Two wonderful companies are going to become one big awesome company. Colorado-based Level 3 Communications, Inc. and tw telecom, also based in CO, announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement, intended to qualify as a tax-free reorganization, whereby Level 3 will acquire tw telecom in a stock-and-cash transaction valued at $40.86 per share based on market close as of June 13, 2014.

From their joint press release:

"The combination leverages the highly complementary strengths of the two companies to create a stronger, more nimble, customer service-oriented competitor to meet customers’ increasingly complex local, national and global communications needs."

I'm an agent in good standing with both companies. Have been for years. I have clients with services from both companies. For my small business clients, tw telecom offers better customer service. While Level 3 is a strong, good company, they are known for just showing up and doing their job and not for add-on services and customer service. For this reason, I hope the acquisition generates a gigantic tw telecom and not a faceless Level 3.

tw telecom CEO says the following in the press release:

This month, The Global Standard for Digital Transaction Management™ DocuSign® selected northwest-based business phone and Internet service provider, Integra Telecom for its voice, data and cloud connectivity needs.

This is big news for Caisson customers of every size and industry. It means Integra continues to be a valid, large player in the business telecom marketplace. Many businesses don't realize this because Integra started as a small service provider delivering POTS lines and DSL. That was years ago, however. Since then, they acquired ELI (also years ago) and now have the high bandwidth infrastructure to support large, growing organizations regionally and around the world.

Integra is one of over 40 telecom service providers that we work with at Caisson. We've been a valued agent of Integra since our inception in 2005. We're proud to work with its management, engineering teams and provisioners to deliver connectivity and bandwidth to customers via Integra Voice Communications services, IP/MPLS VPN and Ethernet services. Contact us.

Here are more details about the DocuSign announcement as represented in a press release from Integra:

My company, Caisson Technologies is an authorized agent of Comcast Business. Have been for 7 years. During that time, the mega company has definitely been a leader in expanding access to high-speed Internet and data to more businesses in our region, now including commercial areas in the Kent Valley. Here is the announcement from Comcast Business:

Comcast Business announced the expansion of its commercial fiber network, capable of bandwidth up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps), to underserved commercial areas in Kent, Washington, the sixth largest city in the state.

The network build out will bring Comcast Business Ethernet services to more than 150 local businesses for the first time, providing a cost-effective solution to increase speed, scale bandwidth, or connect multiple office locations on one dedicated network.

Advantages:

1. You own it

An on-premis (on-prem) system is yours. You own and manage it. You're not dependent on anyone else to get it to work, which of course means you are responsible for making it work. But if you don’t want to do that, you can hire out some parts of the maintenance to a vendor. Just be sure to pick one that is trained and certified on your specific system.

2. It's highly customizable and robust

Highly customizable, an on-prem system has a long shelf life--typically, 10 – 20 years if run in a proper environment (not to hot, not to dirty). Overall, on-prem systems offer every day performance and relatively easy maintenance.

Disadvantages:

Toll fraud is on the rise. Just last month, one of my clients faced a $1,200 bill due to fraudulent activity on their phone system. Somebody hacked into their system by using a default user name and password for a conference phone and made hundreds of minutes of international calls.

Toll fraud is more common today because VoIP phone systems are more popular. VoIP systems can be hacked because they are connected to the Internet. The costs associated with fraudulent activity add up fast.

Digital phone systems can be hacked, too, but it's much harder and thus rarely happens.

Here are 2 ways to protect your business from toll fraud: