So much has changed in business telephone services in the past fifty years. I keep sounding like an oldster when I say - I remember when . . . but it's hard not to do when considering the rapid, complex and profound evolution of the industry. Competition is fierce for your business. Most companies want term contracts and offer discounts for different tiers. Not only are there many new options for local and long distance service for your business today, there is a menu of options available from each company.
Deregulation of the industry was achieved with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, giving rise to scads of companies eager to compete (CLEC's, or competitive local exchange carriers), though an equally impressive number had folded within a decade.
Open your local yellow pages and flip to the customer guide section toward the front. The ILEC or incumbent local exchange carrier provides a list of companies that provide business telephone service in the area. In our area the ILEC used to be SBC, but SBC acquired its former parent company AT&T Corp. in 2005 and adopted the AT&T name and brand.
Though I don't hear the term as often these days, companies like ours may be called 'interconnects'. The interconnect business emerged as a direct result of deregulation of the telecommunications industry. The term interconnect came from the process of interconnecting telephone devices to the phone company's network.
Today there are thousands of interconnects and those of us who are aren't new to the business, having adapted and evolved through the leaps and bounds in technology over the years, understand how competition is shaping business telephone services - offerings and prices, and we're generally well equipped to help you sort through the choices so you get the best telco and data fit for your business.
It wasn't so long ago that we steered clear of recommending this carrier or that carrier, because so many companies were inconsistent in the quality of their service and their customer service, that it just wasn't worth risking guilt by association. In that regard, things have improved, though we can generally say we've had good and bad experiences with most of the notable CLEC's, but these days not surprisingly, we can certainly say the same of the ILEC's too.
In this section, we want to provide some information about choices you have for business telephone services as well as background on some of the major competitors to the ILEC's, and articles on things related to your monthly service such as telecommunications taxes and mobile telecommunications services.
If you have a question about specific business telephone services, pricing, technology, an ILEC or CLEC, give us a call. We routinely open trouble tickets on behalf of our customers and run interference with the providers for you. Since we can 'speak their language' this can be a huge time saver for you and another way we can add value to what we do.
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