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5 Steps to Decommissioning your old PBX – Analyze and Implement

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Move your phones to the cloud

If you’ve been exploring a move to a cloud based phone system and decommissioning your old PBX then you know it’s not as simple as it seems. Below are five simple steps to analyze your voice environment and plan your implementation.

  1. Telephone count – You’ll need to analyze how many devices you have and where they’re located. This is the first step that can be improved if you also figure out and log how each phone is actually used by its rightful owner. Contact us to help perform your audit.
  2. Connectivity – The day of POTS lines and PRIs is done. It’s all SIP in the core. Each phone uses between 88kbps and 200kbps for HD calls. You’ll want to account for that on top of the bandwidth you’ll need for any other external applications. Don’t forget to block Netflix at your office!
  3. Decommissioning old equipment – A lot of top UCaaS providers are giving rebates for old telephone equipment so you should certainly take advantage. You’ll also want to either sell your old PBX for parts or have it destroyed by a third party.
  4. Training – Who are your end users? Now is where step one’s additional information will come I handy. You’ll want to plan your training for end-users around their use habits and learning style. Not everyone can just watch a YouTube video and get it. They may need additional hand holding, especially if they’re working the reception console. We can help your users get up to speed. Click here
  5. Save the date – You’ll want to pick a date after hours to install your new system, test, and rip out your old equipment. Weekends are ideal but you don’t always have that luxury, especially if you have a large call center environment.

Decommissioning your old PBX can save you tons on monthly telco and power charges. You can really reduce your data center footprint while improving the security and functionality of your voice ecosystem. It’s just so much easier to manage.

Shoretel’s dock is a great addition to a voice ecosystem, adding redundancy with cellular connectivity through your mobile carrier and allowing for a cool, distributed work force. It literally turns your iPad into a phone system!  Contact us for more information.

Interpreting Phone Bills – Telecom Audit and Expense Management

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Telecom expenses are difficult to understand

Don’t let your telecom expenses send your running

Telecom expense management, including interpreting telephone and cable bills, is infamously difficult. Even telecom veterans have trouble, often seeing services thought to have gone extinct with the dinosaurs appearing on bills. How much do these billing discrepancies actually end up costing the customer? You’ll need to perform a telecom audit to truly get accurate numbers.

For some telecom billing nightmares check out this blog post.

The question becomes, how do these billing discrepancies and management of telecom expenses inflate stock price and perceived value? Most never think that the frustration they encounter trying to cancel Comcast service or with any other provider has a greater macroscopic effect on the economy. It sucks when you’re just moving and have to deal with this but we see this on a much larger scale with companies that have many services at multiple locations.

The truth is, if your carrier doesn’t cancel your account it will remain an account receivable or an asset on their balance sheet. This makes the company look more powerful, profitable, and a better investment. Meanwhile you’re pulling your hair out to fix some billing issue created by a rogue sales agent that put your order in as new instead of a change. If you’ve run out of hair or would like to keep the hair you have remaining, allow our team to take on the headache by contacting us here to perform a telecom audit and telecom expense management.

Spectrum is providing a date for the merger of their systems which is August of 2017. This should make telecom expense management a little easier. Although I’m not confident they’ll make that date, they’re making more progress than other carriers in a similar situation, growing through acquisition. What makes them most effective is that they’re call center reps are trained differently and approach as a human first rather than a cog in the wheel. Where most companies will deny a problem exists Spectrum’s reps acknowledge the issue immediately and jump right into looking for a solution.

Communicating with telecommunications companies can be like speaking a foreign language that is constantly in flux. In fact, the folks within these companies typically speak different languages and have very defined roles with limited visibility into what other departments are doing or saying. To learn more about telecom expense management click here.

3 Reasons Gigabit Fiber is right for your business

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CloudOgre for redundant networks and distributed work force.

Gigabit Internet is a great option for many businesses if the technology is available. Technologies like Google Fiber, FiOS, CentruyLink’s Fiber Plus, and AT&T Business Fiber are SUPER fast and customers love it! They’ve all been making big investments to offer Gigabit Internet via fiber optics to more businesses. You can even get network based security services like DDoS mitigation, cloud based firewall, and Managed DNS.

 

If you’re doing basic browsing, emailing, and accessing cloud services like UCaaS, AWS, Salesforce, NetSuite etc., Gigabit Fiber (Gigabit Passive Optical Network or GPON) will give your company more than enough bandwidth to support your needs. Contact Us with your address and we’ll verify what carrier is available with speed options and pricing.

 

Quick to Install –

One of the highlights of GPON based technologies are that they’re quick to install. We recently had AT&T install a 100x100M Business Fiber circuit in three business days in Texas. These technologies were developed to supply multiple addresses using a single node with high speed bandwidth.

 

New builds can be tricky since the revenue requirements aren’t met as easily since these are lower cost solutions but we can help. If you’re a property owner looking to get Gigabit Fiber to your tenants we can help through our relationships with carrier’s finance teams. Click here to get the ball rolling.

 

Fiber Optics are better than Coax –

It simple physics, light goes through glass faster than electrical signal travels over coaxial cable. Furthermore, coax is made of copper which can erode from water over time. Fiber Optics doesn’t have that issue so during inclement weather your business is more likely to stay connected.

 

Low Cost –

AT&T Business Fiber, Fiber Plus, FiOS and others have a much lower price than dedicated internet or active Ethernet, especially from a Tier 1 telecommunications service provider like aforementioned. Typically, we are seeing GPON based, gigabit fiber optic internet at 80% lower prices than Ethernet.

 

Our clients are typically larger companies with multiple sites so it’s best to start with a telecom audit, you can learn more about that process by clicking here. Often sites move and things happen that don’t allow time for a complete audit and we understand! In fact, we like to come in and save the day in the tough situations.

What is the difference between shared internet and dedicated internet access?

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Many times, not fully understanding telecommunications causes buyers to get frustrated and make choices that aren’t best for their goals. One of the mistakes that we frequently see are buying multiple cable or FiOS circuits instead of paying for Ethernet. It’s hard to explain the difference between Two 100M x 10M circuits from Spectrum and a 20M Ethernet circuit.

 

Have you wondered or had to try and explain the difference between a FiOS circuit and a 100M Dedicated Internet connection to folks at the C Level? If you need help making that discussion clearly and succinctly, contact us.

 

Shared Internet just means that there is an aggregation point shared by you and your neighborhood before you get to larger IP router. Most speed tests don’t show how much throughput you have because they’re based on an average of packet transmission speed. This can very in two hours when all the kids in the neighborhood are streaming Netflix or playing Pokemon.

 

Dedicated Internet is provisioned as a layer 2 physical circuit between your site and your carriers Internet Gateway. This is a much more stable solution that some would label “the fast lane to the internet”. The billing is much different and typically broken into a loop, or last mile, and a port, the actual access. For more info on telecom billing click here for our latest blog post on telecom billing.

 

With shared access, you not only need to worry about your carrier’s peering arrangements, you also need to consider how many others are on and are expected to be on your network. Gigabit Fiber, Google Fiber, Fiber to the Home, AT&T Business Fiber all use a technology called GPON or Passive Optical Network. Metroethernet is active, not passive, allowing for fully duplexed package transmissions.

 

GPON, like cable and all shared architectures, has a capacity shared by the whole neighborhood. Active Ethernet can go up to 100Gbps whereas a GPON routers can only handle 2.5Gbps maximum download and is split between at least 64 circuits. The upload speeds are not as high. Furthermore, point to point WANs are not capable via GPON routers. For more information on the differences between shared and dedicated internet access, contact us here