Recently I was working with a small business that purchased their building.  Half of the building had been rented out, and the renter had left.  The building owner had been unable to find a new renter for the entire space so he was considering renting the offices out individually as executive suites.  In order to do that he would need to supply a phone, internet, fax, etc…etc…

We began talking about how a new phone system might solve one of his problems.    He was willing to pay for the hardware, but did not want the monthly re-occurring bill to go up.  Good news at least from my perspective was that he had been with his current provider for a number of years and had not reviewed his bill.  Consequently, he was paying too much.   See Money Saving Tips for the New Year!!!   Additionally, with competition up, prices are coming down.

I have been installing Panasonic phone systems for years now, and I knew the Panasonic KX-NCP1000 would solve the problem, and since Panasonic is currently running a promotion for new and upgraded systems, our price was very competitive.  Problem was, where and how to get the best deal on the needed phone and data services. 

I am partial to PRI’s, love what they can do, and I appreciate their reliability.  We have a PRI in our offices.  I need it to demonstrate functionality to perspective new customers and I also have a mini-executive-suite-scenario here at our building.   We have 4 companies running on our PRI, I supply phone, voice mail, private fax number, all from our Panasonic phone system and our PRI.  It works perfectly 99.999% of the time.  So… the problem with a PRI is they are expensive,  today a PRI will cost you between $400 and $500/month plus taxes, and you still need internet.

Our perspective customer would need the ability to make probably 6 to 8 simultaneous calls and would need to provide probably 5 or 6 fax numbers.  A PRI, it can handle 23 simultaneous calls and you could have as many phone numbers as you like.  On a PRI each phone number typically costs fifty cents per number per month.   So, 6 or 8 companies with a main phone number and a fax is a breeze for a PRI.  Actually the PRI would be underutilized and underutilization costs money.  So the simple answer is VoIP and the Panasonic NCP1000 supports VoIP, no problem in G.711 G.729 H.323 and faxes in T.38 modes. 

I don’t understand why, many people think VoIP means it is free.  It is not!  You have to pay the vendor for the phone numbers, the number of simultaneous calls, you will need a special router that supports QoS (Quality of Service) lately the router manufacturer’s are getting on the VoIP bandwagon and they are licensing the number of VoIP calls through their routers.  And most important you need IP bandwidth.  If you want a first rate connection, you want G.711.  G.711 requires 88K per call, so if you have 10 calls going you will need 880K.  A T1 is considered 1540K.  So you see 10 calls eats up more than half of your T1.  And don’t forget when you are talking you need to consider you upload speed, not just your down speed.  Around Las Vegas, Cox says you can get 10 megs , they rarely tell you what the up speed is and they won’t guarantee it. So, this means T1’s and bonded T1’s

You can find a dynamic T1 with a PRI for under $700 + tax or you can get a full T1 and a PRI for $800 + tax.   So for full T1 of data and the ability to make 8 simultaneous calls, the VoIP vendor I like charges $12.75 to $15/m/call so if you say $13/ call and 20 DID numbers.   You have 13X8= $104/month. 

DID’s with VoIP providers is another story, if you want them to be able to have different outbound CID and be available for a directory listing plan on spending $6/m/DID.  Fax numbers don’t seem to matter so they are $1/m .   So, let’s say, 6 companies at $6 and 6 faxes at $1 will be an additional $42/m for a total of $146/m plus the cost of the T1 say, $325 + taxes, grand total $471.  The VoIP provider I like will give you a router that supports QoS, but will not give you access to setup port forwarding so you still need a QoS router.  One of the least expensive is from Edgewater Networks, and an EdgeMark 4500 that will support 10 calls will cost $449+ and allow a couple of hours to set it up and test.  Now you have to deal with Faxing.  I was ranting and raving about costs, reliability, faxing, etc, etc the other day to my favorite VoIP provider sales engineer, and here is part of an email I got back.

“Faxing is one of those things we always recommend you test – as we discussed yesterday, we support T.38 and faxing over G711 codec.

Some customers are happy faxing over VoIP and some others are not. It mostly comes down to the amount of faxes you send/receive.

If I am speaking to a law office or medical/insurance company, etc…I would recommend they keep an analog fax machine as huge files are faxed in and out multiple times a day, all day.

Our internal fax completion rate is 90-95%, while the VoIP industry standard is only 80%. That said, with a 90% completion rate 1 out of 10 pages could not come through. We have done many things internally to ensure fax completion; I have copy/pasted one of our engineer’s comments:

We built out a new profile to force T.38 negotiation between our SBC and customers under most circumstances. While the fax call may still go over a carrier that does not support T.38, our SBC will transcode the T.38 into G.711u, and the fax should still complete. Typically, fax failures over G.711u are caused by low-quality DSPs in end-user ATAs or by the fax machine itself if it is an IP-enabled fax. Our DSPs do a much better job of converting T.38 to G.711u and converting G.711u to T.38. This should vastly improve fax success rate since it takes the job away from the lower quality end-user DSPs.

And in regards to another concern we received:

Also, it is worth noting that we have a special profile that can be set up on his connection that forces T.38 on all fax calls. This improves performance considerably as it should not ever try faxing over G.711, regardless of what our upstream providers support.

Also, I always recommend keeping maybe one or two analog fax lines (depending on the size of the business) in an office to be used as a backup line/in case of failure, the alarm line, etc…with that, you will still see cost savings.”

Randy here again, get that, average reliability 80% their success rate 90-95%.  So they recommend you keep 1 or 2 backup faxes. By the way B1 lines pretty much cost $20-25/ month each.  Add $25 to the monthly bill.  All that said, my prospective customer needs 6 fax numbers. Oh and his T1, if there 6 calls in progress at 88K that’s 528K of the 1540K is being used up to talk.

So with VoIP when you add all this up $471 + at least 2 faxes at $25/m you are at $521/m plus taxes for 8 calls of VoIP.  You can get a dynamic T1/PRI for under $700 plus tax, you don’t need a special router, it is more reliable it can make 23 calls.  On VoIP if the calls are not going through, it could be the phone equipment, the VoIP provider, the router, the T1 provider, everyone pointing fingers at one another.  If you have a PRI, it is either the phone system or the PRI provider, much simpler, works every time.

The VoIP solution is cheaper, the question is, is it worth it?  By the way, after all that, my prospective customer said his prospective new renters said no. So, no go, whew, that was a mouth full!

Randy  Dell

Recently we got a call from Jim Brock of Simple Computer Repair to meet and discuss needs for phone and data cabling at their new offices, located at 1000 N Green Valley Pkwy Suite 250, “In Henderson Of Course”. We talked to figure out what they wanted, put in a bid and got the job.  Next day we started and finished the following day.

 What was really interesting to me was what Jim told me about Simple Computer Repair . They have a wonderful philosophy for fixing up that problem PC or Mac.  It’s simple, we will diagnose it for free, and if we fix it, the labor will be $99.00.  Jim tells me that during these times his customers are trying to save some money and time, and saving a PC or Mac is less expensive both in dollars and in the time setting things up again, and it is green too.

Some time ago, I had my personal PC fail, I just go a “boot sector not found” error.  The PC would not start up.  The really bad news was that the latest revisions for my book “Sophia’s Kitchen” were on the hard drive, and I could not see them.  I had a backup of most of it, however I had just spend a couple of months testing and retesting recipes with ingredients available in America and US measurements.  I was totally depressed, all that work gone, the measurements, pictures everything, lost. 

So, I took my hard drive to Simple Computer Repair they told me $99.00 or no charge.  Next day I get a call, ‘IT’S DONE, IT’S ALL THERE”.  

I am truly grateful for Jim and his company; I had almost given up on the project. 

Who likes a good coffee in the morning to get things going?  ME! 

So how many of us stop at Starbucks or one of the other myriad of build your own sugar in your coffee shops?  I used to but found since I like my coffee hot and black, and I think the shop near my office’s black coffee tasted burnt, I stopped going. That saved me $2.00 per day, oh, the coffee was only $1.40 + tax + the change as a tip.  So using our magic number of 260 days per year, I saved $560/year.  Now if you are like most of the people in the burnt coffee and sugar line, and want a caramel, chocolate, vente, with a double shot of whatever they are asking for you are spending at least $4.00 per day and sometimes more.

I started picking up high quality coffee beans at the market, and now I brew my own, save a lot, and it is not burnt.  If you like some coffee in your sugar, those additives are also available at the market I frequent.  Yea, it takes 5 minutes more, but I get what I want, don’t stand in line and have to stop on the way to work.

Sandi and I just returned from a perview of Julie & Julia.  It was Wonderful! The score is fabulous, loaded with memories.  I remember watching Julia Child on television, and Meryl Streep has got her down, she is wonderful in this film. 

Visit the Julie & Julia site at Sony  http://www.julieandjulia.com/?hs308=JNJ036&kw=julie%20&%20julia

How many of us go out to lunch during the week?

It seems even at the standard fast food fare you almost can’t get away without spending at least $6.00.

At my favorite close to the office inexpensive sit down, the lunch special is now up to $6.49 and then add $1.50 for a soda,  or drink water for health and savings, then add tax and a tip, you can hardly get away without spending $10.00.

I don’t advocate cutting out all sit down lunches, we use them to clear the head from the insanity that the office can be, and strategizing with spouses, friends, employees, and colleagues.

Again we visit the 260 day work week, at $10.00 per day that is $2600/year or $215/month.

Recently my wife started bringing sandwich fare to the office and we sit down in the conference room and visit and eat.  Certainly the lunch fixings cost us, but not nearly what it costs to eat out, and we save the tax and tip. 

So to summarize, even if you were to cut out just 2 days out, you could save at least $8.00 per day, assuming that it cost you $2.00 to bring lunch fixings to the office.  Well just 2 days mounts up quite quickly to $69.00/month SAVINGS.

Here are some things you can do to save money on a regular basis. It is very easy to spend literally thousands of dollars pennies at a time. 

Summer is here, who’s stopping for soft drinks, energy drinks and candy?

At the local convenience store a soda is $1.09 to 1.29, bottled water  is $0.99 to 1.49, the average cost of a candy ranges from $0.99 to 1.59 and an energy bar or health bar is  $1.99 to 2.89.  Since there are roughly 260 working days per year, if you stop just once a day, averages for 2 items can easily add up to $720/year or $60.00/month.

If you are like our crew that spend the day driving around town, pickup a small cooler, put it in your vehicle, put in ice your refrigerator makes, and stock it with water, snacks, fruit.  You will save money and be healthier.  

Here are some things you can do to save money on a regular basis. It is very easy to spend literally thousands of dollars pennies at a time.  

Cigarettes: 

I was appalled the other day while driving around town I saw 2 signs one for cigarettes at $41.98 a carton and the other at $4.50 a pack.   At these prices even a one pack a day smoker will spend $1850/year or over $150.00/month.  

For the employers in the group, consider offering stop smoking help to your employees or even stop smoking incentives.  I do it really helps.  You end up with employees that don’t get sick as often, don’t take as many breaks.  If your employees work in teams then if one stops for a smoke break, the whole team can slow down or stop. 

If you are an employee ask your employer if they offer a stop smoking program.  It is great for your health, you will feel better, and save thousands of dollars.

For the smokers, consider that public acceptance of smoking is on the decline.  If you walk into my office and you smoke, I can smell it.  I am not saying it is right or wrong, that is for you to decide.  This must be a conscious decision on your part.  I just say that it may be costing you more that it is worth to continue to smoke. 

You can find out more about the true cost of smoking at ttp://www.tobaccofreekids.org