Click here to view a list of vendors and partners that specialize in providing business phone service to multi-location, nationwide businesses.
If you're looking for metro specific buying information check our metro specific directory.
For the purposes of this buyer's guide, "Local Business Phone Service" is defined as the service connected to a local phone number used for making and receiving voice phone calls over a "land line". The "Nationwide" part means the company providing the phone service can pretty much provide and manage any phone number anywhere in the US.
A nationwide local business phone service vendor or channel sales partner (AKA telecom agent, broker, consultant, etc.) works with multi-location businesses that want a single point of contact to work with "all their phone companies".
"Nationwide Local" vs. "Local Local"
The local phone companies most business customers use are what I call "local local" phone companies because they provide local phone service but they only do it in their "local" area. Now granted the old "Ma Bell" or RBOC's (regional Bell operating company) like AT&T, Verizon and CenturyLink's "local" areas cover dozens of states each, but none of them cover ALL the states and they don't overlap each other's local territories.
As well, the alternate "competitive local phone companies" or CLECs that sprung up after the 1996 deregulation of local phone service (XO, PAETEC, Windsteam, Broadview, etc.) are all generally "land locked" to some local "on-net" footprint where they can provide dial-tone service from their own network and switching equipment.
Cable companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable and others suffer the same "on-net" challenges. They might provide fine business phone service in one area but they do not provide service to other areas. The ILECs or independent local phone companies that serve rural areas fall into the same boat.
The obvious problem for multi-location businesses with office locations in multiple phone company local areas is that they need to work with multiple different phone companies to coordinate the dial-tone for their multiple offices. Multi-location companies that want to have a single dialing plan and a "single phone system" that works over any phone line provisioned by any phone company throughout their multiple locations needs to work with a "nationwide local business phone service" vendor or sales partner.
Who Provides Nationwide Local Phone Service? IP Carriers and Resellers
"IP carriers" (the IP stands for Internet protocol) are companies like AireSpring, Alteva, MegaPath, Smoothstone, Telesphere and others that use "softswitch" phone technology from the likes of Broadsoft, Metaswitch, Asterisk or similar to provision business phone service anywhere in the US using private high-speed data networks and/or the public Internet.
Many of today's IP carriers started out as CLECs or resellers. Many of today's biggest phone companies are also rolling out IP carrier solutions. In five or ten years it is predicted that all phone service will be provided via some flavor of IP carrier solution because the "old phone system", the copper wire one put in the ground over the last 100 years, is just too expensive to maintain.
"Resellers" are companies like PowerNet Global, GLOBALINX, TouchTone, Ernest Group, Wholesale Carrier Services, Granite, BullsEye, Lightyear, TNCI and others that generally own some of their own network but who also "resell" the networks of the larger "facilities based" RBOC and CLEC providers.
Which Type of Nationwide Local Phone Company is Best For Your Multi-Location Business?
Recent Comments