Do you get faster Internet speed at home than you do at the office? Does your office building have a gym, a great carryout, ample parking but only cable company Internet access available?

Most office buildings were built before the internet became an indispensable part of any business. We hear from customers who suffer at buildings that may not have what is needed to provide a business with fast and reliable digital connectivity. Some buildings have upgraded their tech to today's standards, and others haven't. It's hard to tell until you get moved in and start relying on the building's connectivity choices.

To give tenants visibility into this aspect of building amenities, WiredScore worked in cooperation with New York City in 2013 to set up a tiered certification and rating system fo building connectivity. After success of their rollout in the Big Apple, they've moved service availability to other metropolitan areas, including the DMV metro region. Commercial building landlords can now take a proactive approach to maximize digital infrastructure, get certified, and promote that certification.

We'll show you how WiredScore evaluates buildings and how you can work with your landlord to improve digital infrastructure.

Imagine a rogue nation fired 30 long-range missiles at major US cities. Within 30 seconds, the president is on the phone with our allies. Just as the directive is about to come through, the voices start to sound like they're underwater.

No one can hear what anyone else is saying. Why? Because the phone system is malfunctioning.

Now, your business isn't going to face the prospect of war. But, your phone system is still critical. No one thinks much about the phone system until it doesn't work. And, when your phone service gets caught in a technical sneak attack, your business suffers.

If that happens, getting a steep discount on that budget phone system won't seem like such a great deal. If your business is going to always be great, you need the best phone system.

As a well-respected business phone service provider in the Washington, D.C. area, we've helped hundreds of small businesses implement and manage office phone systems successfully and we'll show you the best systems to consider.

"Call recording is illegal!"

Ever heard that before?

It's not true.

There are all kinds of benefits a company can gain by recording their phone calls. You can improve customer service, create comprehensive customer communications records in your customer relationship management (CRM) system, and protect yourself in the event of legal disputes.The drawbacks of business call recording, however, can include legal risks for failure to comply with state law, potential employee resistance to call monitoring, and additional costs for audio storage and access.

If your company decides to access the benefits, you'll need to mitigate the risks that call recording carries. By weighing the considerations, you can be confident that you'll get all of the benefits without the fear of angering customers or facing litigation.

Atlantech Online has added 1919 South Eads Street in Arlington, VA to its metro fiber ring that serves Arlington, Crystal City and National Landing. The four-story building is the headquarters of the Consumer Technology Association. The addition of 1919 South Eads Street brings the total number of buildings lit by Atlantech Online in Arlington to 30. All the commercial office buildings in National Landing are on the Atlantech Online fiber ring. 

Are legacy systems based on Primary Rate Interface (PRI) obsolete?

While many businesses have made the switch to cloud communications with Voice-over-IP (VoIP) or Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS), PRI is a reliable and well-established technology. PRI transmission protocols have successfully supported voice calling for over 40 years, but they're also being phased out by major vendors. Is PRI still a viable solution for telecom?

For a small percentage of businesses and some particular use cases, PRI could be the right choice. However, business adoption of alternatives is quickly reaching the tipping point. By 2020, over half of organizations will use UCaaS, according to BroadSoft. 95% of leaders believe cloud-based collaboration is a significant business opportunity.

The growth of UCaaS adoption has created seismic shifts in the telecom marketplace recently. Some major phone system manufacturers have announced end-of-life plans for PRI products between 2020 and 2025. Major vendors have announced they will no longer maintain copper network resources, including AT&T and Verizon.

Cloud communication tools are a better choice than PRI for most businesses, but your organization could be the exception. The right business communications strategy for your business could involve PRI telecom or a hybrid deployment of legacy and cloud tools.

Adopting SD-WAN can provide businesses with a long list of attractive benefits, like lower costs, stronger performance, security, and agility. However, before you can unlock this potential, you need to cut through the confusion of picking the right service.

There are at least 50 distinct options for SD-WAN technology. Growing demand from businesses has resulted in countless new vendors entering the marketplace.

Many organizations are confident in the idea of SD-WAN but unsure of how to start choosing the right solution. The state of the SD-WAN ecosystem is so complex, it's been described by industry analysts as a vendor "free-for-all." If you are wondering whether there's a big difference in SD-WAN Providers, you're not alone. But how do you know which is best?

There are countless resources which detail the features of various SD-WAN solutions. While these are valuable, they don’t necessarily reveal the full picture of differences between providers.

Is there a significant difference between the amount of bandwidth offered by fiber Internet and copper high-speed Internet? Should you base your business Internet decision on bandwidth alone?

To make an informed decision about business Internet service, you need to know the differences between fiber connectivity and copper. This includes how much bandwidth each option provides, and how it will serve your businesses’ need for data in the present and future.

Demand for bandwidth has doubled every 18 months since the inception of data services, and this growth shows no signs of slowing. It's imperative that whatever type of data connectivity you choose can grow along with your business's technology and traffic.

Commercial building owners and managers have justifiable reasons for seeking building riser management solutions. Inspecting the vertical riser system and telecom closets in many commercial buildings can reveal thousands of feet of aging cabling abandoned by former tenants. Abandoned cables can take up valuable space in a building's risers and create significant risks to commercial tenants, including fire safety hazards.

Abandoned cabling may not be an immediate risk to access or safety in newer commercial buildings. However, failure to identify and remove issues from the vertical riser system can create problems quickly. In 2019, the average business uses more than three times the bandwidth resources they used in 2016. The growing demand for data connectivity is fueled by installations and upgrades to communication infrastructures. 

There's no question that commercial property managers need a solution to maintain safe risers to extend communication services from the building's telco point of entry (MPoE) to the telecom closets on each floor. The market has responded to this growing need with several types of services to audit, clean up, and maintain the risers in commercial properties. There are several options for building riser management solutions, each of which offers distinct pros and cons.

Telephone Denial of Service (TDoS) attacks are on the rise, and no business is exempt from this security risk. While phone spam is not a new threat to businesses, risks to your communication systems have evolved.

Today's hackers are using sophisticated malware to infect smartphones and flood the phone systems of agencies or companies with spoofed phone calls, resulting in phone line unavailability for legitimate callers.

The growth of TDoS is so concerning, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have issued warnings to businesses about this risk. If a telephone-based DOS attack targets your organization, you may suffer consequences that are even worse than phone system downtime. TDoS attacks can be used as a "smokescreen," or distraction from other information security threats against your network. Increasingly, TDoS targets also face extortion demands to pay a ransom to stop the attack.

While the Internet Crime Complaint Center has received thousands of reports about TDoS attacks, there have only been a few convictions to date. TDoS attacks equally impact every kind of phone system, regardless of whether a business is using traditional phone technology, premises-based systems, or voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephony. To protect your brand, it’s time to determine your risk level, evaluate solutions, and create a plan for response.

Can you imagine the mess you would face if you went 23 years without cleaning out your closets? Unfortunately, that is a frightening reality for the telecom risers and phone closets in many older commercial buildings.

I was touring one building, and in one of their telco closets, there was a whole rack of equipment powered on for a telecom company that had been out of business for five years! Telecom risers play the vital role of housing data and phone communication in commercial buildings from the basement minimum point of entry (MPoE) through vertical risers to commercial tenant offices. Riser infrastructure needs to be managed by professionals to avoid the headaches caused by abandoned cabling infrastructure like fire hazards or damage.

The current state of commercial cable risers can be traced back to 1996 when the Telecommunications Act deregulated the industry. Deregulation meant better price and selection for businesses, but it also led to an influx of telco vendors who were installing cabling in commercial risers. During the same 23-year period, internet technology adoption worldwide grew over 5,944%, and business demand for data bandwidth began to soar. These factors converged into a recipe for very cluttered cabling closets.