Today's tough economic times are causing many businesses to look at ways to reduce costs and improve productivity to gain a competitive edge. Some of the newer VoIP PBX Solutions provide both the ability to reduce overall costs and improve business productivity. If you have an older phone system that is paid off there may be some reluctance in looking at new VoIP PBX solutions due to tight capital constraints. If you have costs for annual maintenance and moves/adds/changes on your existing phone system you may want to consider reviewing expenses and comparing them with the cost of a hosted VoIP phone solution. You may find out that the cost of a hosted VoIP phone system may be less than the cost of operating your existing phone system. You may be able to take advantage of new voice technologies such as SIP voice lines that may reduce your overall costs. If you have not taken a look at these costs and need some help in analyzing consider contacting your LightBound account manager. You may be surprised to find you can both reduce costs and improve services! Lightbound is an Indiana VoIP Provider that offers Fonality trixbox PBX that can provide productivity enhancements to help your business save money and grow. Click on the examples below to see a short video to see what it provides:
Still time to register! 11:30-1 at LightBound's Data Center
March 10th Lunch and Learn on LightBound's Hosted VoIP PBX Solutions and Fonality trixbox recent enhancement!
LightBound offers a cost effective and turnkey service for small to mid-sized businesses that offer Internet Service, Voice and Hosted Phone System.
This system is based on Fonality trixbox so as your business grows you can migrate to a dedicated PBX without lost of investment. Fonality will be adding some enhancements and will demonstrate their new version of the VoIP PBX-trixbox!
IP trunking is a term applied to the options offered by many service providers. These are traditional phone companies and others such as cable companies and new entrants referred to as Internet Telephony Service Providers or ITSPs. These service providers accept VoIP traffic over the Public Internet or private connections which they then place on the telephony network to reach residential and business customers. Inbound calls are received at the service provider central office and then sent over the Internet to the intended recipient, again using VoIP as the transport medium.
With the recent affordability of large Ethernet circuits, services are more affordable to transport over that same circuit. LightBound is able to provide VoIP, Internet access, off site data backup service, and virtual network services over the same circuit, whereas in the past most customers would use several smaller circuits to achieve the same solution.
LightBound, an Indiana VoIP service provider, offers SIP and many other types of voice service. SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) utilizes the same data connection as your internet so that small businesses can save on communication costs.
The equipment available today that uses VoIP technology can be an analog telephone adapter for your head set through the computer. There are a few VoIP phones that act like a regular analog telephone but have the ATA incorporated into the phone. It's actually a small dedicated personal computer in your telephone. These VoIP phones can be plugged into the computer with high speed internet connection or into the router .
LightBound, an Indiana VoIP Service Provider now offers hosted voice service. Rather than having the overhead cost and maintenance of a phone server, LightBound can offer a VoIP PBX solution that allows the customer to purchase a dedicated or shared server that is housed at the LightBound data center.
If you are looking at VoIP PBX Solutions and VoIP Service Providers that say they can offer voice with QOS over the open Internet you need to beware. We have run into this several times and this is how the scenario goes.The provider that is offering voice services over the open Internet tells customers that they provide QOS in their router or phone system and if they have enough bandwidth it should not be a problem.The customer signs up for the service and then after several months they begin experiencing problems.The provider then tells them it’s the problem of their ISP not having QOS.The ISP (LightBound in this case) gets a black eye for not having “QOS” and then the provider tells them if they get their Internet directly through them the problem will be resolved.The customer is bound under contract for the voice service and then winds up having to pay for another Internet circuit that has QOS.
There is no way to provide QOS over the open Internet because there is not end to end control of the circuit. Once the data packet carrier voice leave the router or switch from your location there is no guarantee that other routers downstream will treat the QOS packet with any priority. Will voice work over the open Internet?Yes it will, sometimes, but there is no guarantee and it is on a best effort basis.LightBound is able to offer QOS to your office because the circuit is directly connected from the LightBound data center to your office and there is equipment that can be set up to provide QOS at each end.
The other advantage we offer is direct support for the entire solution around the clock 7 x 24 x 365 through our NOC. LightBound offers Internet Service Indiana through a direct connection to your company location through a circuit that is a T1 or higher. LightBound also provides the voice services through our class 5 voice switch in the data center.If there ever is an issue with our voice switch or circuit the NOC technicians are monitoring around the clock.We are the provider of the Internet, Voice server, and PBX solution, so if you have issue there is one number to call.We manage hundreds of circuits and have processes in place that quickly resolve issues with telecommunications. Others vendors who offer VoIP PBX Solutions with VoIP Server Providers are agents and most likely don't have a NOC, or the breadth and depth to provide to support the service around the clock, but you may want to check with them
LightBound, Indiana's premiere VoIP Service Provider, has several voice service options. I met today with a customer interested in on PBX system that allows them to link several remote offices together so that they are able to save on long distance charges by dialing internally from each office. Each office is able to dial another linked office and it is seen as an internal office call, just as if they were in the next cubical. These types of VoIP PBX solutions make everyday business more productive and less expensive, something every company can profit from.
LightBound, an Indiana Internet Access Service Provider offers high speed Internet unlike what most other Internet service providers can offer. LightBound peers directly with the top Internet providers in the country in order to provide a robust and redundant network with low latency. I spoke with a customer today that is struggling with the cost of bandwidth and trying to weigh the options between a more cost-effective option versus the more costly option with higher speed. In their daily business they upload large graphic files and need to have a robust network in order to guarantee Internet access at all times, with a high upload speed. After reviewing their options they decided upon LightBound's Internet access service so that they can insure their business is constantly online and running. LightBound also offers business continuity, WAN configuration, and VoIP services over their high-speed network.
SIP Trunking is simply a single conduit pipeline for multimedia elements (voice, video and data). SIP Trunking reduces or eliminates the need for PSTN media gateways as well as reduce or eliminate the need for narrow-band voice circuits SIP Trunking provides a smart and cost effective solution to customers by eliminating the need to purchase additional equipment, such as managed media gateway devices to interface between IP voice to the PSTN; additionally, SIP Trunking provides the following
VoIP can provide a professional and streamlined approach to business calling for small businesses and businesses with multiple locations. SIP gateways, also very practical in business applications, are available from many service providers.
Plus, many VoIP service providers welcome you to "bring your own device." If you're already purchased VoIP phones or adapters, or have an asterisk pbx server up and running, you may be able to use them with your new service plan. "Bring Your own Device plans are excellent ways for a small business to tie in an asterisk server to a sip/gateway to be able to handle a few or even dozens of inbound and outbound lines.
Using a VoIP provider gives you more of a measure of security than relying on freeware systems available on the Internet. The primary defence mechanism of any computer is the firewall. Providing a barrier between your computer or network and security threats such as hackers and viruses, a firewall offers a degree of protection that filters data going in and out of your network. As VoIP works by breaking voice messages into digital data, a standard firewall installed in your PC may not be enough to offer you full protection. VoIP providers have much more stringent firewalls installed on their main servers, which protects the entire network and all machines linked into that network. This is one of the primary reasons why, if you're serious about using VoIP on a regular basis, it's best to sign up with a bona fide VoIP provider.
LightBound, an Indiana VoIP provider, offers several PBX options. Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is the technology that enables voice communications to be made using IP networks like the Internet. VoIP has become popular largely due to the cost savings over traditional telephone networks. LightBound specializes in building solutions based on Asterisk - the open source PBX. We deliver full featured PBX solutions at a small fraction of the cost of proprietary telephony systems. Merging the power and flexibility of the Asterisk open source PBX with the rugged dependability of a specially configured hardware platform based on the Linux operating system, our turnkey PBX systems are robust, functional, and reliable.
Learn about LightBound's complete voice solution for all your business communication needs. Fonality's full featured VoIP PBX Solutions, with integrated voice messaging and call center functionality costing a fraction of comparable systems, will be demonstrated. LightBound IP Converge provides voice services and Internet over a single circuit that works with your current voice system whether it takes analog, PRI, or SIP. Why pay for a separate PRI circuit or analog voice lines when you can get voice over your Internet connection from LightBound, one of Indiana's top VoIP Service Providers?
Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, you can employ VoIP technology in a number of ways in your organization:
Your business organization can use VoIP for all calls within the company network, and then once calls go outside the company, they can be routed over standard phone lines.
The second option is plugging your phone into a sort of gateway that then plugs into your broadband modem. This allows you to talk on an ordinary phone and to call people who don't have a VoIP set up at large discounts.
PC to PC software based applications allow you to speak someone anywhere in the world as long as your caller also has the same software application on his PC.
Pros
The most obvious benefit to employing VoIP technology is cost savings. VoIP allows you to make extremely cheap, if not free, phone calls and have unlimited calling plans at half the cost of a standard phone service.
More advantages of VoIP over circuit-switched technology include the ability to:
create your own private interoffice network for communication between main and branch offices;
use the same lines to transport voice and data transmission;
eliminate or reduce intra-office toll charges.
avoid service and support contracts on existing PBX hardware;
eliminate the need for on-going Centrex services -- and charges;
reduce expansion costs due to lower costs for moves, changes and adds;
reduce the on-going costs for separate voice messaging systems;
improve productivity for remote and traveling workers by offering the same integrated capabilities as their office workers;
allow more flexibility in a call center architecture since it can now be virtual; and
reduce customer turnover via improved call center services.
We have had alot of conversation with SIP Long Distance providers lately, what we discovered is that all VoIP Service Providers are not the same. Many resellers and wholesale providers actually provide service without having a Class 5 switch in there network. They do this without the benefit of having a Class 5 switch. What does this mean? It means that the VoIP Service Providers can't give the same level of reliability, because their core switch is not redundant enough. What I mean by this is, their switch cannot have any hardware or software failures without taking it down. When looking at VoIP Service Providers ask if their switch is NEBS compliant and look under cover to make sure.
I just met with a customer this week who was moving offices and in the move decided to outsource their support of servers and phones. Unaware that LightBound offers managed servers hosting through our new VM and shared server platform they looked to a competitor. We let them know that we are going to be offering this platform in Q1 2010 and possibly before the end of the year. They currently have Indiana VoIP service with us but were using their own phone system. We let them know that we offer VoIP PBX Solutions through Fonality's trixbox solution. By provider management of both their phones and server infrastructure the customer now has more cycles to support and develop their application to make money for their company.
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