In this part . . .
Chapter 1
A Buyer’s Scoop on Telecom
In This Chapter
Getting a general understanding of telecom
Planning and implementing effective telecom systems
Making major telecom decisions
Finding people to help you make the right choices
Setting up for future expansion
Troubleshooting your telecom system
Every business in the world either uses or could benefit from using phone service. Even if your business deals directly with the public, you still need to call your manufacturer for updates on shipments, check on the ads you have going out, and make sure your accountant has all of your financial information. As your business grows, so does your need for phone lines, not just to enable you to speak to your customers and suppliers, but also to transmit data between offices, and possibly even maintain a Web site to receive and track orders.
Growth in business is great, but you may easily find yourself overwhelmed by the logistics involved in all the changes. The phone system you had 2 years ago may have been perfect for you at the time, but today you have 20 new employees in house, 5 new outside sales reps, and the Web site for Internet orders is being released next week. If that is the case, you have probably outgrown your old telephone system. The important thing to know is how to gauge the technology you have, where you are going, and what technology you need to get there. In this chapter, I help you figure out what you’re dealing with and get you started on your quest to improve your telecommunication, or telecom system.
Assessing Your Telecom Services As They Are Now
At the most basic level, telecom refers to any service that is provided over phone lines. Included in this definition are
Internet connections over
dedicated circuits or dial-up modems
Regular phone lines used to place and receive calls to your mom
High-speed data links used for transmitting information
When you boil things down, all phone service can be reduced to the same basic principles of transmitting and receiving signals over fiberoptic or copper wire.
For example, if a backhoe cuts through a fiberoptic cable that supplies your Internet connection, along with the service from your local carrier, your only connection to the outside world becomes your mobile phone. If your mobile phone provider also uses that link to complete calls, you still may not have a connection to the outside world. With the increase in redundancy being built into the local and long-distance networks, you shouldn’t have an outage that completely shuts down your service. If you have a good telecom system, when (not if) a breakdown in the network occurs, stopping calls from passing through the east side of town, your system can automatically route calls to an alternative network on the west side.
Many companies rely heavily upon their phone service, and any outage, no matter how small, has a large impact. Sometimes the problem is an act of God, (say your carrier’s switch is struck by a bolt of lightening, reducing it to a smoldering brick of silicon and steel valuable only as a piece of modern art). Other issues may be the result of bottlenecks in your own phone system, or just a need for more phone lines. The first step to taking care of these issues is to assess the phone service you need right now.
Identifying Your Carriers
A telecom carrier is an entity that provides and bills for phone service. It would be convenient if I could classify a carrier based on the fact that it owns a large fiberoptic network and multimillion-dollar phone switches, but not all of them do. Some carriers own no hardware and simply contract with other companies that have sophisticated hardware networks.
Actually, all carriers have contracts with other carriers to sublet space on their networks. Subletting enables them to build more redundancy into their systems (which is good thing for customers). In some areas, subcontracting also helps carriers get substantial price breaks when they try to negotiate new contracts to gain entrance into a specific market.
In fact, the best way to understand carriers is based on their functions. Carriers treat local networks, long-distance networks, mobile networks, and more.
Looking locally
Local carriers provide local service. If you call from your office to the building next door, your local carrier receives the call and completes it to the other building. In addition to providing local calling services, local carriers also provide you with dial tone on your residential or simple business phone lines, assign your phone number, provide 911 (emergency service), 411 (information), toll-free service and a host of other features like call waiting, caller ID, and sometimes even voicemail. One of the most important functions of the local carrier is to identify every call you make as being local, long distance, or toll free, and then to route it to the appropriate carrier to complete.
The industry refers to local carriers primarily as local exchange carriers (LECs). When you think of LECs, names like Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Ameritech, or Verizon come to mind. These are all companies that were lucky enough to be given the limited monopoly to provide local service to a specific geographic area. America was carved up based on local population statistics and state borders when the Ma Bell monopoly got broken up in the 1980s.
LECs are also known by other names. The LECs that were part of the initial monopolies given by the U.S. government and generally have the word Bell in their names are sometimes grouped as RBOCs (pronounced ahrr-boks). An RBOC is a Regional Bell Operating Company. At times, RBOCs are also referred to as ILECs (pronounced eye-leks). The ILEC designation identifies a carrier as being the senior LEC in the area, specifically, the incumbent local exchange carrier. Throughout this book, I avoid using too much jargon by simply referring to the carrier that supplies your local telecom service as your local carrier.
Introducing competing local exchange carriers
A competing local exchange carrier (CLEC) does the same work as other local carriers. The special name simply signifies that these carriers arrived on the scene later than the baby Bells referred to in the previous...
