New England Communications

Avaya Flare

2011-01-14T11:07:00.004-05:00

Avaya is taking Unified Communications to a new level with their new Flare Experience. Flare works through a desktop tablet and integrates all forms of communications including Email, IM, Voice Conferencing, Video Conferecing etc. You can access your Enterprise directory from the device and through Presence, see who is available and how they can be reached. You can even add your favorite Android applications, as the tablet runs on the Android operating system. Today the application is available exclusively on the Avaya tablet; however, they are working on integrating Flare with the Ipad and Android tablets. Click on this link to see what the application looks like and how it works.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW_uzYiquug&feature=channel

2010-12-03T10:38:00.003-05:00

Avaya IP Office R6.1

Avaya released the newest version of IP Office this week. This new version installs on the standards based Linux operating system. This should reduce installation and licensing costs to the user as the process is more streamlined and there are no Windows licenses to purchase.

Other new enhancements to 6.1 include:

Flexible Avaya one-X™ Portal for IP Office: The solution’s dynamic Web-based desktop communications interface for remote, mobile and office workers features a newly-designed, customizable interface with drag and drop application gadgets. The solution—which lets users manage calls, instant messages and e-mails from one PC-based portal—is more flexible, allowing users to place gadgets (i.e. Directory, Call Log, etc.) wherever they want on their screen. Further customization includes 'skins' and branding with a business' name.

Improved Contact Center Reporting: Now, an SME can gauge the success of a customer campaign through location-based business intelligence that analyzes the calls flowing into a contact center, and makes them viewable on a geographic map. This capability provides a visual report of the volume of customer interaction based on each customer's location.

Expanded Video Options: Avaya IP Office expands upon its videoconferencing capabilities, going beyond Softphone-based video to now offer more advanced multi-point HD videoconferencing with up to 4 parties.3 Additionally, it enables video integration with selected third-party SIP phones.

Multi-site Management: SME owners can now manage multiple office sites using one consolidated interface and a single log-in. This lets users view and manage all of the key communications parameters (i.e. user rights, hunt groups) of multiple locations (up to 32).

Also with 6.1 comes the ability to use some Nortel IP sets on the platform. Future releases will also allow Nortel digital sets to operate. These advances will let businesses with Nortel systems upgrade to take advantage of the latest advancements without throwing out the investment in all of those telephones.

Small and medium sized businesses want the same tools that Enterprise sized business have taken advantage of for years. With 6.1 come some of these tools with the promise of more in the near future.

2010-10-28T11:50:00.004-04:00

Happy Halloween!

A useful tip for troubleshooting VOIP quality issues in Communication Manager.

Doing a “list trace station xxxx” when an IP station is on a call will result in the following output every 10 seconds during the call:

15:33:46 Jitter:4 3 3 2 3 3 1 3 3 3: Buff:9 WC:26 Avg:2

15:33:46 Pkloss:1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1: Oofo:0 WC:1 Avg:0

These two lines will tell you a lot about what is going on during a call.
The first line indicates jitter (variations in latency). Each number is 1 seconds intervals. In this case the first second of the call had 4 milliseconds of jitter. Followed by the jitter buffer size (which is dynamic), worst case jitter during this call (26 milliseconds), then the average jitter for this call. In general, 20 milliseconds of jitter or less is desired.

The second line indicates packet loss in percent. In this case the first second had 1 percent packet loss. Oofo is the number of out of order packets, followed by worst case packet loss for this call. Then the average packet loss for the call (in this case 0)
Packet loss at or above 2 percent will be noticed. Above 3 percent will usually result in call quality complaints.

High numbers from this output can tell you that there is something wrong on the network somewhere. It usually take a deeper dive to find out just where the trouble is occurring but this is the place to start.

MERU

2010-10-01T13:10:00.004-04:00

We've been having great success again this year with Meru's wireless access solutions. The biggest advantage that Meru brings to the table is single channel deployment.

Most 802.11 wireless access solutions utilize a three channel deployement. Multiple access points installed in a facility each need to be on channels 1,6 or 11. There can be no overlap in coverage from AP's using the same channel. This means that the AP's have to be strategically placed so no AP using channel 1 can be near another AP using channel 1. The same goes for channels 6 and 11. This can make designing a solution challenging and adding to an exisiting system even more challenging.

Meru circumvents this problem with their single channel deployment. Unlike the 1,6 and 11 solutions where the AP's decide where you will be connected, Meru's decision points are made by the controller. This allows them to have a single channel throughout the building. As you move from one area to another, the controller moves you from one AP to another.

This is particulary important with 802.11n installations. 802.11n AP's provide significantly more range than 802.11a/b/g AP's. However, the coverage for N is very spikey compared to the a/b/g AP's. N signal bounces off walls giving more coverage, but weird coverage patterns. With the single channel deployment this is not an issue at all. If you have an area of weak coverage you just install another access point. If you are using a product without single channel deployment and want 802.11n AP's, it will become very difficult to get optimal coverage without designing and re-designing to avoid channel conflicts.

Check out our website, www.necomm.com , for more information on Meru if you are considering wireless access.

2010-08-23T15:36:00.001-04:00

Come One, Come All! Charity Yard Sale to Benefit Good Shepherd Food Bank on Saturday, September 18th, 8am – 3pm, 480 Riverside Street, Portland, Maine. Parking in the rear of the building. New England Communications employees are having a gigantic yard sale with lots of great items! The items will include clothing, household items, books, toys, and some sports equipment. All items are priced to sell – after 2pm $1.00 per box/bag full --all items must go! What a deal – you get a great bargain AND you help your neighbors in need! All proceeds will go to benefit The Good Shepherd Food Bank.

Patricia Bartlett

2010-07-29T14:43:00.004-04:00

Giving back to the community is a big part of the fabric of New England Communications. Throughout the year, we hold various fundraisers for charities in support of the needy here in the State of Maine.

This week, NEC employees are enjoying ice cream sundaes and contributing to a worthy cause at the same time! Several employees contributed various items for making ice cream sundaes, such as: coffee, vanilla, and strawberry swirl ice cream, as well as several toppings including; coconut, strawberries, pineapple, nuts etc. We even had cherries and whipped cream for the top! Our fellow employees then purchased a sundae for $2.00 to make their own creation for a joyous consumption. All the proceeds will be contributed to a worthy cause to be chosen at a later date. There will be other fundraisers throughout the year to add to our contributions, such as our annual yard sale in September and a luncheon on Halloween.

NEC employees are extremely generous when it comes to helping those in need.

Patricia Bartlett

2010-07-13T16:06:00.002-04:00

Recently we had a request from one of our employees to add some feature capability to his mobile phone. This would allow him to turn EC500 (mobile twinning) on and off remotely with his mobile phone. It would also allow him to send all calls to his desk phone remotely and access pbx dial tone remotely. With this last ability, he can establish calls remotely from his cell phone, but the caller ID that shows to the called party is his company DID number. This is a great feature if you don’t want the world to know your mobile phone number. He can also now dial a four digit extension for any of our employees from his mobile phone.

FNE’s are the extensions in your dial plan that your EC500 can dial from an outside EC500 phone to activate Communication Manger features.

Usually each of these entries is populated with a DID. However to conserve DID’s, we decided to use a VDN and came up with the following solution:

1. Populate the required FNE’s using non-DID numbers:
change off-pbx-telephone feature-name extensions

Feature non-DID extension
Active Appearance Select 3405
Idle Appearance Select 3406
Off-PBX Call Enable 3401
Off-PBX Call Disable 3402
Send All Calls 3403
Send All Calls Cancel 3404

2. Select an available DID to create a VDN.
add vdn 2075 to use vector 75

3. Add and record an announcement with the features you’ve selected.
add announcement 1550

Script: To enable your EC500 press 1. To disable EC500 press 2. To enable Send All Calls press 3. To disable Send All Calls press 4. To extend call press 5. To make a call press 6.

4. Write the vector steps based on the selections you have given your caller in the announcement.
change vector 75
wait-time 2 secs hearing silence
collect 1 digits after announcement 1550 for none
route-to number 3401 with cov y if digit = 1
route-to number 3402 with cov y if digit = 2
route-to number 3403 with cov y if digit = 3
route-to number 3404 with cov y if digit = 4
route-to number 3405 with cov y if digit = 5
route-to number 3406 with cov y if digit = 6
stop

Besides conserving DID’s another advantage to this method is having to remember only one number for numerous FNE’s instead of individual DID’s.

Remember that you will need a PRI for this function.

2010-07-01T15:23:00.003-04:00

Our SIP seminar held on June 24th generated a lot of interest in both Avaya applications and the savings, business continuity and flexibility of SIP trunking. Mark Hinckley from Avaya and David Allen from Paetec shared their thoughts on these topics. The presentations were geared towards and attended by Enterprise sized accounts.

There are also many benefits for both small and medium sized business with SIP applications and especially with SIP trunks. With that in mind we have decided to host another VoIP/SIP seminar focusing on this market segment. This seminar will be held on August 12th from 11:30am-1:30pm at the Holiday Inn West located at 81 Riverside Street in Portland.

We will be speaking about the general benefits that VoIP can bring to businesses and we have invited another SIP provider, Tidal Communications, to speak about the many advantages of SIP trunks. If you are interested in hearing about the benefits of VoIP and SIP trunking, please go to our website, www.necomm.com, to register.

2010-06-21T10:36:00.002-04:00

It seems that all the "buzz" lately in our industry is around SIP. Yet, very few companies in Maine are using SIP for trunking, for application access or for endpoints. This Thursday from 11:30am to 1:30pm we are hosting a SIP seminar to talk about the benefits that this protocol can deliver. If you are interested in joining us, please register on our website, www.necomm.com

2010-05-24T12:04:00.002-04:00

Come visit us at the Maine Telecom User's Group Telecommunications and Computer Networking Conference at The Holiday Inn by the Bay on June 3rd. The event features vendors displaying voice, data and video solutions for all businesses. There will be network service providers there as well. Make sure you ask them to explain the benefits of SIP trunking.

Break-out sessions are held throughout the day. Your peers from other Maine businesses will speak about some of the applications that they have implemented and what the benefits have been for them.

The keynote speaker this year is from Microsoft. The topic is cloud computing.

We will be in booths 52 and 53. Hope to see you there!

2010-04-02T13:50:00.004-04:00

Interest seems to be percolating again around video conferencing solutions. Maybe it’s the news reports that gas prices have started to rise in anticipation of summer travel. Maybe it’s the fact that video conferencing is focusing more on personal solutions with video softphones embedded in telephone system applications. Or maybe its just our love of gadgets that keeps this “George Jetson” technology circling around the business world. Whatever it is, I like it. Video does have a special place for the gadget lovers, but it has some very practical applications as well.

Talking on the phone with your employees and/or clients is a great way to communicate, but you miss the body language that is so important in conversation. And sharing a powerpoint over a “go to meeting” session can be effective, but is the other end really listening? Or, are they furiously typing away responding to emails while your covering a new process or product?

There’s nothing like good old fashion eye to eye communication. I drove 3 and a half hours the other day for a 2 hour meeting. It was well worth the drive because I had never met the client. Driving a round trip of 7 hours for a 2 hour meeting could become a pretty big waste of time and money. But, rest assured, if some of our future meetings can be done over video, I’m all for it. I even spied a video unit in their conference room.

2010-03-18T14:02:00.004-04:00

Avaya IP Office 6.0 Release

Avaya has released their newest version of IP Office, Release 6.0. This version will be a terrific way to consolidate the SMB portfolio. IP Office will now support Avaya Partner ACS telephones and it will also offer features that target companies that have less than 20 employees.

Other enhanced features include:

-Improved Capacity for Small Community Network that Supports up to 1,000 Users

-Supports Avaya Partner ACS Series Telephones

-Support for 9600 Series Sets

-Support for 1400 Series Sets
aaaaa· The 1400 series telephones are similar to the 1600 series telephones; however, they are listed at a lower cost. These phones are priced right for telephones that look and sound great and enhance productivity of employees.

-SIP Trunk Enhancements:
aaaaa· Easier setup of incoming SIP calls to Hunt Groups
aaaaa· Support for SIP session timers
aaaaa· Multiple account credentials per SIP trunk
aaaaa· Register SIP line using domain name
aaaaa· Dial from call log using line prefixes

-Video Conference Capability on SoftPhone

-New Office Worker Solution that accompanies the Mobile Worker, Power User, and Teleworker Solutions
aaaaa· Office worker solution gives workers an easier way to communicate. It allows them to use their PC to access visual voicemail and use IM capabilities to better reach co-workers.

-Avaya One-X Portal for Avaya IP Office with Audio Conferencing Control Built In
aaaaa· Avaya one-X portal allows employees to access and manage telephony, messaging, mobility, and conferencing applications through a web-based interface.

-IP Office System Can Run in Either IP Office or Partner Mode

With all the additions and enhancements in this new version of IP Office, it is a great way to push forward in the New Year. With Partner and IP Office uniting, it will give others a better opportunity to make changes within their companies, at a lesser cost.

2010-03-03T13:24:00.004-05:00

SIP Trunks

SIP trunking seems to have taken hold in larger markets. What’s a SIP trunk? Think of it as a telephone line that rides over your internet connection instead of coming into your building on the usual copper wires. There are some key advantages to adding SIP trunks to your system if it is capable. For those of you that would like to have DID (direct inward dialing), but cannot justify a PRI T1, SIP may be the ticket. SIP trunks allow for DID and Caller ID. They also allow you to port any of your current telephone numbers to the SIP trunk.

If you want a California telephone number for your business, no problem. If you have customers in other states and want them to call you as though you were local, not an issue. If you are working on a disaster recovery plan, SIP trunks should be considered. If you have to move your workers due to a fire, flood or other natural disaster, you can quickly and easily move the SIP trunks to your new location and internet connection. And, the bonus is – SIP trunks are less expensive than your copper lines.

So, what’s the downside? Well, if your internet connection takes a dive, you’ve lost your dial tone. Keeping a copper trunk or two would be a good idea. The other possible drawback could be that the sound quality of the SIP call may not be as good as your current dial tone. But, then again, it might be fine. These days we all seem to have adjusted and accepted cell phone quality.

2010-02-11T10:04:00.004-05:00

As you know, I am the end-user telephone trainer for New England Communications. Every training session is unique in its own way, since customers buy different telephones for their company. The sessions are also unique because each customer selects different programmable buttons for their telephones.

One feature that our customers have the option of adding to their IP Office telephones is visual voice mail. Assuming the customer has voice mail and they have an extra button available for programming, I highly recommend this feature. As opposed to dialing your voice mail, entering your password, then listening to the prompts in your voice mail box, you may get all the information you desire with just a click of a button. When visual voice mail is programmed onto your telephone, all you need to do is to press the button associated with this feature, put in your password, and you have now entered your voice mail box. On the display of your telephone, you will see four different options. These options include: Listen, Message, Greeting, and Password. To listen to any of your voice mails, you just press the button associated with the listen option, and you now have ability to listen to any new, old, or saved messages. Once you have listened to a message, the display on the telephone will prompt you on what to do next. You will have choices such as: save, delete, forward, etc. Again, to choose any of these, you may just press the button on the telephone corresponded with that option.

Rather than listening to prompts in a voice mail box, you can view the next steps required for you to take, by glancing at your telephone screen. Although it is a learning curve and requires a little hands-on training, this is a great way to save time getting your voice mails. Once people get the hang of how to use it, most prefer accessing voice mail this way.

2010-01-26T19:08:00.007-05:00

Now that Nortel and Avaya are together, all of the technicians are faced with learning the "other" companies equipment. We at New England Communications (like Avaya) need to make decisions on what to adopt and what to drop. The data side especially has a whole host of new gear for people coming from the Avaya side. New England Communications has used Juniper for the last year or so as the frontman on the network side, and they have a complete portfolio of switches, firewalls, SSL, and have even added a smattering of wireless lately. It remains to be seen (from my perspective) what we will adopt from the Nortel portfolio if anything.

It's pretty clear from the SMB roadmap that the IP Office will encapsulate the Nortel SMB features and hardware. Part of our learning will include what about the Nortel feature set the IP Office system was lacking and needs to be incorporated in.

Time to print off docs for that great bedtime reading!

Jay Tarbox
Convergence Specialist

2010-01-21T12:11:00.003-05:00

Avaya Presents Roadmap for Nortel Migration

Earlier this week Avaya presented the first view of their vision for moving Avaya and Nortel products forward. It was clear that Avaya did not purchase Nortel solely for the installed base as they laid out the roadmap.

Avaya’s IP Office is the going forward product for small to medium sized businesses. Both the Avaya Partner ACS and the Nortel BCM products will be migrated to the IP Office platform. Partner ACS telephones will work on the soon to be released IP Office 500 R6. Nortel BCM telephones and features will be integrated into the IP Office 500 in R7. No immediate date has been released for IP Office R7. This is great news for businesses using the Avaya Partner system, which did not have the capability for remote workers to use softphones or remote IP telephones. It is also good news for users of the Nortel BCM systems who will now see their telephone sets and key features carried forward.

The Enterprise strategy held equally good news for both Avaya and Nortel customers. The migration plan includes keeping the best of the Avaya technology and the Nortel technology to create a stronger unified product offering. The immediate integration of Avaya and Nortel systems is present with Avaya’s Aura solutions. These introduce a SIP layer between Avaya and Nortel products (and other manufacturers as well), to allow a disparate system to share features, applications, and telephones. The strongest features and applications of both product lines will eventually reside on an application server on the Avaya Aura platform. The longer term integration will also include further development of Nortel’s contact center software to incorporate it directly into the Avaya Aura solution.

Avaya will also fold the Nortel data solutions into its portfolio. This product line includes routing, switching, network access control, ssl vpn’s and firewalls. These will be further developed to operate with a tighter integration in the combined unified communications infrastructure.

All of the Avaya and Nortel products will be available for purchase as they stand today, over the next 18 months. The integration of the two product lines will be gradual. This will allow customers of both Avaya and Nortel to expand their current architecture as the products combine as one.

2010-01-15T13:08:00.001-05:00

Next Tuesday, Jan 19th , Avaya will be sharing the roadmap with their customers for the Avaya and Nortel product lines. Avaya and Nortel customers will learn the direction that has been chosen for their existing voice and data hardware and software solutions. Visit our Blog next week and we will give a quick outline on what stays, what goes and what is “morphed” together from the two solution providers.

2010-01-13T08:28:00.001-05:00

As 2009 comes to an end, I have reached a personal milestone with the completion of my first six months with New England Communications. I started at NEC at the end of June, after having retired from Avaya with twenty plus years of service. One would think such a transition would be an easy one. Yet although I still have the same title of Software Associate, my role has been significantly expanded. With a much larger pool of individuals at Avaya, we were each responsible for a smaller share of the implementation “pie.” My previous responsibilities were limited to the programming of telephone features.

Today, my responsibilities include all three aspects of the implementation: rack and stack, trunking and station programming. Here at NEC, I have been given the opportunity to expand my knowledge and provide more comprehensive service. I am now learning all aspects of a customer’s implementation. The last six months have been where I have learned how to prepare a switch for implementation and how to handle calls to and from a customer site. For me it has been a welcome learning experience; for my customers it means improved service.

So for the new year, my New Year’s resolution is to be the best technician that I can be. I wish you a prosperous 2010. And, if you have any telecommunications needs, please contact NEC where we are ready to offer you outstanding service!

Rudy Narvaez
Software Associate
New England Communications

2010-01-06T11:45:00.004-05:00

For obvious reasons corporate acquisitions in 2009 stalled a bit as compared to some other years. But, there were some notables out there that did or will happen soon. Let’s run through a few of those.

The one that we talk about the most is Avaya’s purchase of Nortel’s voice and data solutions. This includes the telephone systems along with the switch and router business. Avaya will be rolling out the roadmap for the combined product lines on January 19th. We will post this roadmap information on our blog and website soon. We will also be hosting some educational seminars to everyone understand their options.

As for Nortel’s Metro Ethernet business, a company called Ciena will pay $796 Million for that infrastructure. That’s 248 million more than their initial bid. Cisco grows by gobbling up other companies, so what would any year be without a few fast grabs from the marketing king. This year they added to the portfolio by purchasing Scan Safe, Starent Networks, Tidal Software, Pure Digital Technologies, Richards-Zeta Building Intelligence, and the set-top business of DVN. If you’re like me, you haven’t heard of most of these companies, but they all have their niche. A company that you probably have heard of is Tandberg. After a bit of waffling on the purchase, Cisco did move forward and acquire the video conferencing product.

Silver Lake is heading up a group that wants to purchase Skype. HP plans to purchase 3Com for $2.7 billion. IBM bought SPSS, Intel purchased Wind River Systems and Logitech is purchasing Lifesize, the low end High Def video conferencing solution.

This stuff is enough to make your head spin and 2009 was a down year! I can’t wait to see what happens this year.

2009-12-16T14:11:00.004-05:00

On behalf of all of us here at New England Communications, I wanted to wish everyone a very happy and safe holiday season. As our personal lives become busier with the preparations for the holidays, so has our work lives here at New England Communications. Our work queues are full and our teams busy with year-end projects. For that – we are very merry!

To our Partners, Suppliers, and Vendors: Your support has been incredible this year. It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. No one company on this planet serves its customers without help from their partners, suppliers and vendors. Thank You.

To our Customers: It is our pleasure to serve you. We appreciate your partnership with us as well as your confidence in us to support your ongoing communications needs. We take our responsibilities very seriously and are looking forward to a productive 2010.

Happy Holidays!

From:

2009-12-07T10:10:00.003-05:00

Since I have become New England Communications’ End-User Telephone trainer, I have had many new learning curves to adjust to. The sales staff, managers, and technicians have been incredibly helpful and supportive. Because of the unlimited support from my fellow employees, I have learned to really enjoy this career path.

I know all companies say that they have great customers, but we truly do indeed. Along with my co-workers, I also have our customers to thank. The groups of people that I have needed to train in the last six months have been exceptional. The relationship with customers begins with the account manager, blossoms with the project manager, and continues to develop with the telephone trainer. It truly is an endless relationship between our company as a whole, and our customers. After reaching my one year anniversary at New England Communications, I can honestly say that I am glad to be a member of the staff and look forward to many more years of establishing relationships with all our customers.

2009-11-19T14:19:00.001-05:00

As the Convergence Specialist at NEC it's my job to straddle the fence between the phone world and the computer world. I deal with the "You got voice in my data!" concepts here. I started here 9 years ago, when VOIP was barely in its infancy and I was only interested in servers and switches. I never would have dreamed I would be troubleshooting voicemail servers and voice issues.

We recently hired a new account executive and it was my task to set him up as a SOHO user at his home in New Hampshire. We're using several very cool technologies to do this and help this remote worker feel like they are in the office and not so remote.

I outfitted him with a VPN phone which is an Avaya 4610 IP Phone loaded with firmware that allows it to be a standard IPSEC VPN client. The phone boots up then creates a tunnel over the internet back to our office. Voila! An office phone at his house, with PBX dialtone and 4 digit dialing to the rest of the company. Any and all PBX features are available to him

The phone guys set him up with EC500. This is a software feature of Avaya Communication Manager that bridges an internal extension to a cellphone. Now, customers call his office number and both the cellphone and the office phone ring at the same time. He can now be reached almost anywhere with a single phone number. As opposed to forwarding calls, the caller ID of the original caller shows up on the cellphone.

We're using the Juniper SSL VPN capability extensively here at NEC, and it allows our remote users to access all the company LAN resources and terminal server from anywhere. The Juniper client installs with very low overhead and doesn't even require a reboot. Softphone on a laptop is even usable over the SSL VPN for those time when you're on the road in a hotel.

All these things make a remote worker not very remote at all.

-- Jay Tarbox

2009-11-04T14:53:00.010-05:00

Each day we design new telephone system solutions for our customers. One question most commonly asked is, "If we have IP phones, we can make all of our calls for free, right?” These are mostly small to medium sized customers who have not been exposed to the advantages of voice over IP yet. Since we get this question so often, I thought it would be a good idea to bring it up in our blog.

There are definitely some opportunities to save some money and improve communications for businesses by using VoIP. There are probably some network savings for your company if you have multiple locations. We are in the process of implementing a system now that will span 14 locations. The network savings in this case will pay for the telephone system quickly.

There are also mobility features that can improve communications between your customers and your employees. This generally results in happier customers. Happier customers often spend more money, which could make you happier.

Another great application for VoIP is disaster recovery. If you have a system that supports VoIP, you can use VPN phones or “soft” phones from any remote location that has access to the Internet. Your employees can log into the telephone system to make and take calls as if they were sitting at their desks. If for some reason your building is not accessible or if you have employees that can’t get into the office due to snow storms, ice storms, or those pesky pandemics, they may continue to work virtually with this application.

So, can you make most of your calls free with VoIP? Probably not. But you should still explore the benefits of VoIP for your business. You may be surprised at what it can do for you.

2009-10-20T09:51:00.004-04:00

It’s the third week of October which means we at NEC are in the middle of our United Way fund raising campaign. Last year we ranked 81st out of all the companies in the state for the size of our campaign. That’s pretty good for a company with 42 employees. Many of our employees contribute directly through payroll deduction each week and we run a lot of internal events like yard sales, bake sales, lunches etc. The fund raising is fun and it’s for a very good cause.

We’re also happy to be installing a new call center for 2-1-1 Maine. Much like the 4-1-1 or 9-1-1 service, Maine callers can dial 2-1-1 for information about health and human services available locally. The new call center will help 2-1-1 save money and improve their services to the community.

It’s great to be involved in contributing to the community that we do business in each day!

2009-10-06T08:33:00.006-04:00

Avaya has received court approvals from the US and Canada on the Nortel deal. It still needs court approvals from France and Israel. The transaction is also subject to customary closing conditions, including necessary regulatory approvals.

Avaya has indicated that they will support current Nortel solutions over the next 18 months. We should all be keeping an eye out for the road map of products and solutions that Avaya will be presenting soon. It will be interesting to see if any Nortel products or migrations will be carried forward in their vision.

The other buzz going around concerns FairPoint and the possibility that the company may be facing bankruptcy protection. It’s been reported that the company is now more than $2 billion in debt and cannot make its interest payments.

The New York Post reports that there are some big names eyeing the troubled company. Traders of distressed assets are positioning themselves and the rural carrier Windstream may be purchasing FairPoint debt. Windstream currently has 3.2 million access lines compared to FairPoint’s 1.7 million.

2009-09-15T09:38:00.003-04:00

Well the anticipation is over and the “tweeter’s” can finally get some sleep. The Nortel stalking horse auction came to a close and Avaya walked away as the winner. Their original bid of $475 million jumped up to $900 million to take the prize, but they can now claim the highest market share of any voice/data equipment provider.

It will take a little while for the dust to fully settle. In the meantime, Nortel customers should be looking to Avaya to learn about solutions which will help preserve their Nortel investment. Avaya does have applications such as Session Manager, which will help in this effort. On another note, Silver Lake Partners, the private equity firm which owns Avaya is also leading in the bidding for Skype.

Combining Avaya, Nortel and now Skype? Sounds intriguing.

Stay tuned to our blog for updates.

Joel Bicknell

2009-09-04T14:25:00.015-04:00

For those IP Office users out there, Avaya has released the new 5.0 software.

Here’s some of the new stuff:

More phone choices with support for SIP phones and new DECT wireless phones. There are also new enhanced features for mobile “twinning”.

The embedded voice mail gained a “dial by name” directory. Voice Mail Pro has expanded from 30 to 40 ports and integrates with Windows Server 2007. The Unified Messaging Web Access includes controls for callback, get previous and get next messages.

External directories can be obtained from up to three different sources per IP Office. A centralized call log for users and hunt groups is driven by the IP Office, not by the phones. IP Office 500 supports T.38 Fax over SIP. The System Status screen has some new VoIP stats as well. It shows QoS reports for each IP extension along with Packet loss, Jitter and Round Trip Delay info.

32 IP Offices can now be networked together in one SCN. And…. the roadmap has support for Partner phones. That will be huge for many Partner ACS users!

2009-08-26T14:51:00.007-04:00

As another veteran of telecommunications I feel compelled to follow up Eric’s blog with some thoughts of my own.

For those of you who have been in the technology arena for many years, you will understand my awe at the progress and technological innovations that have occurred. I marvel that when I started in this business (don’t ask how long ago that was – it’s impolite to ask a lady that question), modems and CSU’s were bigger than today’s servers running enterprise wide applications. PBX’s took up rooms rather than some small amount of space on a data rack.

In just a blink, I find myself utilizing a Blackberry that serves as my phone (almost anywhere) and my computer workstation, with a monitor the size of a deck of cards. My family and I own a camp in northern Maine and while cell service is still a pipe dream – I can get email on my Blackberry. Go figure that! Technology lets our business locations seem closer together than ever, sharing a single switch, world-wide, through the power of the internet and ingenious engineering on the part of PBX providers.

As participants in this progress, we too have had to evolve – to understand the transmission of data, if we were just voice before; to understand the million voice features on a PBX, if we were in the data world. Convergence is more than technology – it is people and our thought processes. In many ways it is easier and in many ways it is way more complex. But I think you’ll agree that the last 30 years have not been boring. Just imagine what the next 30 years will bring.

2009-07-30T15:10:00.083-04:00

"Our First Blog"

As the founder of New England Communications I felt it was appropriate that I kick off our first blog. We plan to use this as an opportunity to post some of our thoughts and feelings about our business, new applications and products. Blogging may be new to us but changes in technology certainly are not. I think back to the days when the receptionist’s console took up half of the desk. Phones had 25 pair cables linking them together and little pink notes littered everybody’s workspace. Today I answer my desk phone with my cell phone. I receive emails, text messages and access the internet on the same device. It weighs about as much as my wallet. It can tell me where to go and how long it will take me to get there. Oh, and it can hold enough music to run a radio station. We have digital phones, IP phones, wireless IP phones, SIP phones and cell phones with desk phone features. And that’s just telephones. Don’t even get me going on unified communications………….. I’ll save that blog for our techie geeks. We will be sharing our experiences with LANS, WANS, wireless Access, video Streaming, video conferencing and a host of other apps and gadgets. We’ll share the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, as you read these blog postings please let us know what your thoughts are and what some of the topics are that you would like to hear about. Thanks and Happy Blogging!