Author Archives: Calum
Free 411 directory assistance
The big buzz today at the announcement of free directory assistance calls. The cost for this service is typically 75Â cents to a $1.50, however dial this number 1-800-FREE411 and they are free – well almost. When you phone you are … Continue reading
Intermittent Audio during phone call?
A lot of the negative reviews we get all have one thing in common, actually it’s 2;Â bad customer service seems to be a common complaint but another is choppy or intermittent audio during a phone call. Over the past week … Continue reading
T1 or DS3 – When should you switch?
The simple answer is - if you are approaching 8 T1 lines then you should look into a DS3 connection. 8 T1′s give you 12.352Mbits of bandwidth a DS3 gives you 44.736Mbits of bandwidth(equivalent of 28 T1 lines), the cost however of … Continue reading
Voice T1 or Data T1
As we’ve stated many times before a T1 line physically looks the same in terms of bandwidth, frame rate, clock rate, etc, regardless of what type of information it ultimately transports. So this being the case can’t you just get a T1 … Continue reading
PRI T1 (Primary Rate Interface)
No matter what type of T1 line you ask for its bandwidth, physical medium, etc we have disucssed before will be the same. However what type of data or how the T1 is used  maybe different. Primary Rate Interface or PRI T1 as it is … Continue reading
Types of T1 lines
Over the past few weeks we have gone into some depth as to what T1 lines are in terms of voice T1, sampling rates, frame width, data T1 lines, IP packets, voice compression, packet delay, etc. But what do you … Continue reading
AOL no more
AOL recently announced that it is terminating its total talk service after less than two years of service and to be honest it was not much of a surprise. At $30 for its cheapest plan there was far too much competition … Continue reading
Comcast wins big in Texas
The United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (of all places)ruled in favor of Comcast Cable in a suit brought by Caritas Technologies. Essentially Caritas Technologies was awarded a series of VoIP-related patents. One, in particular, Caritas claimed … Continue reading
Speech delay and IP packet frequency
The ITU define the acceptable delay for speech in G.114. The aim in any network is to minimize this delay, however this can be problematic as the designers of networks have no idea who or where you will be calling. You … Continue reading
VoIP features
When I first started looking for a VoIP provider I didn’t care about what features I would get with it, thinking that I would never use them. All I cared about was price and coverage of Western Europe – Scotland to … Continue reading
Data Transfer v VoIP call
Is there a difference between a data transfer and a VoIP call? There isn’t a significant difference, the same IP packets are used, the same medium is used but there is one important difference – how big can a packet … Continue reading
Digital Voice
Has anyone heard of Digital Voice? I bet you’ve seen the commercials and flyers of a certain cable company promoting their Digital Voice. Did you realize that digital voice is just VoIP, the technology that’s been around for the past … Continue reading
What is an IP packet?
An IP packet is simply a the data you want transferred encapsulated in a frame or packet. The packet is typically broken up into smaller chunks to be transmitted over a T1 line. It’s kind of like writing a letter, … Continue reading
Data T1 Lines
First let me state there are no physical differences between a T1 for Voice and a T1 for data. They use the same physical medium, they have the same bandwidth, the same signal coding and the same frame format. The only … Continue reading
u-law encoding – 8 bits in a DS0
The previous blog explained why we have 8 bits in a DS0, here we’ll explain how we get these 8 bits. When your voice is digitally sampled the amplitude or how loud you are speaking is captured, this happens 8000 … Continue reading