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Our areas of service in addition to Nashville include: Franklin, Brentwood, Forest Hills, 37211, Cool Springs, Green Hills, Antioch, and Williamson County. |
Broadband VOIP and Listing a Business in Yellow Pages DirectoriesBy: Shawn Hatcher When switching over to VOIP over broadband for business one of the factors to consider is VOIP and Yellow Pages listings. I had read through several pages on the internet, including forums and newsgroups, but did not found anything that was anymore helpful than what I already knew, so my findings will be discussed here to assist people with similar decisions in the future. I had just recently started the business and needed to go ahead with a business phone number. I had considered using SunRocket, but had heard BroadVox Direct may be the way to go for a listing. Vonage automatically makes numbers unlisted, therefore you would have to pay around $30 a year for a “foreign listing” through your LEC. The girl I talked to, at SunRocket, seemed to be more than happy to answer my questions, and it appeared that they could do just about anything I ask. So it appears that SunRocket will list you in a directory of some sorts including whitepages, caller ID, and directory assistance, as will BroadVox and a few other VOIP broadband providers. I spoke to the people at YellowBook and they wanted $30/mos to advertise in my area over the next year for a 3-4 line listing. YellowBook has an ad in the front of their book saying you can fill out a this form or call them and they'll list you in their next book if you are not already listed. Well I called them and they had a sales guy call me back. I'm not interested in paying for an ad, you should get the same service as any other phone customer without having to pay hundreds of dollars, when all you want is a 1-line listing. Plus their sales guy was kind of clingy and didn't want me to leave the office at my own will. I eventually ended up paying for the YellowBook listing simply because of 2 things. The first was that YellowBook is released a few months after the LEC’s book, therefore I get yellow pages listings for several months in at least one book until the LEC releases their book. The second being that from talking to the people at YellowBook, they pull from the LEC’s book to get their minimal listing, so since I’m not already listed with the LEC this was my only option to list within the next year. Then I talked to BellSouth, the LEC provider in my area. They offer something called 'Foreign Listing Service'. I guess this is something developed for wireless phones and out of town merchants who want to sell to people in a particular area. This service is about $30/year, and at least gets you in directory assistance, caller ID, and the WhitePages. The final option is to have BellSouth setup something they call “Remote Call Forwarding”, which is only $18/month and it will come to my cell. They will then give me the standard yellow pages listing they give for all businesses. In addition to these options it’s always a good idea to get your business listed on several of the directory service providers on the internet including: Google, Verizon SuperPages, and Open Directory. LECs seem to be getting more and more resistant to letting CLEC customers into their phone books, probably due to the competition provided by some of the new CLECs and the high possibility that POTS will someday be irrelevant for most people. I will soon update this page with more information on how my VOIP adventure for business is going. For
additional information on VOIP or any other services we offer come to our request
service page.
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