Being a phone system equipment provider here in Houston Texas, I run across plenty of customers who are in need of new voice and data services or an upgrade to their existing services.
I also have had the opportunity to work with most of the phone line providers here in town and they with us.
Out of all the providers here in Houston, I must admit that I personally endorse Logix more often than any other company. Before we get into why, let me at least mention who the big service players in Houston are.
Logix ( for info email Jeffrey Scheldt @ Jeffrey.Scheldt@LogixCom DOT com, tell him Jay from Tele Technology sent you. )
Birch Telecom
Cbeyond
AT&T
Broadvox
Time Warner Telecom
These days, Birch Telecom and AT&T are generally the only companies that utilize normal, analog, copper trunks to your office any longer. Just about all of the other companies will pull a single, zero mile T-1 from AT&T to your office and go Voip the rest of the way to their equipment here in Houston. Through that T-1, they pump as many voice channels as you need through and then squeeze your Internet access beside the voice traffic on the same T-1. Generally a Cisco box is installed in your office that converts the providers IP traffic back to standard analog telephone signaling for use with phone systems (boy won’t hey be excited when SIP trunks become the norm! more on that in a different blog)
Out of all these companies, I really do feel like Logix is the easiest to deal with and the most relaxed to work things out with. So far in my experience, they do not oversell, they do not fib about what you are going to get and they don’t pressure you into a fast contract.
Now, I’m NOT going to say anything bad about any other providers. Mom as said, nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Although Birch really does always seem to be a good company too.
Logix is ranked the third largest voice and data services company in Houston by the Houston Business Journal (behind AT&T and Comcast home service). I personally feel that this helps them help you. They know how to keep their costs down, their large customer base helps that. They really do help pass that onto their customer base.
Logix offers a dynamic T-1 with 32 phone lines for somewhere in the neighborhood of $530 per month. They also now offer a dynamic PRI platform for those that need PRI service directly to their phone system. On the market soon will be the long awaited SIP trunks (I’ll have a whole nother blog on THAT one!) and yes I know nother is not really a word, but I’ve never been the orthodox type.
Logix services only Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. And they concentrate heavily on these regions. They are smart enough to know that to survive in the phone lines market in these areas, they better take care of their customers with some seriousness, and that’s exactly what they do.
Now, all of these providers mentioned will eventually, at the end point, provide analog phone line service, T-1 or PRI services to your phone system (well, they won’t touch your phone system, but we will 281-894-6606) Anyhow, everybody thinks that these companies are delivering IP service. This is incorrect. They might use an Internet protocol to get the services to your building, but it’s converted onsite. And that’s nothing special, AT&T has been using IP from city to city for MANY years.
Broadvox, here in Houston, is so far that I know of.. the only company that provides an actual, no kidding SIP trunk, again, I’ll have to have a whole other writing on the SIP trunks and all the ins and outs, which I plan to do next, but just know that only a very small number of phone systems on the market today will even accept a SIP trunk directly.. like 3 or 4, however this is coming down the line to be far more main stream. It’s great for the providers cause now they don’t have to put an $1100 cisco box in your office to do the conversion. But you do.. when you buy that phone system that will accept a SIP trunk, get my point.
Jay Harper
As always, feel free to call me at 281-894-6606
or visit us online at
http://www.telecompaging.com
