DLS Helps Best, Vanderlaan & Harrington Maintain a Commitment to Their Clients

This renowned law firm in Chicago needed a communications system that offered reliability, helped manage costs and offered easy administration to help them get the most value from their solution. Best, Vanderlaan & Harrington is a firm of trial attorneys with a reputation for excellence and dedication to their clients. Their partners rank among the … Read more

The VoIP Market’s Gotten a Lot Tougher for the Little Guy (Pt 1)

The government has never really known what to do with VoIP.

Rules and Regulations

On the one hand, VoIP is a telephony service, and as such some people argue it should be regulated and taxed in the same vein as other telephony services (such as traditional PTSN networks).

On the other hand, VoIP is an online service, a platform that isn’t so different from any other online application you might utilize, and one that should be open to new, small service providers. Seen from this angle, the notion of taxing and regulating VoIP has been a thorny issue, to say the least.

Over the years, as VoIP has increased and improved the services it’s offered and gradually transformed further and further into a full-service telephony platform, VoIP has seen increasing regulatory and tax burdens placed upon it. These burdens have dramatically changed the VoIP landscape- especially for small VoIP providers and organizations looking to become VoIP providers.

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Gartner Predicts BYOD Boom by 2018

In a recent report, research organization Gartner predicted that 70% of professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices by 2018. To translate- Gartner effectively predicted that 70% of employees will be working on their own smartphones or tablets by 2018, a concept generally referred to as BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device.

If BYOD plays out as Gartner predicts than this will be a huge change in the workplace, and one that requires some extensive planning to implement properly, with minimal friction.

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Just How Big Will VoIP Market Grow? (Part 1)

We’ve all heard the reports that business VoIP is projected to grow massively over the next couple of years. We’ve all heard predictions that the VoIP market is going to be extremely exciting throughout the rest of this decade. We’ve all heard that VoIP is the future of telephony, for both enterprise markets and the private sphere. But most of the predictions are extremely vague. Thankfully we’re starting to see some new reports come in that begin to align these predictions with some real numbers, and the VoIP-dominated future they predict appears to exceed what most of us anticipated.

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VoIP over Cable or DSL?

voip over cable or dsl?

voip over cable or dsl? - voip dsl modemMaking the switch to Voice Over Internet Protocol is a wise move for business owners. The choice is not only cost-effective, with relatively cheaper call rates than the conventional media, but it also has the added advantages of mobility and higher scalability, which are the frosting on the cake. However, you still have to make a choice between DSL and cable Internet. Both DSL and cable modems are good choices, although cable connection is more dependable and DSL is more reasonably priced. For your immediate needs, get in touch with us.

If you are considering the implementation of VoIP to reduce telephony costs for your very small business, there are a variety of ways to install a VoIP telephony solution.  The different types of installation require infrastructure and environments which are designed to support the specific type of business telephony you want to use.

Two of the different types of VoIP installation include cable and DSL or Digital Subscriber Line. Cable installation requires high-speed cable broadband and a cable modem with VoIP to establish connectivity.  DSL VoIP requires a slightly different type of connectivity and infrastructure.

To help you understand the difference between the two types let’s start with the difference between a cable connection and a DSL connection.

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Hosted PBX Trends

Over the past few years there have been numerous online discussions and articles on the subject of “cost” and “price/performance” of the Hosted PBX. Today these discussions are sounding more and more like outdated statements of the obvious. Yes, it is obvious that Hosted PBX is far more feature rich and cost effective than traditional PBX or outdated Centrex services, but that isn’t the point. Appropriately chosen communication technology very directly impact ways and speed with which business is being conducted, more important than ever in the current economic climate.

Recognizing the Value of Hosted PBX

For most businesses, however, communications does not fall into realm of their core competencies. Conventional school of thought preaches that you are not going to be a better law firm, architecture firm, pizza shop, etc by running a better phone system than the competition. But that simply isn’t true any longer. With Hosted PBX services reaching beyond simple voice or SIP trunking and becoming full Unified Communications solution, we see promotion of Hosted PBX as a smarter strategic play for SMBs. The value of converging — or integrating — data, voice and video communications over a single IP network comes in the improved ability of people to share, discuss and develop ideas with colleagues anywhere in the world. Voice itself can become a “killer app.” The new standard environment integrates voice mail, global telephone network, directory, presence, unified messaging capability, text-to-speech, conferencing, online phone, address book and more. Enterprises adding voice to other IP-compliant applications really begin to see what the technology can do for them.

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