GRAND RAPIDS ? In the old days of telecommunications, a business would buy a phone system from a single carrier and be good for a decade or so. Phones were just for voice calls or sending faxes. Not today. Alexander Graham Bell’ s invention has morphed into a computer for communications that deliver audio, video, Internet, and software applications.
What?s more, the distinction between wire line versus wireless lines are becoming quite blurred as the new buzz is bring your own technology to the workplace to communicate. So businesses need to become flexible enough to let employees connect to their phone network using smart phones, tablet computers, laptop computers, video and any other computerized communications device developed in the future.
Certainly, in a survey of telecommunications providers in West and Southwest Michigan, most said the biggest single change in the last five years has been the demise of wire lines, the traditional copper telephone lines that have been delivering voice communications for more than a century. Some survey show that upwards of one-third of Michigan households have dropped their traditional land line phone in favor of wireless technologies, including cell phones and the more advanced Smart Phones.
?Everybody used to have land lines,? said Rich Koch, Chairman of Boston-based 382 Communications. ?Try selling a land line to a kid coming out of college today. Everything is IP (Internet Protocol) now. When we get a new customer, to get that customer to send us their wholesale traffic, they just give us their IP address. Then we?re up and going with their service in minutes.?
Koch?s company in June bought Grand Rapids-based Iserv, one of the largest independent internet service providers in the Midwest.382 Communications will piggy back on Iserv?s Internet capabilities, including its huge data center, to provide voice, data, and network services to telecommunications service providers and businesses. The connections from Iserv to these clients will be done over the Internet using a customer?s unique Internet address, called an Internet Protocol – in essence a business? address on the Internet.
For years, a service called Voice over Internet Protocol has made it possible to make a telephone call over computer networks. VoIP converts analog voice signals into digital data packets and supports real-time, two-way transmission of conversations using Internet Protocol, hence the name. Using technology to communicate over the Internet levels the business playing field, Koch said.
?As a business person, no matter how small your company is, you can look big on the Internet,? Koch said. ?You can get a phone system that provides music when your customer is on hold, where the customer presses, say, one for sales, and gives the caller the impression you?re a much larger business. For a business, it?s all about communications. I can make your cell phone ring if your desk phone doesn?t answer. You?ll never miss a customer call. You can conference in 10 people to solve your problems. You use these tech tools to compete with anyone.?
The other big change sweeping the telecom industry is a reflection of changes in the world place, said Dave Wittwer, president and CEO of TDS Telecommunications Corp., better known as TDS Telecom. Virtual offices staffed by employees working outside the office is the new standard.
?Businesses must remain flexible with their employee base,? he said. ?Employees are demanding alternative work arrangements. They want to work from home. Business owners want to work with employees not in the same location. Using a company IP addresses allows businesses to integrate with any employee mobile device. This has to be a high quality tool, not just best effort.?
Smart phones and virtual offices are no longer the future of business, he said; they are the new norm. He predicts less innovative businesses will struggle trying to harness these new Internet and telecommunications innovations. But they must adapt not only to increase productivity, but also to survive in this 21st century digital communications world.
Long-time PBX equipment seller David Simon, president of PBX.Net Corp. in Farmington Hills, agreed that the biggest telecommunications trends has been moving away from fixed copper telephone lines to VoIP-based services and hardware; as well as the increasing embrace of the wireless connections and smart phones. PBX has customers throughout the state, as well as in Western Michigan.
?The industry is headed towards greater penetration of these two items with the increasing popularity of video conferencing and collaboration in the general business communications space,? Simon said. ?Video conferencing is the triple threat. Seeing someone?s face while talking to them is the next big trend. The Jetson?s have arrived. With video conferencing comes video chatting services and applications.?
The pace of change in this revolution in telecommunications is accelerating, said Jim Burnam, President and CEO of CTS Telecom in Kalamazoo.
?I?ve only been in this industry for four and a half years. CTS went from a phone company to a data company. Now the demand is for bandwidth and bandwidth speed to deliver all this content, which will only continue to grow.?
The proliferation of software applications ? dubbed apps by the digerati ? is driving the need for much greater bandwidth and much higher speeds. Burnam said moving video and data through phone lines or over the Internet is fueling the demand for bigger circuits. Traditionally businesses were served by Copper T-1 lines. This, in turn, is fueling the demand for faster speeds delivered over fiber.
?Health care and education require circuits starting at 100 Megabits per second and up to 1 gigabit. That?s 10,000 times a T-1 copper circuit.?
At CTS, for example, delivering Netflix movies to residential customers eats up 15 percent of the telecom company?s bandwidth, Burnam said.
?We have calls from people in smaller communities in some of these tech desert zones in rural areas and they are struggling to communicate with customers and other business in metropolitan areas, where broadband is pervasive,? he said. ?We can?t do much for them right now.?
To provide broadband to more rural parts of Michigan ? think the farm house or cottage in the country ?Frontier Communications just inked a deal with Hughes Network Systems to provide rural residents of Muskegon County broadband Internet service via satellite.
By October, Frontier customers will be able to purchase HugesNet Gen4 high-speed Internet service, part of Frontier?s telecommunications portfolio that includes digital telephone, DSL broadband Internet and satellite television services from the Dish Network.
Frontier will resell the Hughes Internet service through its billing system, just like it currently does for Dish satellite TV service. Service will be provided locally by Frontier technicians.
Frontier purchased the land line telephone operations from Verizon in 2010. Now Muskegon is not only one of Frontier?s largest markets, but also its corporate headquarters. At the time of the purchase, only 37 percent of Verizon customers in Muskegon County had access to its DSL Internet service, provided over phone lines. Frontier has been expanding that service and hopes to provide 85 percent of Muskegon County households with the service by the end of this year.
?We?ve added 157,000 new Michigan households since we acquired Verizon,? said Frontier Vice President Robert Pero, who also serves as General Manager for Michigan. ?Rural customers, and small communities, we?re focused on them. The satellite product allows us to expand our product offerings to these customers, providing them high-speed Internet, TV, telephone and more.?
While Frontier does not yet offer a wireless communications package in Michiga
