Long Distance Business Phone Service

How iTelNet Can Help Your Business

When selecting long distance business phone service, you should consider two factors: quality, and price. ITelNet will service your company with the most reliable phone service, we’ll also make sure to get you the lowest possible price and the best long distance business plan.
In addition to providing your business’ long distance phone service, we can provide all of your other phone service and internet access needs, including telephone equipment and installations. To speak with one of our experienced telecom executives and get a price quote for your business today, call us at 1-800-677-0836 or click here to email us.

Why Use iTelNet for your Long Distance Business Phone Service

Regardless of where you’re located, we can get you set up with a very inexpensive and effective long distance plan. In fact, if you use iTelNet for all of your company’s phone service, we’ll likely be able to get you a plan that includes your long distance business phone service at no cost (provided you don’t go over a certain number of minutes, which will be very reasonable).

business long distance phone service

We have relationships with every significant carrier in the country, and will ensure you get the best possible plan, based on what you need and where you are. For example, you may have heard of T1 service, the best choice for most small to medium sized businesses to get their phone service and internet access (please click here for more info on our T1 service). However, you may not know about a “long distance T1”, which connects you directly to the nation’s wires, allowing you to avoid your local carrier’s fees and saving you money. A long distance T1 is ideal for companies making a massive number of long distance calls, not for a company making only a few hours or less per day.

3 Types of Long Distance Business Phone Service

There are three types of long distance business phone service that your company will most likely need:

1) Intra-State Calling: (calling within your state). As with an 800 business number, the cost for calling within your state will vary based on what state you’re in. States with very spread out populations like Maine or Montana have more expensive business long distance phone service rates than states like North Carolina or California, where the state is very well wired for voice cabling. Intra state plans can range from 2c a minute to 20c a minute.

2) Inter-State Calling: (calling between states). This fee will be the same regardless of what state you call. The price will depend on your plan, but again will range from 2c to 20c, or free if you get an unlimited calling plan.

3) International Calling: (calling other countries). If you’re calling outside the United States regularly, you’ll need a cheap international calling plan for your long distance business phone service. Calling Canada (because it’s so close) or Japan (because it’s so well wired and calls are so frequent) is going to be much less expensive than calling Eastern European countries or countries on the other side of the world like India. 10c to 40c is a range of per minute pricing you can expect to pay.

A History of Long Distance Business Phone Service

From the beginning, Alexander Graham Bell knew telephone technology needed to travel. So five months after the first telephone transmission to Watson using a battery-powered liquid transmitter and an electromagnetic receiver, Bell appropriated a telegraph line for the first (one way) long distance call in history. At that point, long distance was 6 miles!
Three thousand miles and thirty-nine years later, Bell picked up a phone in New York and placed the first transcontinental call to Watson in San Francisco. Both men reported the sound quality was better than that day when Bell called for Watson from the next room. It wasn’t saying much. Companies had embraced the telephone but long distance business phone service needed to improve in reach and quality to reach its true potential.

How Does Long Distance Phone Service Work?

Telephone technology is not particularly complicated. The telephone receiver coverts the sounds waves of human speech into electrical impulses that travel at the speed of light through the telephone line which are then converted back to acoustic speech by the phone receiver on the other end and amplified by the speaker. The electricity for this process is provided by copper wires in the phone line. Even today’s advanced fiber ring process uses the same technology.
   The first telephone lines connecting cities and states were made with copper wire. Now signals are sent using optical fibers, ultra thin glass fibers that is less expensive to manufacture than copper wire, takes up less space, experiences less loss of signal, and has superior sound quality.
   With fiber optics, the electrical impulses from the phone are converted to light and encoded by a transmitter. The light signals then if forwarded along the optic fiber. The degree of degradation of the signal varies, depending upon the quality of the glass used to make the fibers.
   If the distance traveled is long enough an optical regenerator can be used to boost the light signals. The optical generator has laser-boosted coated fibers that revitalize the depleted signals as they pass through. Practically speaking, the coasted fibers act like a signal amplifier. The last stop for signals along the fiber optic relay system is the optical receiver, which converts the light into electrical impulses which can be decoded by the telephone.

Long Distance Business Phone Service Carriers

Since the breakup of AT&T in the mid 1980s, there are hundreds of carriers, big and small, offering business long distance phone service. The job of the carrier is to be responsible for transmitting the telephone signals across the majority of the distance the call covers. That distance is referred to as the long-haul and this portion of the transmission connects the caller’s local telephone carrier to the receiver’s local carrier.
So to place a long distance call, a business has to choose a long distance carrier. The Primary Interexchange Carrier, or PIC, is the long distance company accessed when someone dials, 1+, the long distance code. That code prompts the switch to forward the call to the long distance business phone service’s designated carrier via its nearest switch, also called point-of-presence or POP. Calls are completed by digital switches that decipher the phone number to ascertain the recipient’s local exchange, completing the calls in a literal blink of an eye. The switches also record the billing information. This is known as switched long distance.
Small business phone service can also have dedicated long distance, which does not require this switching. It’s called dedicated because it has a direct connection to its long distance carrier’s POP via a dedicated circuit installed by the business. The circuit runs from the business to the POP. This kind of circuit is known as a T1, which has 24 channels to place long distance calls.
The advantage to a T1 line is lower long distance charges, so for a large business that generates a large number of long distance calls a months, a T1 line makes financial sense. The downside is that dedicated lines require a monthly fee of several hundred dollars, special equipment and a contract. So a T1 line would not be a good for a small company that doesn’t use long distance phone service that much.

Other long distance business phone service options

There are of course plans for a business long distance phone services. ITelNet can help you select a calling plan designed to fit your company’s typical calling pattern for a guaranteed rate that is lower than a la carte. The rates may change depending on the time of day or day of the week and there is usually a relatively small monthly fee, though iTelNet will almost always negotiate that fee to $0 for you!
   For some individuals, long distance call can be paid for by pre-paid calling cards. The more minutes bought, the cheaper the per-minute cost. Pre-paid long distance cards are easy to find and can be bought at many types of stores and ordered online. For small businesses, it’s a way of controlling costs since the cards are prepaid. Be sure to check for per-call fees and the expiration dates some cards have a longer shelf life than others.
   Small business phone service can also benefit from using dial around services which enable the business to bypass their designated carrier. To use a dial around service you dial 10-10 or another combination, followed by a three digit access code. These carriers offer cut rate long distance and usually do not require monthly fee. The monthly charges appear on your regular phone bill. These numbers can be found on the internet, which makes for easy comparison shopping. In addition, you may want to get an expandable phone system for a small business to help with routing lots of calls.
   International callback can also make long distance business phone service more cost effective if they have employees who travel internationally or have customers overseas. International callback is a technological end-around. It lets people outside America to place long distance calls using U.S. rates via an 800 number and access code. U.S. rates are typically lower than that of other countries. But not all countries allow callback services to operate within their borders so businesses need to check the legality of it in specific countries.

Watch out for slamming

Businesses need to check the company phone bill every month to make sure the long distance carrier has not been switched without your consent. If it happens, under law you do not have to pay for the first 30 days of the new service and can demand your chosen company take you back with the same rate plan as before the slam. However, if you sign up with iTelNet, we will be tracking your long distance business phone service, and we’ll be sure this never happens to you. Call us today at 1-800-677-0836 and we will provide you a quote for long distance, and all of your other business telecommunication needs.