Audiovisual technologies facilitate and enhance communication capabilities, but it is vital that their integration into your existing technology infrastructure be expertly conducted through proper and appropriate system designs. Audiovisual equipment refers to equipment and applications that deal with sound and sight. The audiovisual world includes microphones, audio tape recorders, audio mixers, sound systems, analog and digital cameras both still and video, film projectors, slide projectors, VCRs, CD players/recorders and DVD players/recorders, multi-functional devices and computer controlled sound and video systems.

The installation and integration of all equipment pieces into a working system is a complex engineering task. In order to make the audiovisual system functional with differing needs and technical know-how, the end-user interface design often requires customized solutions. In the audio industry, audiovisual innovations include projectors, screens, monitors, cameras and plasma displays. Broadcasting companies are creating a revolution in how we get and listen to audio. Innovation in this field means a compelling product portfolio that delivers complete audio solutions for performance audio, for computers, the internet, for home, for life--in short, for every conceivable need.

Audiovisual home service providers can seamlessly integrate almost anything—media walls, touch screen panels, speakers, structured cabling, etc., into your existing components or into the architectural integrity of any room. These innovations have not only enhanced entertainment but have also been useful for education. The use of audio visual equipment in teaching has made it possible to break geographical barriers and reach out to a wide range of students. Greater interaction between the teacher and the student has been made possible by integrating traditional knowledge with innovative means of reaching out to students.

For ensuring the right usage of any new technology some amount of regulation is essential. The audio-visual regulatory framework imposes a certain amount of control on the content providers. It redefines ’broadcasting’ by distinguishing between linear services and non-linear services. Linear services comprise of scheduled broadcasting on television platforms as well as the internet and on mobile phones. Linear services would be subject to the same rules as those which apply to broadcasting. Non-linear services comprise non-scheduled broadcasting including video-on-demand and web based news. Regulation would ensure that innovation happens in positive and constructive ways.

The telephone is one of the all-time great inventions of modern man. We use these devices on a daily basis to keep up with work issues, and to communicate with our family for whatever reason necessary. Telephones have become a necessity for all of us. Because of the, telephone answering systems have become very important to help us monitor our calls. How else would we keep up with all of those different activities going on in our hectic lives and businesses? We all take advantage of telephone answering systems of some sort, which ensures that that we are in touch with the world around us.

Cell phones have become ubiquitous as if they were and other appendage. While we still use our home phones, cell phones are a constant addiction. They can literally be taken anywhere. It seems that people have to make calls for no reasons these days. And I'm sure many of these calls are unnecessary. Regardless of this epidemic, telephone answering systems are still prominent. Voice mail is probably the most well-known of them all.

For businesses, cell phones can be relied on when you are in the car or outside of the office and need to be accessible. If the person is unavailable, a voice mail service will be able to take any messages for you and relay any messages as well. Many of us, even away from our work environments use this feature regularly for family issues and simple chores. I know there are times when I have the use my voicemail as a call screener. Telephone answering systems can at times be an excellent secretary.

While voice mail is certainly the current rage when it comes to telephone answering systems, I still prefer the good old answering machine. I guess I'm old school but I still like having the ability to glance over at my ringing phone, check out who's on the other end with caller ID, and then decide whether or not I want to talk to them. If not then the answering machine will get it. It is actually quite efficient. I can still has a message as it's being reported and if I'm unclear about what was said I can replay it is many times as I like.

This to me is the greatest of telephone answering systems. The funny thing about keeping track of our messages these days is the simplicity. Whether you want your messages routed through your cell phone, home phone, or computer, the choice is yours. When it comes to telephone answering systems, there are plenty of choices to be had. However you like to receive your messages, you still nevertheless, need to get them. If you're in need of a good telephone answering system, you can check the local electronics stores, who will provide you with valuable information to aid you in your choice. My personal preference is to compare telephone answering systems on the Internet in order to find the very best deals available.

We all have of course seen James Bond attaching a small chip on an enemy's overcoat to track the bad guy enemy. The spy-chip he used was actually the RFID system. RFID means Radio Frequency Identification method. This system uses transponders to store and remotely retrieve stored data. In the RFID method, these transponders are also known as RFID tags. Currently, RFID is used everywhere. From animal tracking to container tracking, and credit cards to library cards, we see the use of RFID. Some of the RFID applications can even remove human intervention completely.

Generally, an RFID system has tags, tag readers, servers and application software. The tags are mobile devices with digital memory chips and unique identification codes that transmit the data, which is then read by the tag reader. Further processing is done by application software according to the need.

Though relatively expensive, RFID provides the advantage of having multiple independent data sources on one chip. And when one thinks of long-term gains, RFID is the future. RFID technology not only provides greater functionality but also greater clarity. But, as every coin has two sides, RFID technology has some side effects too. The use of RFID creates the problems about the privacy of an individual. These concerns mainly rise from the RFID tags attached to products consumers buy.

Thus, great technologies like RFID must be judiciously used to enjoy the benefits from it. Once the negative issues are removed by standardization and by law then RFID will definitely be useful for mankind.

An electrical device designed to receive and transmit electromagnetic waves is called an antenna. Antennas are commonly used in radio, television broadcasting, cell phones, radar and other systems involving the use of electromagnetic waves. Since electromagnetic waves can pass thru any medium at a certain frequency, this simply means that antennas can work not only in air but also under water and even thru solid ground. An antenna is also defined as an arrangement of conductors that generate electromagnetic field as a reaction to applied alternating electrical current or induce an alternating current between its terminals when placed in an electromagnetic field.

The word antenna became popular because of Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian scientist. Marconi was testing experimental wireless equipment in the Alps of Salvan, Switzerland way back in 1895. A tent pole in Italian is called l'antenna centrale and Marconi was using the term antenna to describe the pole that serves as the transmitting and receiving elements of his wireless equipment. Today, the term used by Marconi is now being used uniformly to refer to this type of equipment. Antennas are usually intended for communication applications involving radio waves. Although other communicating systems that utilize electromagnetic waves other than radio waves still use antenna to refer for their transmitting and receiving elements.

There are two basic types of antennas. The omni-directional antenna radiates electromagnetic signal equally in the three dimensional plane while the directional antenna radiates the signal more in one direction. Adding conducting elements such as a rod or a coil and varying their spacing, direction and length can create a specific antenna with specific properties. By connecting several antennas to a common source, it becomes an antenna array that has a directive radiation pattern. The conductive means for conveying signal energy between the active antenna and the source is called antenna lead-in while the components between an amplifier and the active antenna is called antenna feed.

There are certain parts of an antenna that perform a distinct function. A few of these parts are the reflector and director. The reflector is usually a metallic plate or screen that reradiates the electromagnetic radiation coming from or going to the active antenna and adding a component in an opposite direction to the velocity of the interrupting electromagnetic wave. The director on the other hand, works in a similar manner but adds a component on the same direction to the velocity of the interrupting electromagnetic wave. Most antennas are made up of simple vertical rods. These simple antennas are inexpensive and are omni-directional with respect to the horizontal plane. However, the direction that the rod is pointing at is a null area where the antenna can't receive or transmit. Theoretically, signals transmitted by an antenna can travel at great distances and at the speed of light. In reality, the speed of the signal is affected by the medium it is passing thru. Radio waves can even penetrate solid materials such as a non-conducting wall. Some solid materials however, may totally reflect the signal and in essence, not allowing it to pass through.

Phone cards (calling cards) are a convenient way to save a lot of money on international calls without the need to have an expensive international telephone account setting up. Of couse the cheapest way is to use Voice over IP as used by skype however the person you call would need also to have a breadband quality computer. So when buying a calling cards you need to consider a fwew things.

You may be aware of the many choices you have when buying a calling card. However, have you considered the truthfulness of the claims that some companies will make in order to get a competitive edge? Are you aware of the tricks that are played and the hidden charges that are made?

The minutes that a calling card will offer may look good but did you know that even if you were to make one continuous call, then most companies would steal between 10% and %20 of those minutes. They call this "fluctuation". Then there are also other charges to be taken into account; *connection 3p-5p *daily maintenance 5p-10p *rounding up to a whole minutes *second call rate increase *increasing the rate based on call duration *overcharging for calls to other destinations not specified

The UK broadband market is notoriously crowded but has become smaller over the last few years, as a minority of very successful Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have begun to dominate the market. Experts now predict that the industry is about to see a period of consolidation, where more ISPs are taken over and the broadband market starts to merge with other markets, including mobile telephony.

The UK broadband market is still very crowded in terms of ISPs, and you have some big winners and some also-rans. A period of consolidation makes sense for businesses and consumers, as traditional mobile operators have the global financial muscle to buy out some of the smaller UK broadband ISPs.

The convergence between mobile, broadband and fixed line operators has already begun: NTL already owns Virgin mobile and Wanadoo is re-branding to Orange. For consumers, this means that you’ll soon be able to pay for all your communication – internet, home phone and mobile - on one bill. Are Vodafone, O2 and 3Mobile at risk of being left behind as the bundle becomes ever more prominent as a marketing strategy?

T-Mobile has announced its intention to offer a wireless broadband service via 3rd generation mobile networks, and the TalkTalk ‘free broadband’ offer has redefined customers’ expectations in terms of value for money. The telecoms companies are trying to secure long term relationships to recoup the amount they have hadto pay to entice new customers in. Therefore they need to be able to offer broadband, mobile and fixed phone lines so that customers have a ‘one-stop shop’ for their communication needs.

The UK broadband market is currently in the middle of a price war, which has led to some clever bundling of products. To date, this mainly means fixed phone and broadband services, but why not add mobile and TV content into the mix? BT is expected to launch a Broadband TV product shortly and Channel 4 now offers new episodes of Desperate Housewives and Lost via its website.

Recent press reports have also suggested that Vodafone and O2 are looking to enter the UK’s fixed line marketplace, simply to acquire broadband customers. Telefonica, the parent company of O2, is Spain's largest provider of internet TV services, and this will surly push O2 to either enter the UK market independently or acquire a leading UK ISP.

We may also find that if Channel 4 viewers have an appetite for TV over broadband, some of the other commercial broadcasters may decide to have a closer look at some ISPs, because at the moment the advertising potential of this distribution is largely being ignored.

The reason behind the sudden proliferation of prepaid calling cards in the telecommunication market is the degree of convenience that they impart on consumers. One doesn’t have to bring those messy coins just to use the pay phone; one prepaid calling card is all that is needed. Phone bills are gotten rid off as well since the calls that one is going to make through the prepaid calling card has already been paid for. Prepaid calling cards have been around Asia and Europe for quite some time. Another reason for the fast rising popularity of prepaid calling cards is the facility that allows a consumer to regulate calling times in order to save a lot of cash on a monthly basis. Since one can make only a preset number of calls equivalent to the monetary value of the card, the worry of running up a phone bill eventually reaching to surprising amounts is eradicated. One also needs not to have a good credit history to acquire a prepaid calling card. There is no need for deposits as well; just pay for the card and one is ready to make calls.

The PELORUS Group reported about the surge of revenues in the prepaid calling card market over the United States and Canada between 1995 and 2000. The prepaid calling card market sales increased from $750 million to over $3.3 billion in a matter of 5 years. Domestic and international components of the market simultaneously rose during this period. However, between 2001 and 2002, the prepaid calling card market in North America decelerated. It was during this time period that domestic prepaid calling card revenues declined. Nevertheless international prepaid calling cards continuously enjoy increasing revenues. With the escalating popularity of international calling cards, the total prepaid calling card revenues managed to bounce back to about $3.2 billion.

International calling has been made affordable to a larger segment of the population by rates the have lowered sharply in recent years. The drop in rates has been sparked not only from the intense competition among prepaid calling card vendors, but also from the escalating competition from other telecommunication modalities and Internet telephony or VoIP, which foreign carriers have been struggling to keep up to. But this has consequently generated a higher degree of acceptance among consumers. Hence, call time has grown to more than counterbalance the detrimental effect of revenue erosion due to lower rates. The net result is a higher gain in revenues even as some sectors of the market, such as domestic calling, have receded.

The same report projects a gradual decline in domestic prepaid calling card revenues starting from 2003 all the way up to 2008. On the contrary, international prepaid calling card revenues are positively foreseen to boost by almost 33%, climbing to an estimated total of $2.75 billion in 2008. By 2008 the size of the international market will more than double the corresponding size of the domestic market.

However, the promising industry of prepaid calling cards is not impervious to problems. For instance there is a diversity of opinions regarding rechargeable cards. The prevailing issue is concerned with the fact that retailers do not agree to sell rechargeable cards because the sale will be a one-shot deal. The counter argument asserts that rechargeable cards actually render extra revenue from the recharge residual fees to retailers.

Vending machines are becoming the fastest-growing method of merchandising. Retailers can benefit from enhanced security this method of retailing provides. Furthermore, it also requires lower inventory needs as well as no employee involvement.

If you run a small business it is likely that you wear several hats by necessity and this makes it all the more important to manage your time effectively. It is also important to build a reputation for always doing what you say you will do. Being reliable is the easiest way to ensure customers give you more business. It’s just so much easier to use someone you know will do the job rather than someone who has to be chased.

One of the areas that should be immediately addressed is how you manage incoming phone calls since you can save valuable time by not allowing work to be interrupted it is all too easy to allow them to disrupt what you are doing. How many times have you answered the phone in the middle of doing something else then, when the call ends, forget to finish the previous job? This endangers your reliability and can easily lose you business. So it’s important to manage incoming phone calls effectively otherwise you run the risk that they will mismanage you.

You can save valuable time by not allowing work to be interrupted. A good way to manage phone calls is to allocate specific time slots when you will make return calls. Perhaps one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon. Callers won’t mind waiting for your return call if they know you are reliable about so doing.

You can safely avoid answering every phone call by offering callers the ability to leave a voicemail message. Your greeting shouldn’t just request callers to leave a message. Be more specific by asking callers to leave their name, phone number and what it is they want. This enables you to prepare your answer to their query. Otherwise you’ll find yourself responding to a caller to ask what they want then having to call them back again with the answer.

It’s amazing how often people will call simultaneously, especially as your business becomes busier. If you only have one incoming line this can be a problem. However, it can easily be solved by using a virtual switchboard service that, in the UK at least, is often available free of charge.

A virtual switchboard is never engaged even if you only have one incoming line. Every caller will be answered and, if you are not answering calls right away, will invite them to leave a message. Most virtual switchboards will email the message to you as a voice file, which has much more clarity than an old fashioned answering machine. Many will even email you the phone numbers of callers who hang up without leaving a message.

Of course, it goes without saying that you should always answer calls in a professional way by announcing the name of your business. This can be difficult for home workers with only one phone line unable to distinguish between business and private calls. But it is easily solved by another function of most virtual switchboards called a whisper. When you answer a call from the virtual switchboard, the whisper feature will announce that it is a business call and invite you to accept it by pressing a key on your handset. This way you can either ignore the call and send it to voicemail or answer it straight away in the name of your business.

With modern technology every business however small can handle calls effectively and in a way that enables the business owner to make the most of every valuable minute.

With so much new technology, including Voice over IP (VOIP), coming to the office today, small business owners and managers are increasingly challenged to maintain their systems. They face the ordeal of making multiple vendors with overlapping responsibilities accountable for systems that must work together.

Poor customer service from a vendor can result in an entire office being off-line or unable to receive normal call volume for hours, or even days. Few companies really specialize in providing prompt, personal solutions in this market.

Large companies hire technical specialists as permanent employees to maintain their telecom equipment and carrier services. Small and medium sized companies most likely look to their network administrator, office manager or other administrative person to maintain their telecommunications equipment and service. When telecom issues arise, both large and small companies often rely upon outside vendors and carriers to solve these problems as quickly as possible.

Carriers are notorious for their weak customer service, relying on multi-level auto-attendants and remote call centers to minimize their cost in responding to customer questions and service issues. Small carriers and resellers often do not have qualified staff to provide good customer service. Typically very strong in their customer acquisition process – sales – carriers, especially, are very weak in after-sales customer service.

Business customers may be unaware of this weakness in their carrier’s customer service process until they lose their telephone or data connection completely or have a serious intermittent service issue. Loss of service is a rude wake-up call that makes everyone suddenly appreciate the trade-off made in selecting the lowest cost provider or vendor.

Telecom equipment vendors may leave customers in a similar predicament. In order to capture new business, a vendor must be very competitive in pricing equipment. As compared to selling, post-sale service is another challenge altogether.

Some equipment vendors may be technically competent but not have a customer service orientation or friendly personality. You may discover when calling on your vendor, that they are non-responsive to your “emergency” and not especially good at dealing with customers on routine issues either.

For the vendor’s customer service person, it often takes finesse, or at least careful listening and gentle questioning, to respond appropriately to a customer with telecom issues.

How to choose a vendor?

In the first place, you should make it part of your decision criteria for purchasing equipment, a conscious decision to hire a mature, service-focused vendor. Choose carefully. It requires a savvy customer who understands these issues to assure a wise choice of vendor.

When purchasing new equipment, most people focus on the feature set and initial cost. They may assume the after-sales customer support is everything that the sales executive claims it to be.

Based on experience, we know that a sales person will always claim to have outstanding or excellent customer service. Whether the company actually has in place the organization, training, technology and culture to really meet customer expectations for after-sales service is irrelevant to most telecom sales people. Their mission is to close the sale.

The Solution

How do you minimize problems with your office phones? Be selective in your choice of vendor. You are not just purchasing equipment. You are looking for a vendor with an outstanding reputation for service. You are hiring a vendor to install and maintain your telecom system. That’s right; consider your purchase to be a hiring decision.

If you work at it, you can find vendors out there, who offer outstanding technical support with a highly professional approach to customer service - before and after the sale.

Many businesses and organizations employ a "use it or lose it" strategy when it comes to setting annual budgets, particularly in the technology sector. Often the end of year budgets yield a frenzied spending spree on the latest gadgets without any real perspective on whether or not the purchase is even beneficial to the company. Any surplus can be the ideal time to consider a tried and true technology purchase that can actually generate a return on investment - call accounting systems.

Telecom managers wrestle daily with keeping track of a vast inventory of telecom equipment, vendors, bills, and endpoints, not to mention the time it takes to sort out who made what call and to which department it should be allocated.

The benefits and return on investment of a call accounting system far outweigh the initial costs.

Cost allocation is used to hold departments, divisions or individuals accountable for usage and to ensure they stay within budgets. Calls can be charged back to departments for phone costs based on their actual usage. A call accounting software can save time and labor by distributing telecom expenses by department. Often personal calls or calls that don't normally fall within the corporate calling patterns can be billed back to the person or department. By keeping track of call detail records of each department, project or product, it can be determined which are profitable and which aren't.

Take employee productivity. Call accounting systems can be used to provide managers with reports showing number of calls, types of calls, cost, average duration for each person/station; evaluate calling patterns and calls completed per hour (useful for collection agents, customer service agents, telemarketers and sales persons); monitor the number of incoming calls per hour to correctly estimate the number of staff needed at the right time and at the least cost; verify the effectiveness of marketing efforts. Analyzing how an employee spends time on the phone can be an effective measure of productivity.

Traffic Analysis is a good way to track needless spending. Telecom managers can monitor the efficiency of the phone system by locating unused trunks and can verify the correct routing of calls in order to achieve cost effective routing. Additionally, call accounting can help to spot fraudulent or incorrect billing practices by vendors, as well as identify and provide documentation of down trunks and malfunctioning circuits that may make it possible to obtain rebates from vendors.

One of the greatest ROIs that can be enjoyed through a call accounting system is the ability to catch and minimize toll fraud and internal phone abuse. Toll Fraud costs businesses billions of dollars per year according to the FCC. Repeated incoming call attempts over a trunk can indicate hacker attempts to gain access to the switch in order to loop back through it for outgoing call purposes. By using a call accounting system, you can identify suspicious calling patterns, monitor 411 and directory assistance calls, check for abuse of incoming 800 calls from employees' friends and relatives; track illegal or suspicious destinations to the station originating them; monitor production time spent on the phone. Legal departments can track employees suspected of revealing confidential information to competitors, the news media, or headhunters, and can provide proof that a call took place in the event of obscene or harassing calls.

When planning for end of year budgets, telecom managers can be the heroes with a purchase or upgrade of a call accounting system with a call detail record feature that can provide a cost savings benefit that will stretch far into the future and is easily applicable now with legacy PBX systems, or later with VoIP deployment.

Whether using a legacy PBX (public branch exchange) system or a VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) system, most telephone networks generate call detail records (CDR). Usually these come at the end of the call, but with modern developments, this data is now available during the call. Information generated by Call Detail Records includes time, date, call duration, number dialed, caller ID information, extension, line/trunk location, cost, call completion status and more.

Knowing this data can be invaluable to a business providing insight into phone use, employees, sales and traffic trends, and so much more.

Call records produced by the PBX are transmitted via serial port to a buffer, where they are temporarily stored until retrieved by call accounting software. Since they provide a reliable method of safely transferring information to call accounting or telemanagement systems, call record buffers have long been broadly accepted as the preferred storage device as a safeguard against cases of delayed call collection or communication failure.

The greatest benefit of CDR is perhaps in telecom expense management. Call detail records, both local and long distance, can be used for usage verification, billing reconciliation, network management and to monitor telephone usage to determine volume of phone usage, as well as abuse of your company's telephone system. CDR's are an asset in managing long distance telephone costs and aid in the planning for future telecommunications needs.

Identifying seasonal call traffic can be invaluable for staffing purposes, marketing efforts, and the records themselves can be beneficial in call verification if a caller is harassing staff over some dispute.

Once you have a call accounting system in place, review all the CDR's for accuracy. Those records can then be used to verify costs and usage; resolve discrepancies with vendors; disconnect unused service; terminate leases on unused equipment; deter or detect toll fraud of long distance services; and negotiate the most cost-effective call routing.

By choosing a secure call accounting system, CDRs can be collected for processing at a centralized corporate site for any sized network from both legacy and VoIP phone systems in real-time.

CDR collection can be accomplished via the corporate LAN or over the Internet using encryption technology. Encrypted CDR collection via IP enables real-time processing of call data enterprise wide.

When we use new technologies and services, very often we worry about their cost. It has become sort of a law that each new service is very expensive, and some of us just refuse to use it until the cost goes down.

The same thing can be said of almost any new service involving cell phones, which naturally includes reverse cell phone lookup service. Reverse cell phone lookup enables us to look up just about any cell phone or regular number and discover who owns it.

So how much should you as a consumer pay for such a service?

Well if you do not need reverse cell phone lookup then naturally you should pay $0. But remember that the cost of anything that is for sale is not determined by its real value but rather on how much are people willing to pay for it.

However, try and compare reverse cell phone lookup with its much older sister, the standard directory assistance service. Today a call to the directory assistance is so low cost that we do not even notice it on our monthly phone bills. It was not always so, as little as 15 years ago such a call would be much more expensive.

However, with the reduction in prices, these days very few of us bothers using the old phone books anymore (I buy them each year just because of Yellow pages). Directory service is cheap (just a few cents per call), fast and saves you from the sometimes long and difficult phone book search. In addition, the internet phone number search is free and also very fast. So compared with these two services how much should we pay for reverse cell phone lookup?

The answer to these questions is that usually obtaining the information you need by using the cell phone number should be free or at least very cheap. Nevertheless, sometimes just as with regular phone number request, you can experience difficulties finding it. Many cell phone numbers just as well as regular landline phones are unlisted.

There is no way that you can just lookup these numbers and get the info you need. Pay service however, can in some cases discover the unlisted numbers for by using reverse cell phone lookup. Consider them your own private detective, only much cheaper. In most cases, this will require deep investigation, and that costs money. Anything not easily obtainable costs money.

In most cases, it is not worth it to track down the caller, unless you believe that an owner of that phone can be in some kind of a danger. You should report threatening and similar kind of calls to your local authorities, they have other, much better ways to track down these kinds of calls.

So finally, if you are a regular phone user, low cost or even free reverse cell phone lookup can provide useful information. Especially if you are a parent and you want to know who is calling your kid. For just a few bucks, you can check it up and keep your family safe.

I love football. And because I love football, (hey, I'm a guy!) I like using quotes from one of my favorite coaches of all time, legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi. His influence he left in the NFL is incredible and he is one of the most quoted people in the world. The legacy he left in the NFL was so great, that the superbowl winner is given the Lombardi trophy.

After one of the coldest games ever played, the Green Bay Packers won the NFL title game in terrible conditions in what was known as the Ice Bowl. At game time, it was -10 degrees and dropping. None the less, the Packers won the game and their third straight NFL title. When coach Lombardi was asked why his teams were so successful, he grinned and said that "Winning is a habit! Unfortunately so is losing. To be a successful team you must develop the habits of winning through proper preparation and practice."

And so it is with us. We must prepare and practice correctly if we are to give our best keynote speech to our intended audience. Most of the time we will face those conditions that will be most unfavorable to us. And when we do, we will be ready for them and come out winners. I waited for over 6 hours under very difficult circumstances to interview the great Tony Robbins. When he was ready, I interviewed him and it was one of the most incredible experiences I have had!

Knowing you are developing the winning habits will take you a long way while becoming an expert in your speaking career!

In today's interconnected world, long distance phone service is more important than ever before. People find themselves needing to call businesses, friends and family spread all over the country or world, and the related phone bills can be difficult to handle at the end of the month. Thankfully, there are many companies dedicated to providing cheap long distance service options - it's just a matter of finding the right one for you!

Landline Long Distance

If you have a landline phone in your home or office, you can simply call your local phone companies and compare their long distance rates. While you may already have long distance service, it may not be the cheapest available - as a matter of fact, it may be the most expensive. This is why it is important to compare rates. Be sure to look for hidden charges, taxes and fees before choosing a plan, as they can significantly raise your bill.

In recent years, "10-10" long distance services have been very popular for long distance calls. You simply dial the "10-10" plan's 7-digit access code, then the area code and number you wish to call - and receive the discounted rates offered by the "10-10" company. This is an easy way to take advantage of lower rates - without having to switch your long distance company. The Internet is a great resource for finding the rates and numbers of "10-10" companies in your area.

Cellular Long Distance

Do you have a cell phone? This is a great way to save on long distance. Many cell phone companies offer great long distance rates, on both domestic and international calls. A simple check of your cell phone provider's available plans (either on their Web site or by calling customer service) will help you find the best deals. Many companies offer unlimited long distance on nights and weekends - if you can limit your calls to these times, you stand to save a lot of money. In recent times, cell phone companies have started to provide better international long distance rates, as well. If this is something you need, be sure to ask about special offers and new rate plans. You may be pleasantly surprised!

Broadband Long Distance

Do you have a computer and a broadband Internet connection? If so, you can take advantage of one of the VOIP (voice over IP) services that have taken the market by storm.

With VOIP services, you generally pay a flat monthly fee to make unlimited local and long distance calls. This fee is often much lower than a traditional phone bill. Customers sign up for this service, and can usually keep their same phone number. They receive an adapter from their company of choice, which enables them to make and receive calls using their computer lines, rather than standard phone lines. While the technology is still somewhat new, it is growing in popularity every day.

These are just some of the ways to save money on long distance. One of the best ways to find something that will work for you is to research plans available in your area, or even better, ask friends and family what they use. Chances are, some of them have excellent cheap long distance and they will be more than happy to share their secrets on savings with you!