Bringing a T1 line into your business means that you have the best and highest level of service with 99.999% up time.  For many customers whose businesses rely on phone and internet access, nothing but the best performance is acceptable.  A T1 line can either be plugged into the office phone system for 24 digitized voice channels or into the network’s router for a dedicated data channel that can deliver about 60 times more data than a normal residential modem.  There are also Voice & Data T1’s that are dynamic.  This means that the voice and the data are on the same line, and when you are not on the phone, you have all available speed free for internet usage.

Advantages of T1 lines include reliability, high capacity, and exclusivity.  Not having to share a cable with your neighbors can certainly come in handy for businesses.

While T1 lines offer many advantages, choosing the right telecom solution depends upon the specifics of your business, including size, location, security needs, and telecom usage.  We always recommend consulting a telecom expert for more information before making a choice. Contact us for a free consultation, audit, and quote.

1. You May Be Paying For Services You Don’t Need

How often do you get a chance to carefully review your many telecom bills and understand what you’re paying for?  Business owners are typically too busy running their businesses to hunt down outdated services and orphaned phone lines.

2. You May Be Paying Too Much For the Services You Do Need

You can’t afford not to take advantage of the latest technologies – your competitors sure are.  That’s why a telecom broker creates a bundle of the highest quality services for the lowest prices.  OneStop has relationships with many telecom providers, from AT&T to Earthlink Business, allowing us to ensure that you get the services while paying 30-60% less.

3. A Telecom Broker Is Your Advocate

A direct representative of a given carrier is going to tell you that their carrier is the one for you – that’s the only carrier they can sell!  In fact, direct representatives rarely even have access to information about the best pricing and alternative options.   Because an independent telecom broker doesn’t have to be loyal to a given carrier, they can give you an unbiased view of your options and collect multiple price quotes.

4. You’ll Only Have One Number to Call If You Run Into Trouble With Telecom Services

Its that simple.  Forget hours on the phone with various providers.  Simply call OneStop and we work on your behalf.

5. There’s No Cost to You, the Business Owner

A telecom audit is free of charge, and OneStop Communications does not bill its clients for telecom services.  Instead, we work like a buyer’s agent in a home-buying transaction, receiving a commission from the provider.  For a business owner, it’s a win-win (which is what makes serving our clients so rewarding for us!).

So you’re sold on the telecom audit and independent broker, but why go with OneStop Communications?  Frankly, when you’re as busy as our clients, its all about customer service. And that’s where we really shine. Listen to what our clients have to about their experience with OneStop Communications.  Here are just a few examples:

“Excellent customer service”

“Responsive”

“Follows through”

“Has helped my business expand over the years”

“Understands medical practices”

“Saved us money at every location”

Metro Ethernet is a service that allows you to have a lot of bandwidth in a cost effective manner and is a technology that scales very quickly.  To go from 10 to 100 or even 1,000 megs once service is already established can happen in 14 to 30 days instead of the 90 to 180 days that is normally required on a typical fiber build-out.  The top carriers today have different product offerings and a lot of the carriers have their own unique names and catchy marketing productions for what is, in essence, just Metro Ethernet service.

In future articles we will define the features of Metro Ethernet as they relate to business benefits.  Business owners need benefits, not features.  OneStop Communications consultants  specialize in translating both the marketing and technology jargon to deliver what you really need, so the up-and-coming articles will describe and define all the benefits of this great technology and the best carriers in the industry so that you can choose with confidence the best solution for your business.

Cellular Data connectivity is a Point to Point  connection, and while good security can be established, this comes at a cost.  Higher security standards take up more bandwidth, and depending upon signal strength, this often results in low reliability.  To add insult to injury, many wireless carriers are starting to announce that their will no longer offer unlimited data service.  Verizon recently announced that it will no longer have unlimited data plans, and other carriers are following suit.

“Why Verizon Killed Its Unlimited Plans

Making naive consumers buy complex pricing packages will be more profitable; it will also stifle innovation as they learn to fear bandwidth demands by new apps and services”

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/why-verizon-killed-its-unlimited-plans-07082011.html

Its impossible to say whether Google forsaw this twist of telecom fate when they predicted a massive shift from land-based to mobile internet surfing, but we can say that, for now, going entirely mobile is not a viable option for businesses.

A quality Internet connection is more than just high megabits per second or Megs as it is often written.  Just last week we consulted a customer who had switched from a T1 with 1.5 megabits to a cable provider that provided “Up To 20 megabits,” but he did this with out the help of a telecom expert.  At first every one was very amazed by how fast they were able to download information from the Internet.  It is a fact that a 20 megabit connections is 13 times faster than a 1.5 megabit connection.  However, what our customer did not know at the time of his switch is that his new circuit was not a dedicated speed product.  It clearly stated in the paper work that it was up to 20 megs down and up to on the upload but what must be understood is that up to or best effort bandwidth Internet speed can vary a lot in quality and speed.  Sometimes is is super fast sometimes it is really slow!

The other factor was that with his previous 1.5 megabit connection  his latency usually never exceeded 20 milliseconds, yet when we tested the cable connection that he had chosen his latency varied from 10ms all the way up to 120 ms.  So even though the cable connection in theory was faster, the poor latency made it a poor performing circuit.  Latency is critical when a customer is utilizing a VoIP telephone system.  Poor latency performance makes phone conversation impossible.  After we finished our consultation we realized that the best solution was to go back to a dedicated and guaranteed Internet speed for the VoIp phone system and that the faster connection was sutible as a back-up for Internet usage but not as a primary connection specially since this customers phone system was a VoIP phone system.

It is critical to remember that the quality of a circuit is measured by more than just speed and that you get the right circuit that will help accomplish your business goals.  What your business needs is the highest quality connection at the best price not the “cheapest” connection.  Going with the cheapest is often be more expensive.

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We will:

• Analyze current bills
• Eliminate any waste from technology you may no longer need
• Ensure that you have the most relevant and cost effective technology
• Bundle the highest quality services at the lowest cost
• Do an audit and consultation free of charge

When was the last time that you audited your telecommunications bill and reassessed your needs?  Do you have the technology you need to remain a strong competitor in your market?

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 introduced the deregulation of telecommunications. Since then, new competition has entered steadily and the consumer has benefited.  In the 80’s a voice T1 cost could be as high as $20,000 dollars a month, but now the same product is available for as low as $239.00 $/month. Competition has certainly benefited the consumer! Have you reaped the full benefit of declining prices and rapidly evolving technology?

One of the biggest challenges many of our clients face is a lack of knowledge about their options.  With the entrance of competitors and multiplication of potential providers, many business decision makers are not aware of the best phone providers are in their area and end up turning to the original Bell ILEC monopolies.  Our clients are busy running their businesses and cannot devote the time and resources to learn and exploit the ins and outs of the telecommunications industry.

OneStop Communications does know all of the great companies out there.

OneStop Communications has personal relationships with all of the top CLEC’s and also with AT&T and the other ILEC’s. We know the “what,” “where,” “when,” and “at what cost” for any given telecommunications product.

We recommend a telecommunications audit every 2 years.  Most telecom contracts currently last for 2 to 3 years, so we want to make sure that we can do a full audit before any auto-renew clauses are activated.  Why?  Because the renewal clause usually includes the highest rates instead of the best rates.  The other important factor is that when we audit your telecommunications we represent your needs not the carriers.

So if the last time you looked at your phone and internet bill was more than 18 months ago, please do a telecom audit.  You will be shocked at how much you can save!