According to Webopedia, T-1 or Trunk Line One is a dedicated phone connection supporting data rates of 1.544Mbits per second. A T-1 line consists of 24 individual channels, each of which supports 64Kbits per second. Each 64Kbit/second channel can be configured to carry voice or data traffic.

Within the communications world, trunking is analogous to the structure of a tree with one trunk and many branches. According to Wikipedia, this is exactly how trunking got its name. Trunking is a concept by which a communications system can provide network access to many clients by sharing a set of lines or frequencies instead of providing them individually.

T-1 lines are a popular leased line option for businesses connecting to the Internet and for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) connecting to the Internet backbone. Here are some more facts for your review:

• T-1 transmits digital signals instead of analog.
• T-1 connections are available in US, Japan and South Korea, while E-1 connections are available in Europe.
• T-1 PRI offers 23 channels and 1 additional channel to pass data such as Caller ID and improve performance. T-1 PRI is often used for call centers.
• A Bonded T1 is two T1 lines offering 3.0 Mbps of bandwidth.
• A T-1 line is either made of fiber or copper and T1 is being replaced by Fiber to the x (FTTx) technologies, which is a generic term for any broadband network architecture that uses optical fiber to replace all or part of the usual metal local loop used for last mile telecommunications.

Inphonite, LLC develops and markets professional, automated phone messaging systems and interactive computer telephony products that improve the profitability and productivity of a wide range of organizations. InphoniteVoice supports Digital, Analog and VoIP connections.

What is PBX?:
PBX (Private Branch eXchange) is a privately owned telephone switching system for handling multiple telephone lines without having to pay the phone company to lease each line separately. A PBX essentially takes the place of the phone company's Central Office within the company by acting as the exchange point, routing calls. With a PBX in place, each phone only needs an extension, not a phone number, and the PBX handles all calls made from desk-to-desk within the company.

Currently, there are four distinct scenarios in use:

1. PBX (Private and Circuit Switched)
   See definition above.
2. Hosted/Virtual PBX (Hosted and Circuit Switched)
   PBX is located at and managed by the telephone service provider, and features and calls are delivered via the Internet. You just sign up for a service, rather than buying and maintaining expensive hardware. This essentially removes the branch from the private premises, moving it to a central location.
3. VoIP PBX (Private and Packet Switched)
   Uses the Internet Protocol to carry calls. Companies need packet switched networks for data, so using them for telephone calls was tempting, and the availability of the Internet as a global delivery system made packet switched communications even more attractive.
4. IP Centrex or Hosted/Virtual IP (Hosted and Packet Switched)
   Combination of 2 and 3 above.

History of PBX and How it Can Help You:
Historically, the expense of full-fledged PBX systems has put them out of reach of small businesses and individuals. However, since the 1990s there has been a large set of small, consumer-grade and consumer-size PBXs available. And because of the scenarios above, you have many more choices on what can help your business specifically. Inphonite, LLC develops and markets professional, automated phone messaging systems and interactive computer telephony products that improve the profitability and productivity of a wide range of organizations.

The ReminderPro to InphoniteVoice Migration Tool is a new migration tool that can migrate prompts and messages from ReminderPro 2.4, 2008, and 2008 DX. The tool is available now, free of charge from the FTP site:

ftp://ftp.inphonite.com/Downloads/InphoniteVoice/ReminderPro-Migration-Tool.zip

To install the tool, follow the instruction in the readme.txt file contained in the zip file above.

Most of our users are not geeks. They can turn on computers and use them to accomplish things, but when it comes to changing domain rights or networking computers together, they're lost. And they should be; that's not their area of expertise. So we in the Support Department at Inphonite often find ourselves speaking with geeks who have been brought in for a specific purpose: to troubleshoot the things that non-geeks don't have the time or desire to try to figure out.

IT consultants are a great resource. They often are involved in the installation of our products, or in troubleshooting some mysterious problem that all-of-a-sudden cropped up. In those situations, your geek needs to talk to our geek, and soon. Of course, the support engineers at Inphonite can sometimes seem a little hard to reach, and the smallest delay seems like hours when you're paying someone $65 an hour to be there.

Most software vendors — including Inphonite — make their support representatives available for scheduled appointments. Quite frankly, this is the best way to make sure that a geek here is available for your geek there. Since you probably have to schedule time with your IT person, schedule time with our support engineer at the same time. This way, you can have the peace of mind knowing that everyone who needs to be involved in your installation process or in troubleshooting your mysterious issue will be available. No calling in a panic needed. And no paying someone $65 an hour to sit by the phone playing solitaire.

Occasionally, we speak with customers who find themselves faced with a dilemma: They need to record (or re-record) a ReminderPro message, but the room where the computer is located is noisy and not suitable for recording professional messages. Certainly, we want the messages we deliver to our clientele to be of a high quality, and background noise doesn't meet the standard.

In this situation, we often suggest using alternative software and a microphone for the recording of the ReminderPro messages. You see, ReminderPro stores each message in two WAV files located in the ReminderPro program directory. For example, the greeting for the Daily message says "Hello, this is...", and is stored in a file named daily.wav. The closing is the portion of the message that says "Press 1 to confirm your appointment...", and is stored in a file named ^daily.wav. You can use other software to record the greeting or the closing for your message, and then drop the file into the ReminderPro directory, replacing the existing file. ReminderPro will then use the recording you made elsewhere for the message.

There are a couple of gotchas here. First, the recording needs to meet certain specifications. The specs necessary for ReminderPro to use the file(s) are as follows:

• Channels: Mono
• Bit Rate: 128 kbps
• Sample Rate: 8 khz
• File Format: Wave Sound (.WAV)

Voice recording software will generally allow you to set the specifications before you record, or at least before you save the recording to a file. As long as the basic specs are met, you should be good to go.

Secondly, the files must be named correctly. So, if you have a message named Daily, there must be a daily.wav and a ^daily.wav file located in the ReminderPro directory. If they're not there, the program won't find them and, thus, can't play them when calls are made. The name of the message determines the names of the files.

Now, you may already have voice recording software you can use. If not, there is a plethora of them. Personally, I have used Audacity, which is free. It allows you to make recordings that meet the requirements. If recording directly through ReminderPro won't work for you, Audacity could be an option you'll want to consider.

If there are other freeware packages you like, please share your suggestions here.