Think Your Debit Card is Secure? Well Hold My Beer and Read This!

Why $45M in Stolen Cash Still Won’t Get Rid of Hackable ATM Cards
By Marcus Wohlsen, Wired Magazine 05.13.13

What is SIP Trunking and Why You Need It

First of all, I want to let you know I have just returned from back surgery and it was quite a minor miracle. I have been out of commission for 6 months. But it’s all good now and I am quickly on my way to a full recovery. Also on a personal note, I am celebrating (or maybe bemoaning) 40 years in the Telecommunications business this year. It has been an eventful (and sometimes scary) ride. We have a saying in the business, “The only constant is change.” So true.

Sometimes that change is good and sometimes it can displace jobs not only in the Telecom business but in businesses everywhere. I have always lived in a world where technological change has generated new jobs to replace the obsolete ones. We may be living in a new world where that is no longer true. Our ability to communicate has grown exponentially and with that capability the need for complex proprietary technology is being replaced by open networks that are able to cross communicate across multiple platforms. Yes, I’m talking about the internet and like it or not, it is displacing the old telephone network at an ever increasing pace.

The telephone network or PSTN (public switched telephone network) has served us well since making the telegraph obsolete over 130 years ago. I made my career delivering telephone service to customers wide and far and I’m proud of that. It’s an integral part of American history but it time to cut the cord. Why? Because time and technology march on. AT&T stands for American Telephone and Telegraph because they wanted to hold on to the old network while making the transition to the modern PSTN. Eventually they stopped supporting the telegraph network because of the ability to transmit data over the PSTN. Remember modems?

That is exactly what is happening now with the transition to voice over Internet (VoIP) technology using the protocol known as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). Suffice to say SIP is fast becoming the industry standard for delivering multimedia communications services over the internet. What is important to the end users of this technology is the ability to reduce costs and increase efficiency through the use of SIP Trunking. What is SIP Trunking? Michael Cavanaugh does an excellent job explaining SIP Trunking on his YouTube video here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9cT1Lq9Lg8

There is a lot of denial in the industry about going to SIP based communications. Mostly it is coming from people in the industry still supporting the older PSTN technologies. If my 40 years in the industry has told me anything it’s that no one can predict the distant future but knowing what’s coming next is absolutely critical. There is enough evidence now that says SIP and SIP Trunking are the go to technologies and it’s time to start making the change on the user end. The big girls (and boys) in business already know this and have already started (or already made) the transition. Small to medium businesses can now not only have access to this technology but use it just as effectively as big business.

I can help with this transition. The products and services I resell are vetted to represent the highest quality standards while delivering world class customer service. So call me or poke me on the internet. Paul Harned, Divergent Technologies (678) 928-9234

Stop? Don’t Sign that Contract for Internet/Telephone Service before you talk to me.

I talk to a lot of business prospects who are “Currently” locked into a long term contract with their telephone or internet service provider. What they are being told is absolutely false. Customers are encouraged to “lock-in” a current price for internet (and/or telephone service) so they are not subject to sudden price increases. This may be the most outrageous lie ever told in the history of marketing.

The fact is telephone and internet prices for landline services have consistently gone down from the time they have been introduced. According to DrPeering International, internet rates have fallen at an average of 35% annually since 1998. (see chart below)

Think of long distance telephone service, it used to be very expensive.  A little competition and the introduction of technologies like Voice over Internet (VoIP) changed everything. Long distance rates dropped so much that many carriers now include calling within the US and Canada in with local calling for a flat rate. Cellular customers have seen this for quite some time.

So why in the world would you allow yourself to get locked into a contract with prices declining at this rate for so long? I believe every business should do a “SANITY CHECK” on Internet and Telecom rates they are paying on an annual basis.

I am an agent partner with World Telecom Group (WTG) and I look for high levels of customer service through Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) and competitive pricing based on the stated SLA. With WTG, I can compare rates from many of the top service providers and get you connected at a reasonable price point.

So please, put down that pen and call me at (678) 928-9234 before it’s too late.

The following information is from DrPeering International.

Internet Transit Prices (1998-2014) U.S. Internet Region

A World With More Phones Than People

Does this mean I have to carry two phones now?

The Truth About Telephone Systems for Small Business

Friday, June 22, 2012

By Paul Harned, DivergentVoIP.com

The model for small business telephone systems and service has changed forever! The telephone system of the 20th century is being shut down. Not all at once but the older telephone switching systems are quietly being retired in favor of internet routers that move voice traffic much more efficiently and cheaper.

Right now, all the major service providers like Verizon, at&t and Comcast are using Voice Over Internet Protocol or VoIP to offer their customers a better deal if they bundle their services. Many of their customers don’t even realize they have been switched to VoIP because the quality is just as good or even better than the traditional analog service they had before.

What that means for small business is that features that were previously available only to large businesses who used Private Branch eXchanges or PBX’s are now available on the internet. The small business owner can now get the benefits of a large businesses telephone system without the gigantic investment in equipment and special telephone lines called trunks. I call these systems “Virtual PBX’s”.

Hosted vendors sell these services over the internet on an extension basis. What that means is each telephone is an extension off the hosted system and listed telephone numbers are directed to extensions through a web page that the user logs into and sets up. Changes that used to take a service order, a technician and some $$ are now done in a few minutes by the customer for no additional cost.

Not all Hosted PBX vendors are the same, there are various levels of customer service offered and the customer needs to know they will be able to resolve any problem with service issues promptly. That’s where I can help. I deal with vendors like Vocalocity who pride themselves on great customer service. It doesn’t matter if the customer wants to go right to the web site or get connected directly to one of the excellent customer service representatives who can also troubleshoot technical issues. Also with Vocalocity, there is no contract commitment and customers can choose to leave at anytime. The IP phones you get from Vocalocity will work with any internet based telephone system.

The truth is that telephone service for small businesses doesn’t have to be expensive or complicated. Hosted VoIP is a great solution for the small business customer and it can grow with them as they add employees.

Now is the time to consider cloud based telephone service for your business.

Is your business finally starting to grow? After all you managed to survive the economic turndown and now you are faced with adding employees and infrastructure. Before you spend money on a traditional phone system, you should consider vendor hosted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Hosted simply means the telephone service provider houses and maintains the hardware (server) on the internet and then sells the services to customers with internet protocol phones (IP phones). These IP phones are connected to the internet through the customer’s Local Area Network (LAN) and operate as independent devices.

Some of the advantages of going with a cloud based solution are;

Portable phone service. You can now have phone service anywhere you have an internet connection and you can also have your calls follow you on your mobile phone or device.  

It’s flexible. Now the customer can direct where the calls flow to from a web page.

No Upgrade Headaches. Software upgrades and system maintenance are handled by the service provider.

You have Big Business Features without the big costs. Hosted VoIP offers a full package of features that match the features of a big box phone system.

It’s Greener. A hosted VOIP system uses less power, and there is less high tech waste.

It just Cost Less. Monthly costs are 50% to 80% less than traditional systems and there’s no expensive system to buy.

A so called investment in a phone system is a waste of time and money. These systems depreciate rapidly because technology changes so fast. Getting telephone service on the internet is the smart way to save time and money.

The telephone network is becoming obsolete as large companies and individual consumers switch over to the internet. According to an IBISWorld study reported in the Wall Street Journal last year, wired telecommunications carriers topped the list of declining industries while Voice over Internet (VoIP) service providers topped the list of fastest growing industries.

The question then becomes which service provider to go with. There are hundreds to choose from and they are not all the same. I recommend the ones with the best customer service and that narrows it down to just a few. I can help with that, just call me and we’ll figure it out. (678) 928-9234

Go Lean and Green!

Stop ruining the environment with your Phone System!

Yes I said it. That monstrosity you call a phone system hanging on the wall back in the warehouse is using up way more energy than it’s worth. And to top it off, it’s connected to the one of the most antiquated networks still in operation today. Hey, I hear telegrams are making a comeback too!

Isn’t it time your business joined the 21^st century? Hosted PBX’s operating on VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) have come a long way just in the last two years and are dead on the best value for any small business. Your customers are coming to you on the internet, even when they call you. People and businesses are using VoIP to trim communications costs and they are getting better quality than the old and failing telephone network (PSTN). Upgrade your internet connection and cut the cord to the phone company. You’ll save money and improve your communication with your customers.

This is absolutely true for small growing businesses. In order to be competitive, you must streamline costs and a great way to get started is to stop paying corporate welfare to the phone companys. You don’t need them anymore. If that sounds scary to you think about this; Do you keep a horse and carriage around in case cars go out of style and the subways stop working? Of course not, so why are you still spending $500 to $2000 a month on old technology? That’s so last millennium!

Call me for an honest appraisal of your current telephone system and internet connection. I can get you connected to this century. Divergent.Biz (678) 928-9234

Hey it’s a nice place, you’ll like it!

Is it Finally Time for Linux Desktops?

With information technology (IT) going to the cloud and the availability of apps that will let you reach your home (or office) network with thin client devices like the IPad. Why are we buying software like Microsoft Office and keep playing the update game every three years when you can access application servers that are completely updated and maintained in a state of the art data center?

——————————I’m waiting!————————————-

Don’t tell me you have wasted $500 on Office Professional 2010! Even if you are so inclined to go with Microsoft you can get it in the cloud with Microsoft Office 365 for $6 a month. Compared to the Office Professional 2010 software suite that will cost you $13.88 a month ($500 divided by 36 for 3 years) or at the bare minimum for one user-one computer $9.72 a month.

Now brothers and sisters I believe you will soon see the light and go with cloud computing sometime during this century. So my point being, if you use cloud services, what does it matter what kind of desktop software you use in your office (or home). A Linux system will work just fine in this environment. In fact it should work better than the other two (my opinion). While Apple gets points for being user friendly and Windows is just so ubiquitous, Linux is the OS used for many media appliances and it loves the internet. Best of all it’s free. Just go to the website of your favorite Linux distribution say Ubuntu for example (at ubuntu.com) and download it to any computer. It will create a file with .ISO as the file type. After the download, you can burn a CD (from the ISO file) and you can then use that CD to install Ubuntu on most computers. If you have Windows installed, it will ask you if you want to keep it and partition the hard drive for your new Ubuntu distribution. Or you can choose to erase everything on the drive and install Ubuntu on the whole thing.

“Ubuntu is sponsored by the UK-based company Canonical Ltd., owned by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. Canonical generates revenue by selling technical support and services related to Ubuntu, while the operating system itself is entirely free of charge. The Ubuntu project is entirely committed to the principles of free software development; people are encouraged to use free software, improve it, and pass it on.”(Wikipedia) If you choose to do so, you become part of a community of users and developers that support the distribution. Also new versions won’t cost you $ to install and they come in on automatic updates and practically install themselves. I use Ubuntu and I think it rocks. It sports an awesome desktop client (GNOME) and Ubuntu can also be configured to work as a server too. Great stuff!

Two Reasons Video Calling Hasn’t Caught On!

2 Reasons Videoconferencing Remains A Niche
By Kurt Marko InformationWeek
October 31, 2011 11:36 AM

Room-size, dedicated videoconferencing systems have been around for decades, and Skype introduced person-to-person video almost six years ago, so users are comfortable with this concept. And in the age of 3G smartphones with front-facing cameras; Webcams built into every PC; and ubiquitous Wi-Fi, where placing a video call is as easy as sending a text message, you’d think videoconferencing would be as popular as those 140-character missives. Yet it isn’t, not by a long shot.

In our September InformationWeek Unified Communications Survey, we asked about 11 technology drivers for UC; just 5% cited videoconferencing. Results didn’t get much more encouraging from there. And compared with the explosive growth of online video content, the use of interpersonal video communication is downright minuscule.

I see a couple reasons for this: one technological, the other social.

Probably the biggest reason video calling/conferencing isn’t as popular as text- or voice-based communications is interoperability: There’s no universal directory, call-routing system, or system-agnostic client, as exists with email or voice. When I send an email or place a phone call, it doesn’t matter what client or device either I or my recipient use–if I’m accessing my Gmail account via Postbox on a Mac and the recipient is on a corporate Exchange system using Outlook on Windows, it doesn’t matter. Likewise for phone calls. It’s simple to use Skype on my PC to call Aunt Millie on her landline. Unfortunately, there’s a systemic breakdown when it comes to video.

The various systems–Skype, Facetime, AIM, or Tango–don’t interoperate. Sure, they each support all the popular clients, from Windows PCs to iPhones and Androids, but I can’t place calls between systems. Thus, just because I know a colleague’s email address or wireless number, doesn’t mean I can reach them via video for an impromptu chat. It’s an identical situation to the walled gardens that are the various text messaging systems; a mess that necessitated multiprotocol IM clients and juggling multiple accounts.

In fact, a Cisco-sponsored study on “The Benefits and Barriers to Video Collaboration Adoption” found that 26% of respondents cited the interoperability between video providers as a major barrier to using videoconferencing. Sure, motivated users could overcome these obstacles by having accounts with multiple video providers and noting which friends or colleagues are on which system, but it’s a logistical pain that limits the spread and utility of video communications.

Cloud video services attempt to bridge this gap by acting as a go-between to facilitate meetings between people not on a first-name basis. If a Skype call is equivalent to stopping by a friend’s place for a chat, a Web conference is more like meeting a couple of colleagues at the nearest Starbucks. Cloud services also overcome the other persistent impediment, cited by one-third of respondents in the Cisco study, to business-oriented video communications: the cost and maintenance of video equipment and conferencing software. By offloading and virtualizing video processing and adding collaboration features like shared whiteboards, displays, and documents, cloud services also provide higher video quality and a richer experience than consumer-oriented, peer-to-peer services. Tom Toperczer, VP of marketing at Nefsis, a video conference provider, says he sees services such as Nefsis occupying a middle ground between consumer-oriented Skype and high-end telepresence. Besides added collaboration features, Toperczer says Nefsis’ service provides higher-quality video, supports a larger set of more sophisticated video peripherals (not just Webcams), has scalable video quality (the higher the bandwidth, the higher the resolution), and supports network QoS.

The other major impediment to video communication is sociological. Cisco’s study found that a reluctance to be seen was mentioned by almost a quarter of respondents as a barrier to video collaboration, with 5% citing it as the chief reason. Face-to-face meetings, even interposed with a display, are more direct, personal, and intimidating than text or voice, making them unsuitable for spontaneous messages. While the expressive depth of face-to-face conversations introduces visual and aural communication cues that add subtlety and depth to a conversation, thus circumventing the types of miscommunications that black-and-white text or curt voice mails so often create (and that things like emoticons and vocal inflections are designed to mitigate), it also means that video conversations are better suited to those situations that require meaning and understanding, not pith and brevity.

So, the sweet spot for enterprise video communication isn’t so much in augmenting the phone call as in replacing the weekly project meeting. For example, Toperczer says that instead of a construction manager or architect visiting a project site once or twice a month for a job’s duration, they can have recurring video meetings with the on-site crew. Similarly, a corporate trainer, who might be on the road half the time giving the same course at dozens of branch offices, can deliver the same class over video. It’s the old “Why waste hundreds of dollars and half a day travelling” argument. Health care offers other interesting examples, notably in the field of telepsychiatry. Here, as a New York Times feature outlines, therapists can see patients in settings from rural clinics to prisons.

Video communication has reached a point of maturity where its utility and applicability are constrained more by the planning, strategy, and creativity of the user than the available technology and budget. With cloud services, the cost of video is seldom an impediment, even though the Cisco study found cost and budget at the top of reported adoption barriers. Yet, when you find the right application, whether it’s replacing the regular project meeting road trip or pulling a far-flung group of employees together for a training session, the case for video is compelling; and with the new breed of cloud video services, implementation couldn’t be easier.

The End of the T-1 Line

A common misconception in the current telecom world is that T-1’s are always better than cable modems or DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). That’s why customers are charged from $250 up to $1200 a month for the service. The sad fact is there’s a better sales commission on T-1 lines than the lower priced DSL or cable modem service so customers get sold on them without knowing the alternatives to T-1 service.

Just so you know exactly what you get with a T-1 line, here’s a little background on them. According to Webopedia, A T-1 carrier is; “A dedicated phone connection supporting data rates of 1.544Mbits per second. A T-1 line actually consists of 24 individual channels, each of which supports 64Kbits per second. Each 64Kbit/second channel can be configured to carry voice or data traffic. T-1 lines are sometimes referred to as DS1 lines.”

Ten years ago a T-1 was a great way for businesses to get connected to the internet and have phone service come in on the same line. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed competition for local services by Competitive Local Exchange Carriers or CLEC’s. They could dedicate some of the channels to carry voice (telephone) circuits and use the remaining bandwidth for internet access. These T-1’s had a higher priority than regular analog business lines or DSL so the Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) was shorter. That meant they would fix T-1 circuits faster according to the carrier’s (CLEC’s) Service Level Agreement (SLA). An SLA is a written promise to meet certain metrics like MTTR and Mean Time between Failures (MTBF). A T-1 has a guaranteed total bandwidth of 1.544 Megabits per second (Million Bits per Second) no more and no less.

Fast forward to today, many businesses need a faster internet service and they would like to pay less for it. Their options are to get more T-1(s) or go with DSL or cable. Here’s the difference.

DSL is usually a dedicated digital line that can run from 1.5Megabits per second to 64Mbs. DSL is usually much cheaper the T-1 but does not have the same priority when service is down. Repairs can take much longer with no SLA. The speed is usually guaranteed at a minimum rate and costs are lower than T-1’s. Also many DSL lines come with an analog telephone line because the data runs on the higher frequencies and the telephone line runs only on the lower frequencies. This is good for businesses that use FAX services a lot.

Cable service is a shared resource for users. They guarantee a certain level of bandwidth but may deliver more due to network use (or lack of) in your neighborhood. Cable companies used to boast more bandwidth than DSL but that is becoming less true with newer technologies that can boost the bandwidth of DSL. This service generally does not have an SLA and again repairs can take longer to resolve than T-1 service.

For businesses that want a higher level of service and bandwidth there are now Ethernet offerings from 10Mbs and up. Sometimes branded as “Metro Ethernet” these lines are replacing T-1’s as the preferred connection for businesses that want definite service guarantees with an SLA.

My recommendation for small businesses that are home based businesses is either cable or DSL. The higher costs of T-1’s and other SLA based services do not justify the extra expense. What I recommend instead is a “Fail over” strategy so when the power goes out or the internet goes down, your calls will fail over and go to your cell phone. Hosted Voice Over Internet or VoIP is a great telephone solution for small business because the service can easily be configured to follow to or failover to your cell phone.

Call me for a free assessment of your current phone service and I can hook you up with some great service providers. (678) 928-9234