Fit network, fit bodies, iCore and Sport&Health go hand in hand and celebrate wellness all around! Sport&Health, the largest and leading health club in the Washington metro area, announced that it will extend the current five-year relationship with iCore another five years. This renewed partnership will also cover Sport&Health’s two new locations they plan to open in 2012 in DC. iCore will continue to provide advanced call features, network reliability, and voice quality, all the while keeping costs down and to better control telecommunication and data issues. With such a strong network to be able to support their 24 and growing locations, along with a strong presence in the DC area, iCore and Sport&Health are taking this expansion together head on!  Check out the full press release here

Gearing up for 2012, iCore Networks has big plans to continue to bring the future of the cloud to companies, and to turn their wants into reality. The focus for iCore in the new year is to carry on providing those cloud-based services anywhere at any moment, and to enhance our product offering with full motion full broadcast quality video from any device. Utilizing high-def IP-based video telephony, meetings will now become virtual, cutting travel time and costs. iCore Networks is undertaking a big move; leading the transition of a more cloudy atmosphere. Click here to view the article.

Wireless Design and Development Magazine is a print publication that centers on wireless technology on the rise with a base of over 36,000 subscribers. In addition, they produce their own podcast, Tinker’s Toolbox, a web-based interview show discussion. Topics include conversation on the latest technology, components, and design issues for the electronic design engineering community. The latest feature, hosted by Alix Paulte, highlights iCore’s one and only CEO and Chairman, Stephen Canton.  During this podcast, they discussed the latest issues facing system integrators planning IP telephony, the overall shift from circuit switch to packet switch networks, and the benefits of VoPI and Disaster Recovery Tools. Click here to listen to the podcast!

We are happy to announce that iCore Networks Chairman and CEO, Mr. Stephen Canton, has been chosen to be featured in the new book, Profiles in Success, which will release its third volume, “Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington, D.C. Area” in 2012.  The feature includes a case study, entitled Confidence at the Core, highlighting Mr. Canton’s entrepreneurial vision. Starting out in sales, Mr. Canton had a certain flair for this particular role because of his extremely outgoing personality competitive nature. Pretty soon, he and telecommunications found each other and thus, iCore Networks was born in 2001. The case study goes on to explain the slow but sure extinction of wire line services and using a single platform for voice and data is the future, and Voice over Private Internet is our competitive advantage. iCore is on the steady rise to expansion and soon enough, the world will know that VoPI is not just a typographical error. For a sneak peek, view the case study here.

It was disaster for many, just another storm for others, and merely a rainy day for the rest. Whatever the condition in wherever the area, iCore’s Disaster Recovery Team was ready to roll out to help our customers in need, in hard hats and all! Throughout the chaotic weekend of Hurricane Irene, iCore was proud to announce that the network was up and remained fully functional during the storm. In addition, we had our Disaster Recovery crew on standby, some even at the Network Access Centers (NAC’s) to ensure full preparedness in addressing any possible issues. Our vehicles were literally out on the streets ready to help both customers and employees in need of assistance. The eye of this storm may not be one to mess with, but Irene blinked and it was iCore on the ready and to the rescue!

Of course, the topic on everyone’s mind is the literal earth-shattering news of yesterday. The last time the East Coast experienced an earthquake of equal strength was New York, 1944. The Mid-Atlantic earthquake of 5.9 ironically shook up the East Coast’s call volume and connection more than the buildings themselves. Not iCore! Despite the pandemonium and shock, iCore powered through and resumed business as normal. Despite the increasing number of dropped calls during that time frame, iCore made and received calls with ease; reassuring our loved ones, and of course, our customers. Despite everything that happened, the jolts from the Earth’s core, iCore stayed solid providing our 55,000+ users the indestructible core of our business: VoPI.

Typically, cell phone providers operate by routing calls from one relay station to another using the shortest distance between the two points of the call.  When a station gets overwhelmed like yesterday, the calls bypass that station and thus cause the delays. Part of the services we offer include an exceptional disaster prevention and recovery system using a private circuit connected to our Network Access Centers (NAC). With that comes a backup circuit with an additional NAC, providing our customers a truly redundant disaster recovery tool. When iCore says we provide disaster prevention and recovery, we mean business! Our team continues to further monitor our systems, but nothing can shake this core. Our stellar services will rock your world, figuratively speaking of course.

Watch out telecomm world, iCore is on the rise to shake YOU up!

Verizon’s Union Negotiations Are Yet Another Signal of the PSTN’s Demise

Written by: Paula Bernier

Verizon’s hard line on negotiating union contracts is yet another indication that the TDM networks over which 96 percent of U.S. businesses rely are no longer being supported at the levels they once were by incumbent telephone companies, says Stephen Canton, CEO of iCore Networks and a former Bell Atlantic employee. Of course, it’s also a clear indication that service providers like Verizon are pulling investment in the PSTN and placing their bets on wireless and other IP technologies.

As Verizon works with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Communications Workers of America to come to an agreement on contracts covering 45,000 workers in the Mid Atlantic and Northeast, union organizers are expressing extreme concern over the level of concessions the telco is seeking. One report quotes a CWA president saying that Verizon wants everything back that the union has won during 50 years of negotiations.

The piece goes on to say that the average Verizon union technician makes $75,000 a year, plus $50,000 in benefits, but that the number of these folks on the telco payrolls is fading fast. The wireline businesses of cable TV, satellite and telephone companies in the U.S., according to the Labor Department, reportedly employed 575,000 people in May. That’s 4 percent less than the previous year and about 40 percent fewer than a they did 10 years ago.That may help explain why getting into the demarc in a building used to be like getting into Fort Knox ­– you needed all kind of security clearance to get into these areas of vital infrastructure, but is now accessible to anybody with a brick that wants to prop open the box, Canton says.

That says, Canton adds, it’s critically important for businesses that are still relying on circuit-switched technology to make the move to IP services, which deliver quality, service, savings and security.

In  case there was any doubt that telcos are moving away from the PSTN and toward IP networks, many of the nation’s largest service providers have made that perfectly clear in their recent statements to the Federal Communications Commission.

Some of the industry’s biggest names – including AT&T Global Crossing, Time Warner Telecom, XO Communications and others – have been calling for a sunsetting of investment in TDM infrastructure. And late last month Time Warner Telecom took the argument a step further by filing with the FCC  a petition requesting that the commission issue a declaratory ruling on an all-IP interconnection model, which would mean the end of POTS.

Interestingly, Time Warner Telecom and its cohorts on this issue are calling for the FCC to reclassify interconnected VoIP from a Title I to a Title II service, which will move it from an unregulated service to a regulated service. I say interestingly because you don’t often see tier 1 service providers actively seek regulation of an unregulated business. It seems to make even less immediate sense when you consider that these service providers are migrating more of their traffic to VoIP, so you might think they’d prefer to keep the growing part of their business on infrastructure that is unregulated and just keep a bare bones operation going on the regulated PSTN side.

But continuing to prop up the PSTN creates giant operational inefficiencies that these carriers apparently are so keen to address that they’re actively seeking regulation around interconnected VoIP. If everybody is required to support interconnected VoIP, the thinking is, no one will be required to meet TDM mandates around interconnection. Richard Shockey estimates that U.S. carriers could realize at least $20 billion in operational savings over 10 years if they were allowed to phase out PSTN infrastructure.

iCore’s Chairman & CEO, Stephen Canton was recently featured in the Washington Post Capital Business Section.  His article includes the Top 5 Telecom Trends in 2011.  These 5 trends include:

1. Hosted PBX
2. Hosted Videoconferencing & Telepresence
3. PC over IP (desktop hosting)
4. Secure Network-wide Online Storage
5. Converged Communications

Read the full article here

Every time we are asked, “What does iCore do?” and we mention that we are a VoPI provider, we would receive a look of confusion.  We often hear, “VoPI..don’t you mean VoIP?”.  It may seem like a typo, but it completely transforms Internet-based telecommunications: VoPI (Voice over Private Internet) solves a lot of problems inherent in consumer grade VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

VoPI uses VoIP technology in a managed setting: iCore uses its own private, point-to-point circuits to carry its customers voice and data. The advantages of using VoPI rather than VoIP are huge:

• Security- Denial of service attacks and other hacking can affect VoIP quality of service. Call flooding and call hijacking can as well. Hackers with packet sniffers and other tools can monitor where calls are coming from and going to. At the ISP level, they can even eavesdrop on calls. Because iCore’s customers’ traffic travels on iCore’s own secure network none of those threats to security or quality are factors.
• Higher call quality- On the MOS (Mean Opinion Score), the number used by the telecommunications industry to evaluate call quality, POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) averages 4.2 on a scale of 1-5. iCore’s quality averages 4.49. While VoIP suffers from latency, jitter and packet loss — all factors which affect voice quality — VoPI has far fewer issues which degrade quality.
• Better than a traditional PBX phone system: iCore’s VoPI gives customers more voice and data features at a lower cost, with technology that is virtually infinitely scalable.When clients add employees or locations, the network goes with them. Clients do not need to purchase additional servers, switches, routers or any other equipment. New capabilities, such as audio or video conferencing, can be added at any time.
• Disaster Recovery- When disaster strikes, employees can work from virtually anywhere outside the office, including home. Cell phones, smart phones or laptops can be configured in seconds to act like a user’s desk phone. Online information, from a Microsoft Exchange server, for example, can be accessed from anywhere as well. With online calendars and CRM tools, employees can continue making sales calls, managing projects and doing almost everything they would do in the office, even when the office can’t be used. iCore’s VoPI solution, combines the power and reach of the Internet with the safety, security and reliability of a managed system. You’ll pay much less, but you and every one of your employees will get much more.

When we received the letter saying that iCore will be included in the Inc. 500/5000 list, we thought to ourselves “I bet our ranking will be 4999″. After all, this was our first submission to the list and we did not know what to expect.

We received the official letter…drum roll please..our official ranking- #29!! Wow!!

This ranking is a testament to the performance of our team, the reliability of our network and the acquisition of new customers despite the economic meltdown. Thanks to all who helped iCore achieve this prestigious honor!