Home Office Telecommunications Options

Home Office Telecommunications Options
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Home Office Telecommunication Options

Telecommunication refers to any medium or material used to communicate via long distances. While telecommunication has come a long way since the days of smoke signals and carrier pigeons, the years since 1970 have seen such tremendous advances in telecommunication options that the way people live and work has been revolutionized. It is now possible to have a fully equipped home office and to work remotely in even the most demanding of jobs. Best of all, having a fully equipped home office is relatively inexpensive and can usually be done for a few thousand dollars.

Home Office Options

While a home office can be as fancy or as sparse as you want, there are certain fundamental telecommunications components that nearly every home office needs. These telecommunication options include:

  • Telephone service
  • The Internet and Email
  • Fax machines

Each of these devices serves to help you send communication back and forth between a home office and a remote employer. Many of these options enable realtime communication that makes you just as productive as if you were sitting in a desk down the hall from your boss, or perhaps even more productive since you may have fewer distractions in a home office and you don’t have to commute.

Telephone Service

Telephone service as a great advance in the field of telecommunications. While Morse code and telegraphs predated telephone service, phone service became widely used and allowed almost everyone to communicate instantly across long distances. Today, telephone service can consist of either landlines or cell phone telephone service. With a landline you can communicate from your home office. With a cell phone, you can be reached anywhere and you can make calls from anyplace that your carrier provides service. This means you can literally work in your car, on the beach, while on a trip around Europe, or anyplace else that suits your fancy.

Nearly every home office must have some type of telephone service so you can be reached by your boss, clients, co-workers or others within your industry. If you opt for a cell phone, or even for a smartphone which also provides instant access to the internet and email, you can be even more plugged in.

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The Internet and Email

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erhaps even more than the telephone, the internet has changed the way people do business. It is now possible to attend meetings from the comfort of your desk with web services such as Go2Meeting or other virtual meeting platforms. You can communicate with anyone, send files, documents and data in realtime, and upload and download anything you need.

The Internet makes it possible to have remote access to your PC at work, so if you don’t have the files on your home computer, you can still pull up that report at the last minute. By paying a single monthly fee for Internet access on your office computer, you can be online 24 hours a day seven days per week and have constant up-to-the-minute access to news, information, assignments or anything you need to get your job done.

Timothy Ferriss, author of the Four Hour Work Week, devotes a portion of his book to explaining how, with the Internet, you can reduce your workload to four hours a week, most of which can be spent in an Internet Cafe as you travel the world. This premise, as well as the increasing dependence on Internet service, makes the Internet a must-have telecommunications option for any fully equipped home office.

Fax Machines

Fax Machine

Although fax machines may become more obsolete with the advent of scanning and electronic mail, they are still an important feature for most home offices. Fax machines allow you to transmit hard copies of paper data across long distances. Instead of running in to the office to pick up that contract, your boss can fax it to your home office in seconds.

Fax machines are relatively inexpensive and can use your existing telephone line, so adding this to your home office options for telecommunication can be a worthwhile investment.

This post is part of the series: Understanding Telecommunications

The field of telecommunications is vast and exciting. Understanding telecommunications involves knowing what telecommunications are, how telecommunication has advanced or evolved, and what your telecommunications options are for your own home office. Find out the answers to all these questions here.

  1. Understanding Telecommunications: What are Telecommunications?
  2. Understanding Telecommunications: Advantages
  3. Understanding Telecommunications - Home Office Options