Each year, the FCC issues three reports on the development, health, and projected future of the telecom industry. The first report, dubbed the Broadband Deployment Report, is an effort by the FCC to understand the rate of deployment of broadband services, as well as assess how many Americans have access to such services. The second […]

With all the new and trending tech on the market in 2018, it’s easy to think that telecom has officially taken a back seat to other communications technologies. Apps such as Skype and WhatsApp have claimed a broad swath of the telecommunications industry’s market share, and traditional telecoms have struggled to innovate to meet the […]

The tired trope that toll-free phone numbers are a thing of the past could not be further from the truth. Cell phones and unlimited long distance calling plans have been around for almost a decade now, and toll-free numbers are more popular than ever. Why? It’s because they have more functional capabilities than local phone […]

This past September, the FCC drafted several proposed rules changes in how telephone numbers – more specifically, vanity toll free numbers – are to be administered in the future. Chief among these proposed changes are reversals of long standing regulations, such as the Brokering Rule, and to implement new policies regarding how phone numbers are […]

The modern workplace is changing rapidly, and technology is at the forefront of the transformation. Employees and employers need to be aware of and to embrace these changes in the workplace so they move with the times. Engaging with and retaining talented workers is vital, as the job market is more flexible than ever before […]

A private branch exchange, or PBX, is a telephonic switching system that serves private organizations. PBX’s allow for multiple stations to communicate with one another within an organization, as well as route calls into the system to the appropriate party. PBX’s were once the domain of larger organizations because they were too cost prohibitive for […]

Toll free numbers have had a long history. From the days of the Zenith number, introduced in the 1930’s, through to today, the history toll free is full of twists and turns. The regulations that established how toll free numbers work today were passed in the Telecom Act of 1996, and the overall process of […]

The future of the desktop phone In professional sports, you often hear the term Situational Player. This usually means that a player has demonstrated exceptional performance in a narrowly defined set of circumstances, but doesn’t have the skills to be a “full-time” player. In football, it might be that guy who is put into the […]

The most attractive aspect of a unified communications system is its versatility and flexibility. It allows workers to communicate more efficiently, to spread ideas among one another more easily, and there is tremendous potential in the mobile application of a hosted PBX. This has lead to a new trend in some corporate environments called ‘Hotdesking’. […]

Change is in the air. Cloud based unified communications as a service (UCaaS) is a fast-growing industry that is taking over the communications sector by storm (no pun intended). A recent market analysis conducted in 2016 by Small Business Trends revealed upwards of 85 percent of companies have either already moved their communications to the […]

With VoIP being internet-based, it is no wonder that consumers, particularly businesses, have expressed the desire to integrate their VoIP services with cell phones. Bring Your Own Device, or BYOD as it is often called, is the concept of having employees connect via their personal devices to a company’s VoIP system. The practical applications of […]

Appointed by President Donald Trump to lead the FCC in the wake of Chairman Tom Wheeler’s resignation, Chairman Ajit Pai, a former lawyer for Verizon, is wasting no time to dismantle an array of rules and regulations pushed through by the Obama administration. In the past week, Chairman Pai has passed a dozen actions meant […]

What is voice over internet protocol (VoIP)? Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that allows consumers to make voice calls using a broadband Internet connection rather than the traditional copper wire telephone system. Originally, VoIP services only allowed consumers to call other people using the same service (such as Skype when it was […]

Nature is a fickle beast. Telecommunications and cable companies have long sought a perfect record for service delivery. The reality, however, is that nature tends to work against human endeavors. Outages are a fact of life in telecommunications, which is why an entire industry has arisen around disaster recovery services for phones and internet. In […]

Since the rapid rise of the internet, the proliferation of domain names, and the advent of search engine optimization, the world of marketing appears to have forgotten about toll free numbers. Many companies believe that toll free numbers have lost relevance in the marketplace, and so too have many consumers. Major companies have begun ditching […]

In 2014, the FCC passed a recommendation for the telecom industry to transition to an all-IP network by 2020. This was meant as a way to encourage legacy carriers to move away from traditional TDM switches and toward an entirely internet-based network. At first, the industry balked at the suggestion. Most major carriers simply refused […]