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Maximizing Your Move to the Cloud

October Business Phone and Internet Service Promotions Now Posted

Welcome to October. Fall's here in earnest. Caisson placed our first pumpkin of the season on the shelf today.

In telecom, many providers are continuing their September business phone and Internet service promotions through this month. The promos are up on our Current Promotions page now, including:

From Comcast Business:

Add a Voice Line with Comcast Business for only $19.95

This is great for existing Comcast Business Internet customers. Still using the old phone company for your voice service? Now is a great time to bundle in those voice lines and save.

Plus several promos from Integra Telecom:

  • Cloud Firewall Services
  • Business Connect Bundle + Security
  • Confidence Builder (i.e. new, low rates for high bandwidth in Fiber lit buildings)
  • Hosted and Managed SIP Bundles
  • Business Connect Bundles
  • Early Termination Credit Program from Integra Telecom
  • Hosted Voice Connections Bundle
  • Multi-Site Business Bundles
  • Go here for details on each

Sharing with you the most current telecom pricing promotions is just one way we work on your behalf. Contact us today for more details or to buy services now.

Caisson Helps Affinity Home Care Services Deploy Latest in Hosted Voice

We've really been heads-down busy at Caisson of late, so it's nice to look up and see news coverage of the work we do to help our customers. Today, I'm excited to share coverage of our work to help Affinity Home Care Services select, install and manage a brand new hosted phone service from Comcast Business called Business VoiceEdge™. Caisson was one of the first independent telecom consultants in Washington State to be certified to sell this new business hosted voice service. 

The work we did with Affinity Home Care Services was featured in many media outlets, including The News Tribune in Tacoma, HeraldNet in Everett, The Olympian and The Bellingham Herald, as well as in publications in other Pacific Northwest states.

This case study is really helpful for any small to mid-size business in need of a new phone system, or that is experiencing call-quality, call flow and voicemail issues with an existing system. 

Here's what appeared in The News Tribune:

Caisson Technologies Helps Affinity Home Care Services Deploy the Latest in Business Hosted Voice

Seattle Washington (PRWEB) September 29, 2014 - Affinity Home Care Services, a Puget Sound-based provider of in-home care solutions for older adults, hired Seattle-based telecommunication consultancy, Caisson Technology to help it select and purchase a new business phone system this month. One of the first independent sales agencies in the northwest to sell Business VoiceEdge™ (BVE), a hosted voice service from Comcast, Caisson Technologies used its agency to get the service installation expedited and correctly managed on its client's behalf.

How to Select a Business Phone System: A Guide by Comcast Business

This is a quick and helpful graphic for anyone selecting a business phone system. It uses scenerios to help you identify which offering is right for your business.

For more information on business phone systems, check out my article, The Advantages and Disadvantages of On-Premise Phone Systems.

For this month's business phone and Internet promotions from providers, including Comcast Business, please visit our Current Promotions page.

 

"Fax Never Busy" feature is dead, R.I.P. What to do now.

For small businesses that rely on faxes, one of my favorite features has always been Fax Never Busy. Unfortunately, as with many legacy features these days, Fax Never Busy is going away.

Business phone and Internet provider, Integra Telecom was one of the last carriers to offer this feature. It just notified me today that Fax Never Busy is no longer available. Part of its move to modernize its platforms.

Fax Never Busy was a function of the old Octel Voicemail platform. A few years ago, Intregra moved from a traditional voicemail platform to a new soft switch voicemail platform. Still, it kept the old platform up and working. Until now. 

Here are two alternatives: 

We can place a Call Forward Busy feature on your POTS line. This will make is so that when the line is busy/being used additional in-bound calls will be forwarded to a virtual fax number that will receive and store the fax as a PDF in the cloud. Email notification is an option on this, so customers can receive faxes as PDFs attached to emails right away. You can receive and print the PDFs you are sent.

The inconvenience of this is that there's a storage capacity limit, so you'll have to go in and clear out old PDFs every so often.

Alternatively, you can get a secondary fax line (and machine).

As with all telecom, these alternatives are customizable. Which of these you go with, if either, depends on your unique business needs.

For example, I am working with a customer right now who does not want his faxes to go to email. He wants them to come off a fax machine. So we are working to determine how many lines (and machines) he needs.

Let me know if you have any questions about what's right for your business. I can give you pricing on a variety of configurations. My direct line is (206) 420-0140.

Data Networking Info From CenturyLink

Now that business critical applications are becoming WAN based instead of LAN based the need for high-quality, high-speed bandwidth is important. Quality bandwidth is going to derive from a robust network, and CenturyLink has one.  Here is their Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) slick:

If you would like to quote for dedicated, high-speed Internet access at your location please give me a call direct at (206)420-0140 or contact Caisson here.

About Brian Wade

Brian Wade is founder and president of telecom brokerage, Caisson Technologies. He has worked in telecom for 15 years, including at Integra Telecom as a customer care representative, service provisioner and sales representative. He launched Caisson in 2005. He writes about telecom products, promotions and industry trends on his blog.

About Caisson

Caisson Technologies is a northwest-based telecommunications consulting company. We sell the business phone and Internet services of over 40 telecom providers, including Level 3 and tw telecom. We're the better way to buy because we work with the service providers so you don't have to. We're here longterm, so you always know who to call. And we save you money, typically 20 - 30%. Plus, our consulting is free. Here's how.

Definitely Know What's In Your SLA. Here's CenturyLink's.

When ordering Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) from any business phone and Internet provider it's important to familiarize yourself with the Service Level Agreement (SLA) backing the services you're considering.

Here is CenturyLink's Internet Port SLA, for those of you considering CenturyLink.

Specifically, here's what a SLA gives business customers:

  • Guaranteed uptime
  • Guaranteed speed
  • Guaranteed trouble resolution

No SLA from your provider? Then they give what's called a "best effort" agreement. No guarantees. That's why at Caisson, we strongly recommend services that come with SLAs.

If you would like to discuss SLA's or Dedicated Internet Access (DIA), please give me a call direct at (206) 420-0140 or contact us.

About Brian Wade

Brian Wade is founder and president of telecom brokerage, Caisson Technologies. He has worked in telecom for 15 years with experience as a customer care representative, service provisioner and sales representative. He launched Caisson in 2005. He writes about telecom products, promotions and industry trends on his blog.

About Caisson

Caisson Technologies is a northwest-based telecommunications consulting company. We sell the business phone and Internet services of over 40 telecom providers, including CenturyLink. We're the better way to buy because we work with the service providers so you don't have to. We're here longterm, so you always know who to call. And we save you money, typically 20 - 30%. Plus, our consulting is free. Here's how.

We're easy to reach at (206) 420-0140.

Level 3 Communications Acquires tw telecom

Two wonderful companies are going to become one big awesome company. Colorado-based Level 3 Communications, Inc. and tw telecom, also based in CO, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement, intended to qualify as a tax-free reorganization, whereby Level 3 will acquire tw telecom in a stock-and-cash transaction valued at $40.86 per share based on market close as of June 13, 2014.

From their joint press release:

"The combination leverages the highly complementary strengths of the two companies to create a stronger, more nimble, customer service-oriented competitor to meet customers’ increasingly complex local, national and global communications needs."

I'm an agent in good standing with both companies. Have been for years. I have clients with services from both companies. For my small business clients, tw telecom offers better customer service. While Level 3 is a strong, good company, they are known for just showing up and doing their job and not for add-on services and customer service. For this reason, I hope the acquisition generates a gigantic tw telecom and not a faceless Level 3.

tw telecom CEO says the following in the press release:

DocuSign® Selects Integra Telecom for Voice, Data, Cloud Connectivity

This month, The Global Standard for Digital Transaction Management™ DocuSign® selected northwest-based business phone and Internet service provider, Integra Telecom for its voice, data and cloud connectivity needs.

This is big news for Caisson customers of every size and industry. It means Integra continues to be a valid, large player in the business telecom marketplace. Many businesses don't realize this because Integra started as a small service provider delivering POTS lines and DSL. That was years ago, however. Since then, they acquired ELI (also years ago) and now have the high bandwidth infrastructure to support large, growing organizations regionally and around the world.

Integra is one of over 40 telecom service providers that we work with at Caisson. We've been a valued agent of Integra since our inception in 2005. We're proud to work with its management, engineering teams and provisioners to deliver connectivity and bandwidth to customers via Integra Voice Communications services, IP/MPLS VPN and Ethernet services. Contact us.

Here are more details about the DocuSign announcement as represented in a press release from Integra:

September 2014 Business Phone and Internet Service Promotions

This month's business phone and Internet promotions are now up on our Current Promotions page. They include:

From Comcast Business:

Add a Voice Line with Comcast Business for only $19.95

This is great for existing Comcast Business Internet customers. Still using the old phone company for your voice service? Now is a great time to bundle in those voice lines and save.

Plus several promos from Integra Telecom:

  • Cloud Firewall Services
  • Business Connect Bundle + Security
  • Confidence Builder (i.e. new, low rates for high bandwidth in Fiber lit buildings)
  • Hosted and Managed SIP Bundles
  • Business Connect Bundles
  • Early Termination Credit Program from Integra Telecom
  • Hosted Voice Connections Bundle
  • Multi-Site Business Bundles
  • Go here for details on each

Sharing with you the most current telecom pricing promotions is just one way we work on your behalf. Contact us today for more details or to buy services now.

 

Comcast Business Expands Commercial Fiber Network in Kent, WA

My company, Caisson Technologies is an authorized agent of Comcast Business. Have been for 7 years. During that time, the mega company has definitely been a leader in expanding access to high-speed Internet and data to more businesses in our region, now including commercial areas in the Kent Valley. Here is the announcement from Comcast Business:

Comcast Business announced the expansion of its commercial fiber network, capable of bandwidth up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps), to underserved commercial areas in Kent, Washington, the sixth largest city in the state.

The network build out will bring Comcast Business Ethernet services to more than 150 local businesses for the first time, providing a cost-effective solution to increase speed, scale bandwidth, or connect multiple office locations on one dedicated network.