T1 for Voice - The Business Phone Line

T1 Business Phone Line

You might have heard a lot about Business T1 and how it provides the combination of great speed, superior reliability and the unmatched flexibility of use, between voice and data lines. Here’s all there is to know about a T1 Business Phone line.

Typically when you use POTS or Plain Old Telephone Service, your voice travels as an analog signal into the telephone company’s network. This is where the signal is digitized and carried on a Fiber Optic cable and to the network of the person you wish to reach, and subsequently to the person’s phone line, where it is again converted to analog before reaching the machine.

Using VoIP is different, because it is a digital signal from the time your voice leaves your telephone, into the wire. While your POTS lines carry one telephone line, a T1 business phone line can carry up to 24 different voice channels simultaneously.

While for individual users this may not make a significant difference, when there are calling cards available that give you the advantage of Internet Telephony from your mobile or POTS line, business phone lines on the other hand have a tendency to generate high to very high bills and in certain cases rendering them prohibitively expensive.

For businesses, where making and receiving calls are an integral part of the business process, it is cumbersome to use POTS lines and this encumbrance is further magnified in the case of call centers. So how does one keep the tab low and yet get a good business phone line service? The answer lies in T1. T1 business phone lines can give you the unique benefits of

• Toll quality phone lines, 24 per T1 pipe
• The flexibility of using a few channels for internet access
• The cost efficiency of VoIP
• The added call efficiency for call centers that use PRI T1 business phone lines

The best part of a business phone line is really the flexibility that T1 can offer. What you can do is take a T1 pipe and dedicate, say 8 channels to your business phone line and the rest for internet access. You can then analyze your usage over a period of time and if required, transfer more lines from your T1 pipe and allocate it to voice, or vice versa, without too much trouble.

A standard T1 pipe managed by a PBX can normally manage a medium-usage network that caters to as many as 100 employees. But the best part really is this. If you want a fractional T1 (say 12 channels), and allocate 3 channels to your business phone line, it is possible, and in future, if you want to augment your connection to say 18 channels and allocate 3 of the six extra to voice, it is also possible.

The same goes with Full T1 and even bonded T1 lines. You can choose to use as many channels you want, allocated in the ratio of your choice between voice and data, and can switch channels around, too. This is the kind of flexibility that really makes business phone lines such a boon for businesses.