Local Line Services

Comtel can provide and bundle options from various suppliers for redundancy, so you can benefit from a variety of solutions with one phone call for support and updates from a company that has your best interest in mind.

Analog Phone Lines

Also referred to as POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service), analog phone lines are the reliable, traditional sort everyone is familiar with. They don’t require any fancy technology to install, so analog is the most cost-effective if you only need a few lines (such as six or less). As a result, they’re the most common line for homes or small offices, used for your standard phones, fax machines, and modems.

Digital/PRI Phone Lines

Digital/PRI lines are high tech. The binary pulse they transmit knows what it should be when it reaches its destination so it can correct any errors that happened while being sent. This results in clarity of sound and virtually no distortions. Furthermore, much more data can be crammed into a digital than an analog signal: the maximum speed is 1.544 Megabits per second instead of 56 kilobits – an improvement of almost 30 times!

Digital lines require the installation of an expensive T1/PRI, a “pipe.” However, as numerous lines, up to 23, can be run through the same pipe, digital/PRI lines become less comparatively costly the more lines you have; it’s generally less pricey to have a PRI with 15 lines or more than a 15+ analog multiline. Thus, digital phone lines are generally used by larger corporate systems (often 25+ employees) while homes and small businesses find analog lines more cost-effective.

SIP Phone Lines

Ultimately, if a company wishes to make full use of its telecom resources, then a SIP line is the best option for connecting to the PSTN. Instead of relying upon bundles of physical wires, this system connects to an online trunking service provider. Now becoming cost-effective for smaller businesses, SIP trunks can provide significant cost savings for large enterprises by removing the need for local gateways or costly pipes.

SIP trunking has been used by large enterprises for more than a decade and the increase of cheap bandwidth and quality hardware means that many SIP trunks in Canada rival the reliability of the PSTN network. Additionally, with SIP trunks, you’re not restricted by your own area code. Though your company may be based in Vancouver, if you do a lot of business with Torontonians, you can pick a Toronto area code so that your calls to and from Toronto will be local with no long- distance charges.

Call us to Discuss a Telecom Audit.

Let’s talk about what you need to set up or update your company’s telecommunications system. Whatever it is, we can help.