, the monthly cost of VOIP lines is usually less than other options, both in the monthly base price and in long distance fees.  A possible downside to this type of line is that, with certain providers and depending on how the dialtone is delivered, you may have voice quality issues from time to time.  Many people also find that a fax machine, modem, or alarm line will not work reliably on a VOIP line.

Whether you decide to use analog phone lines, T-1 (or PRI), or VOIP phone lines, it is important that you purchase the type of interface from your phone vendor that supports the type of line you have chosen.  Dialtone providers offering VOIP lines recognize that this is fairly new technology, and that many residences and businesses do not have the type of phone equipment that will support VOIP lines directly.  For this reason, many, if not most, of them offer conversion boxes that “translate” VOIP into something that your home phone or business phone can understand; the conversion box makes it appear to your phone system that the line is an analog or a T-1/PRI line (this is, in fact, what a Dynamic PRI line is–VOIP lines that are converted so that they appear to your phone system as if they are a regular PRI).  If your phone system natively supports VOIP lines, no conversion box will be needed.  You should, in that case, communicate with your phone system vendor to ensure that the particular dialtone provider and service you are considering is supported by the equipment; this is because, while there are some common standards that are emerging, the particular “flavor” and implementation of VOIP offered by the various providers may be different.

Today, we had a number of customers who contacted us because they were unable to make or receive any calls.  This was due to a significant localized dialtone outage (the dialtone provider shall remain nameless in this post, as I would consider their service good in general and I have no desire to draw negative attention to them).  Even though our own business was affected by the service outage, we were able to remain operational.  I’ll let you know how in a bit.

Unfortunately, anyone can be affected by dialtone outages, even companies like ours that sell telephone systems, since everyone is at the mercy of the dialtone provider to provide service.  I thought I would post a couple of tips on minimizing your risk of having dialtone issues, signs that you may be having dialtone trouble (as opposed to phone equipment trouble), and how to recover as well as you can if you ever do find yourself in the middle of an outage.

First, let’s talk minimizing risk.  The best way to do this is to have redundant dialtone.  The fact that nearly all businesses have multiple lines is a good start.  Many small businesses have analog phone lines, also known as 1FB lines or POTS lines (POTS stands for “Plain Old Telephone Service”; I’ll post on the different types of dialtone soon in a separate post)  With this type of service, it used to be that if you had a service issue, it would usually be only a line or two that was down, often not your main line, and you could hobble by until the dialtone provider was able to find and fix the issue.

These days, many analog lines are delivered digitally to the premises, even if broken down into an analog signal at the customer premises, and one of the nasty effects of having a digital line go down is that they ALL will go down simultaneously.  For this reason, it might not be a bad idea to have a line or two with a separate dialtone provider.  Be careful, though: many dialtone providers in the Phoenix area do not have their own equipment, but instead resell the service of another provider; thus, even if you get lines from two different providers, they might all still be provided by the same company and may still all go down in the event of a service interruption.  If you go this route, make sure that each dialtone provider has their own Central Office and equipment serving your address.

More and more companies are opting these days to feed digital lines directly into their phone systems to give their business certain feature advantages (again, this will be discussed in more detail in a separate post).  One option available to companies that have digital lines such as a standard T1 or a PRI-ISDN circuit is to also get a separate analog line for their main phone number.  This is what we have done in our office.  Thanks to a feature from our dialtone provider called Variable Call Forward, we are able to call forward the analog line to our PRI circuit.  If the PRI circuit ever goes down (and it has), we can turn off the call forwarding on our main line without having to go through our dialtone provider, and calls will begin ringing in instantly on the analog line.  We have a second analog line that calls can roll to if the first line is busy.

Some dialtone providers have automatic failover features, such as automatically detecting when a call cannot go through and re-routing the call to a different phone number of your choosing.  This seems to be more common with the VOIP-based dialtone services, but some of the traditional dialtone providers do as well.  If your provider offers this, you’ll want to set this up in advance, before you are experiencing trouble.

How can you tell whether the trouble you’re having is dialtone-related or related to the phone equipment on-site?  Generally, if your phones appear normal otherwise (i.e. the displays on the office phones are still working, and you can intercom from one phone to another within the office), you have a dialtone issue and should call your dialtone provider; you can ask them to temporarily forward your main number to another outside number while they work on the trouble.  If some phones in your office can access a specific outside line, but other phones cannot, you’ll want to give us a call (if you’re an existing customer of ours, of course).  Aside from this, it should be noted that most often, if you are unable to make a phone call to an outside number or receive a phone call from an outside number, it’s a dialtone provider issue.  Why?  With miles of cable between your premises and the Central Office, multiple splices in the cable, aging cable, multiple pieces of equipment at the Central Office, and the fact that a given call will usually travel through multiple Central offices, it’s more complex on their end, and more things can go wrong.  Having indicated that, if you’re a customer of ours, having trouble, and aren’t sure who to turn to, we’d be happy for you to call us and we can get you pointed in the right direction.

Even with our redundant dialtone setup here at Telco, we found ourselves in a rare quandary today when neither our primary nor backup dialtone was working.  In this case, ESI Cellular Management came to the rescue!  ESI Cellular Management is another tool available exclusively to owners of any ESI Communications Server phone system.  In our case, we had our dialtone provider forward our main line to one of our cell phones, and thanks to the ESI Cellular Management technology, we were able to have those calls ring on several of our ESI desk phones, and answer them, transfer the call from one phone to another, transfer to any individual’s voicemail, and more!  If you haven’t yet read about ESI Cellular Management, you can check out my previous post on ESI Cellular Management here.  It’s just another way that ESI and Telco set themselves apart from the crowd.

There has been a real buzz over Voice over IP (VoIP) during the last couple of years.  We get asked about it often by businesses looking to purchase a new phone system, who want to make sure they’re not being “left out”.  How does it work?  Will it save money on long distance?  What other benefits does it provide?  In many people’s minds, the concept is a bit undefined; they’re not sure exactly what it will do for them, but they do know that their next system should support it.

First, a small explanation of what VoIP technology is, and the basic reason it’s so promising.  In traditional telephony, voice conversations take place over a dedicated line.  This is generally a pair of wires that carry your voice to the other person you are speaking to, and their voice back to you.  Granted, there is sophisticated equipment that routes your call from point A to point B, so there are usually a number of sets of wires that are actually being connected, but the point is that you are using a dedicated connection when you are on that call.  Since there are a limited total number of connections that can be made, even the phone company can run out of connections, and this is why you can sometimes try to make a call and hear the “all circuits are busy” recording.

VoIP technology is more sophisticated.  When you are on a conversation using VoIP technology, your voice is broken out into many small bits at lightning speed and sent to the other end very quickly, where it is reassembled and played to the person at the other end.  These small voice bits, or packets, have several pathways they can take to their destination and will take whatever path is the most efficient at that millisecond in time.  As long as they can be reassembled properly at the other end within a reasonable time frame (on the order of milliseconds), it does not matter what path they take to get there.  Because a dedicated path does not need to be established in this scenario, certain things can be done to make calls more efficient, such as cutting out the parts of the conversation where no talking is happening, like between words, and voice compression can also take place.  The net effect is that the same resources that could once carry say, 24 calls simultaneously, may now be able to carry triple that number or more.

It’s important to note that, while all VoIP technology is the same in a basic sense as has been described, there are some different applications  that take advantage of this technology.

VoIP Dialtone

Dialtone providers have learned early on the tremendous efficiency gains (and cost reductions) that could be had with packet-based calls, and most carriers have upgraded their equipment so that, at least behind the scenes, they are using this technology.  Most are also now offering VoIP-based phone lines to both business and consumer customers.  In some cases, the interface to your home or business may not even be any different, but they can offer more competitive dialtone rates to you because of this technology.

Some companies, such as Vonage, deliver dialtone over the Internet, and they provide you with a special box called an ATA (or Analog Terminal Adapter) that converts the IP technology into an analog signal that will work with your phone or business phone system.  Companies that provide dialtone via the Internet in this manner are called ITSPs, or Internet Telephony Service Providers, and they can usually offer very aggressive rates in the form of lower monthly rates or free long distance.  Some newer phone systems have circuitry that can understand IP dialtone natively, and in such a case an ATA box is not required.

Phone System VoIP

Phone system manufacturers have also realized that they can do some fantastic things with VoIP technology.  These applications offer tremendous benefits by taking advantage of two things: (1) the fact that most Internet connections are based on a monthly fee, and that you are not charged based on the amount of traffic you generate, and (2) the global nature of the Internet.

• Local IP Phones: these are used instead of traditional digital phones, and rather than requiring separate cabling can use the same cable that your computer uses on your office LAN (Local Area Network).  Their functionality is usually the same as a normal digital phone by the same manufacturer.
• Remote IP Phones: these can be used off-site, such as at a home residence for telecommuters or executives.  While remote IP phones from most manufacturers offer a more limited feature set than a local IP phone, remote phones from ESI (the manufacturer whose phone systems we sell) offer exactly the same experience that a local IP phone does, meaning that a remote user can see who is on their phone in the office at a glance, intercom, answer incoming calls to the business, act as a customer service agent as part of an ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) group, and more.
• Remote “Soft” Phones: this is software installed on a computer, such as a traveling sales rep’s laptop, that, when used in conjunction with a headset, allows the user to have similar functionality to a Remote phone, without the phone’s footprint.  This is extremely beneficial for “road warriors” and can be used anywhere in the world there is a decent broadband Internet connection (wired or wireless).
• Site-to-site VoIP: this is beneficial for businesses with multiple locations.  These locations can be virtually connected together to make it as if the users in all offices are together in one large office.  In addition to bringing everyone together without having to dial outside phone numbers from one site to another, this can eliminate long distance charges between offices.  ESI’s implementation of this is called ESI-Link, and supports tying up to 100 phone systems together.

ESI offers all of the above-mentioned types of phone system-based VoIP in their Communications Server phone systems, and does so with a very rich feature-set and high-quality voice codecs, making it an outstanding investment value.