# Silver Star Telecom > Silver Star Telecom is a Vancouver, WA-based telecommunications and managed-services provider with 25+ years connecting businesses and homes across Oregon and Washington with fiber internet, hosted voice, Ethernet, and managed network services. Silver Star Telecom is a regional telecommunications provider headquartered in Vancouver, WA, serving businesses, government, and select residential communities across Oregon and Washington for 25+ years. Services include dedicated fiber internet, metro ethernet, wavelength services, fixed wireless, hosted VoIP / Hosted PBX, SIP trunking, and managed IT. Residential fiber is offered in specific Washington communities listed below. The sister brand SilverStar Internet (https://www.silverstarinternet.com/) covers internet plans. Key facts: - Headquarters: Vancouver, WA - In business: 25+ years - Service area: 143+ business communities across Oregon and Washington; residential fiber in Battle Ground, Bay Center, Brush Prairie, Cedarville, Chinook, Elma, Hockinson, Ilwaco, Long Beach, Nemah, Ocean Park, Porter, Raymond, South Bend, Yacolt - Sales: (360) 524-7498, sales@silverstartelecom.com - Support: (503) 222-2121, support@silverstartelecom.com - Get a quote: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/get-started ## Service area Business service communities in Oregon: Albany, Astoria, Beaverton, Bend, Cascade Locks, Corvallis, Cottage Grove, Creswell, Eugene, Fairview, Forest Grove, Gladstone, Gresham, Happy Valley, Hermiston, Hood River, King City, La Pine, Lake Oswego, Madras, McMinnville, Metolius, Milwaukie, Molalla, Mt. Angel, Newberg, North Plains, Oregon City, Pendleton, Portland, Prineville, Rainier, Redmond, Salem, Sandy, Scappoose, Sisters, St. Helens, The Dalles, Tigard, Troutdale, Tualatin, Warrenton, Wilsonville, Wood Village, Woodburn, Yamhill. Business service communities in Washington: Aberdeen, Airway Heights, Amboy, Anacortes, Auburn, Battle Ground, Bay Center, Bellevue, Bellingham, Benton, Bingen, Bremerton, Brush Prairie, Camas, Castle Rock, Centralia, Chehalis, Copalis Beach, Cosmopolis, Des Moines, DuPont, Duvall, Edmonds, Ellensburg, Elma, Enumclaw, Everett, Federal Way, Fife, Goldendale, Grayland, Hazel Dell, Hoquiam, Ilwaco, Kalama, Kelso, Kent, Kirkland, La Center, Lacey, Lakewood, Liberty Lake, Long Beach, Longview, Lynnwood, McCleary, Medical Lake, Mercer Island, Montesano, Morton, Moses Lake, Mossyrock, Naselle, Oakville, Ocean Park, Ocean Shores, Olympia, Orchards, Pasco, Port Angeles, Puyallup, Raymond, Redmond, Renton, Richland, Ridgefield, Rochester, Rockford, Rosalia, Salmon Creek, Sammamish, Seabrook, Seattle, Shelton, Shoreline, Snohomish, South Bend, Spokane, Spokane Valley, Stevenson, Sumner, Sunnyside, Tacoma, Tumwater, University Place, Vancouver, Walla Walla, Washougal, West Richland, Westport, White Salmon, Winlock, Woodland, Yacolt, Yakima, Yelm. Residential fiber communities: Battle Ground, Bay Center, Brush Prairie, Cedarville, Chinook, Elma, Hockinson, Ilwaco, Long Beach, Nemah, Ocean Park, Porter, Raymond, South Bend, Yacolt. Full list: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/locations ## Business services ### Business Voice URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/voice Hosted Voice, SIP/PRI trunking, and analog lines, a phone system engineered for uptime and built around how your business actually works. Your phone system is still where a lot of revenue and trust lives. Dropped calls, dead lines, and clunky systems cost you customers. We design, install, and manage business voice that simply works, whether you need a full cloud phone system, trunking to keep your existing PBX, or reliable analog lines for the things that still depend on them. With 25+ years engineering voice and data networks across Oregon and Washington, we right-size the solution to your sites and your call flows, then support it locally so you're never on your own. Features: - Hosted Voice (VoIP): A full cloud phone system with auto-attendants, voicemail-to-email, mobile apps, and easy moves/adds/changes. - SIP & PRI trunking: Modern, scalable trunking to connect your existing PBX with reliable concurrent call capacity. - Analog lines: Dependable POTS lines for fax, alarms, elevators, and equipment that still needs them. - Multi-site ready: Tie multiple locations into one dial plan with consistent features and centralized management. - Disaster routing: If a site loses power or connectivity, calls reroute automatically to mobiles, another location, or voicemail. - CommPortal self-service: A web dashboard where users manage their own call handling and admins manage hunt groups, auto attendants, and reporting. Who it's for: - Multi-site businesses standardizing phone systems - Offices replacing aging or unsupported PBX hardware - Organizations that need both modern VoIP and reliable analog lines #### Standard Hosted PBX features Every seat includes the calling features a working office depends on, more than 60 in total. The ones teams reach for most: - Direct Inward Dialing so callers reach people directly - Voice mail with unified messaging, including voicemail-to-email - Find-Me/Follow-Me and Simultaneous Ring so calls follow your team - Multiline hunt groups for reception, sales, and support queues - Call paging and intercom across the office - Automated attendant menus and time-of-day routing - Caller ID and unavailable call forwarding - Disaster routing and emergency call notification #### Optional add-on services Layer on only what your business needs, with no change to the underlying platform. - ACD and contact center for queued, skills-based routing - Team, web, and video collaboration - Call recording for compliance, training, and quality review - Hosted fax and toll-free numbers - Business SMS from your main line #### Phones and apps We supply and provision the endpoints so they arrive ready to work, and we support them afterward. - Yealink W60 DECT cordless handsets for warehouse and floor staff - Yealink Optima conference phones for meeting rooms - Yealink SIP-T58A and T54W desk phones for daily driver seats - MaX UC softphone for desktop and mobile, same extension anywhere #### CommPortal management CommPortal is the web dashboard behind the system, with separate views for users and administrators so IT is not the bottleneck for every small change. - Users: lines and status, presence, devices, message settings, hunt group membership, find-me/follow-me, simultaneous ring, and call history - Admins: passwords and PINs, hunt groups, phone profiles, music on hold, auto attendant menus, business reports and call logs, and emergency call notification FAQ: Q: What's the difference between Hosted Voice, SIP, and PRI trunking? A: Hosted Voice is a full cloud phone system we host and manage. SIP and PRI trunking connect your existing on-site PBX to the network with scalable call capacity. We help you pick the right fit for your setup and goals. Q: Can I keep my existing phone numbers and PBX? A: Yes. We port your existing numbers, and with SIP/PRI trunking you can keep your current PBX while modernizing how calls reach it. Q: Do you still support analog (POTS) lines? A: Yes. We provide reliable analog lines for fax machines, alarms, elevators, and other equipment that still depends on them. Q: Can you connect phones across multiple locations? A: Yes. We tie multiple sites into one dial plan with consistent features and centralized management, so locations work like a single system. Q: What is a Hosted PBX? A: A Hosted PBX is a phone system that lives in the cloud instead of in your building. There is no physical PBX to buy, power, or maintain. You pay a flat rate per phone per month and we run, update, and support the platform for you. Q: What features come standard with Hosted PBX? A: More than 60, including direct inward dialing, voicemail with unified messaging, find-me/follow-me, simultaneous ring, multiline hunt groups, paging and intercom, automated attendant, time-of-day routing, caller ID, unavailable call forwarding, disaster routing, and emergency call notification. Q: How is Hosted PBX priced? A: As a flat rate per phone, per month. There is no phone system to purchase and no maintenance contract, so costs stay predictable as you add or remove seats. Q: What happens to our calls if a site loses power or internet? A: Disaster routing reroutes incoming calls automatically to mobile phones, another location, or voicemail, so callers still reach someone while the site is down. Q: Can remote and hybrid staff use the same phone system? A: Yes. The MaX UC softphone gives desktop and mobile users the same extension, voicemail, and call handling they have at their desk, so it does not matter where they are working that day. Q: Which phones do you supply? A: We provision Yealink desk phones such as the SIP-T58A and T54W, Yealink W60 DECT cordless handsets for staff on the move, and Yealink Optima conference phones for meeting rooms. Softphone-only seats are available as well. Q: Can our team manage the phone system ourselves? A: Yes. CommPortal gives users control over their own call handling, presence, devices, and voicemail, while administrators manage hunt groups, auto attendants, music on hold, phone profiles, call logs, and business reports. We are here when you would rather we handle it. Q: Can we add a contact center or call recording later? A: Yes. ACD and contact center, team/web/video collaboration, call recording, hosted fax, toll-free, and business SMS are all optional add-ons to the same platform, so you can start simple and grow into them. ### Business Internet URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/internet Fiber Optic Internet Access with the symmetrical speed, low latency, and SLAs your operations depend on. When your business runs on the cloud, every minute offline is lost productivity and lost revenue. Consumer-grade broadband isn't built for that, it's best-effort, asymmetrical, and unsupported when it matters most. Our Fiber Optic Internet Access delivers dedicated, symmetrical bandwidth backed by real service-level agreements. We engineer the right circuit for your location and growth, hand it off cleanly, and stand behind it with local support and proactive monitoring. As your needs grow, the bandwidth scales without re-trenching your whole network. Features: - Symmetrical fiber: Equal upload and download for cloud apps, backups, VoIP, and video. - Service-level agreements: Committed uptime, latency, and response targets, in writing. - Scalable bandwidth: Step up speeds as you grow without rebuilding the connection. - Proactive monitoring: We watch the circuit and act before small issues become outages. Who it's for: - Cloud-first offices that can't afford downtime - Businesses running VoIP, video, and large file transfers - Multi-site operations needing consistent, supported connectivity FAQ: Q: How is business fiber different from cable or broadband? A: Business Fiber Optic Internet Access is dedicated and symmetrical, with committed performance backed by an SLA, unlike best-effort, asymmetrical cable that slows down under load and isn't supported the same way. Q: What does the SLA cover? A: Our service-level agreements commit to uptime, latency, and response-time targets in writing, with proactive monitoring so issues are caught before they become outages. Q: Can the bandwidth scale as we grow? A: Yes. We engineer the circuit with headroom so you can step up speeds as your needs grow, without rebuilding the connection. ### Metro Ethernet & Transport URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/ethernet Metro Ethernet, point-to-point, and dedicated transport that connect your sites like one private network. Multiple locations work best when they feel like one. Metro Ethernet links your sites with private, high-capacity connections, no public internet in the middle, so file shares, voice, applications, and data center traffic move fast and stay secure. We design point-to-point and point-to-multipoint Ethernet and dedicated transport tailored to your topology, then manage it end to end. The result is predictable performance between locations and a clean path to your data center or carrier hotel. Features: - Metro Ethernet: High-capacity Layer 2 connectivity between your locations across the metro. - Point-to-point: Private, dedicated links between two sites with committed bandwidth. - Dedicated transport: Clean, high-bandwidth transport to data centers and carrier interconnects. - Predictable performance: Low latency and consistent throughput, engineered, not best-effort. Who it's for: - Multi-site businesses sharing applications and storage - Organizations connecting offices to a data center or colo - Teams that need private site-to-site links, not VPN-over-internet FAQ: Q: What is Metro Ethernet used for? A: Metro Ethernet privately connects your locations with high-capacity, low-latency links, no public internet in between, so applications, voice, file shares, and data-center traffic move fast and stay secure. Q: What's the difference between point-to-point and dedicated transport? A: Point-to-point links two specific sites with committed bandwidth. Dedicated transport provides a clean, high-bandwidth path to a data center or carrier interconnect. We design the topology around how your sites actually connect. Q: Is Ethernet more secure than a VPN over the internet? A: Metro Ethernet keeps your traffic on a private Layer 2 connection rather than traversing the public internet, giving you more predictable performance and a stronger security posture between sites. ### Managed Services URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/managed-services Offload your network to engineers who design, run, and protect it, managed router and firewall, cloud, backup, SD-WAN, and more. Most teams don't have the time or the in-house expertise to run a modern network well, and the cost of getting it wrong is downtime, security incidents, and lost data. Our managed services put 25+ years of network engineering behind your business, so the infrastructure just works while you focus on what you do. Pick the pieces you need or hand us the whole stack. We design it, deploy it, monitor it around the clock, and keep it patched, backed up, and secure. Features: - Single point of contact: One local team accountable for your network, not a chain of vendors. - Proactive monitoring: 24/7 visibility so issues get caught and fixed before they spread. - Security built in: Managed firewalls, patching, and protection as part of the service. - Predictable cost: Flat monthly managed pricing instead of surprise project bills. Who it's for: - Lean IT teams that need to extend their reach - Businesses with no dedicated network staff - Multi-site operations wanting one accountable partner #### Managed Router & Firewall We deploy, configure, monitor, and maintain enterprise-grade routers and firewalls so your edge stays fast and secure. Patching, rule changes, and threat updates are handled for you, with 24/7 monitoring and a local team on call. - Enterprise router & firewall deployment and tuning - Ongoing patching, firmware, and rule management - 24/7 monitoring and alerting #### Cloud Services From hosted infrastructure to connectivity into the public cloud, we design and manage cloud services that fit how you work, with secure, high-performance paths between your sites and your applications. - Hosted infrastructure and collocation - Secure, high-performance cloud connectivity - Designed and managed end to end #### Backup Service Managed backup protects your business data with automated, monitored backups and tested recovery, so a failure, mistake, or ransomware event doesn't become a catastrophe. - Automated, monitored backups - Tested, reliable recovery - Off-site protection against ransomware and disaster #### SD-WAN SD-WAN intelligently steers traffic across multiple connections for better performance, resilience, and control, keeping critical applications fast even when a link degrades. - Application-aware traffic steering - Automatic failover across multiple circuits - Centralized policy and visibility across sites #### Network Equipment We source, configure, and manage the switches, routers, firewalls, and access points your network runs on, from vendors we trust like Cisco, Juniper, Ciena, and Adtran, so you get the right gear, properly set up and supported. - Right-sized equipment from proven vendors - Professional configuration and lifecycle management - Supported and monitored as part of the service #### Network Protect Network Protect layers security across your environment, firewall, monitoring, and threat protection working together to defend against the attacks that target businesses every day. - Layered firewall and threat protection - Continuous security monitoring - Rapid response to emerging threats FAQ: Q: What's included in managed services? A: You can pick individual pieces, managed router and firewall, cloud services, backup, SD-WAN, network equipment, or Network Protect, or hand us the whole stack. We design, deploy, monitor, patch, and secure it. Q: Will managed services replace our internal IT team? A: No, the goal is to extend your team. We take on the network infrastructure so your people focus on the work that moves the business, with one accountable local point of contact. Q: How does pricing work for managed services? A: Managed services are billed at a predictable flat monthly rate instead of surprise project bills, so the cost is easy to plan around. Q: Do you provide 24/7 monitoring? A: Yes. We monitor your network around the clock so issues are caught and addressed proactively, often before you'd notice them. ### Business Security & Cameras URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/security Surveillance, access control, and corporate network security, physical and digital protection from one trusted partner. Protecting a business means watching the doors and the data. We design and install surveillance and access control to keep your facilities secure, and we harden your network with firewalls and corporate security so the digital side is just as protected as the physical. Because we engineer the connectivity underneath, your cameras, access systems, and security tools stay online and integrated, managed by one accountable local team. Features: - Surveillance cameras: HD camera systems with reliable recording and remote viewing across sites. - Access control: Manage who gets in, where, and when, with logging and remote control. - Firewall & corporate security: Enterprise firewalls and network protection to defend your business data. - Integrated & supported: Physical and network security designed, installed, and managed together. Who it's for: - Multi-site businesses needing centralized surveillance - Facilities that require managed door and access control - Companies wanting physical and network security from one partner FAQ: Q: Do you handle both physical and network security? A: Yes. We design and install surveillance and access control for your facilities and harden your network with firewalls and corporate security, managed together by one local team. Q: Can surveillance cover multiple sites centrally? A: Yes. We deploy camera systems with reliable recording and remote viewing so you can manage surveillance across all your locations from one place. Q: What does access control let us manage? A: Access control lets you manage who can enter, where, and when, with logging and the ability to grant or revoke access remotely. ### Contact Center URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/contact-center A hosted, cloud-based contact center that routes every conversation to the right person, from anywhere. When customers call, wait times and dropped handoffs cost you loyalty. A modern cloud contact center routes calls intelligently, gives agents the context they need, and lets your team work from the office or from home without missing a beat. We design and manage a contact center sized to your team and your call volume, with the reporting to actually see what's happening and improve it over time. Features: - Intelligent routing: Skills-based and time-of-day routing so callers reach the right agent fast. - Work from anywhere: Cloud-based, agents handle calls in the office or remotely, all the same. - Reporting & analytics: Queue, agent, and call metrics to manage service levels and staffing. - Scales with you: Add agents and queues as you grow, no hardware to rip and replace. Who it's for: - Support and sales teams handling high call volume - Businesses with remote or hybrid agents - Organizations that need real visibility into call performance FAQ: Q: Can agents work from home with a cloud contact center? A: Yes. Because it's cloud-based, agents handle calls the same way whether they're in the office or remote, no on-site hardware required. Q: How does call routing work? A: Calls are routed intelligently using skills-based and time-of-day rules, so customers reach the right agent quickly instead of bouncing between queues. Q: Can we see reporting on call performance? A: Yes. You get queue, agent, and call metrics so you can manage service levels, staffing, and customer experience over time. ### Structured Cabling URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/cabling Structured cabling and low-voltage installation done right the first time, the foundation everything else runs on. Every network is only as good as the cabling underneath it. Poorly installed or undocumented cabling causes mystery outages, slow troubleshooting, and expensive rework. We install clean, certified, well-labeled structured cabling that gives your network a solid, future-ready foundation. From a single office buildout to a multi-floor facility, we handle the low-voltage work, data, voice, and connectivity for cameras and access systems, so it's organized, tested, and ready to support whatever you connect to it. Features: - Certified installation: Cat6/fiber runs installed and tested to standard, then certified and documented. - Clean & labeled: Organized, labeled terminations that make future changes and fixes fast. - Low-voltage scope: Data, voice, and cabling for cameras, access control, and WiFi access points. - Future-ready: Designed with headroom so your cabling supports the next upgrade, not just today. Who it's for: - New office buildouts and relocations - Facilities expanding or upgrading their network - Businesses cleaning up undocumented legacy cabling FAQ: Q: What does structured cabling include? A: We install certified, labeled, and tested data and voice cabling, plus low-voltage runs for cameras, access control, and WiFi access points, as the foundation your network runs on. Q: Can you handle a new office buildout or relocation? A: Yes. From a single office to a multi-floor facility, we plan and install clean structured cabling designed with headroom for future upgrades. Q: Will the cabling be documented? A: Yes. Everything is organized, labeled, certified, and documented so future changes and troubleshooting are fast instead of a guessing game. ### 5G Backup & Always-On Internet URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/always-on-internet Always-On Internet keeps you connected when the primary circuit fails, with wireless LTE/5G failover that switches over automatically. Every business runs on its internet connection, and every wired connection eventually goes down. A cut fiber, a carrier outage, or a construction crew two blocks away can stop payments, phones, and cloud apps in the middle of your busiest hour. Always-On Internet adds a wireless LTE/5G circuit alongside your primary connection. When the primary link drops, traffic fails over automatically, no phone calls, no manual reconfiguration, no waiting on a truck roll. When the primary comes back, it fails back on its own. Features: - Automatic failover: The router detects a failed or degraded primary circuit and moves traffic to LTE/5G in seconds, then fails back automatically. - Remote cloud monitoring: We watch circuit health, signal quality, and failover events from the cloud so problems surface before your team notices them. - Carrier redundancy: Dual-SIM and multi-carrier configurations keep the backup path alive even during a single carrier's outage. - Zero-downtime operations: POS, VoIP, VPN, and cloud applications stay online through the transition, so business keeps moving. Who it's for: - Businesses where an internet outage stops revenue - Clinics, retail sites, and branch offices without on-site IT - Multi-site operations standardizing failover across locations #### Where Always-On Internet earns its keep Some sites treat connectivity as convenience. For these, it's the operation itself. - Healthcare and telemedicine: EHR access, patient portals, and virtual visits that cannot pause mid-appointment - Retail and hospitality: point-of-sale, card processing, and inventory systems that stop taking money the moment the circuit drops - Remote work and branch offices: VPN tunnels, softphones, and cloud apps for teams without on-site IT - Multi-site organizations standardizing a backup path across every location FAQ: Q: What is 5G internet backup? A: It is a secondary internet connection that runs over the LTE/5G cellular network. It sits alongside your primary fiber or broadband circuit and takes over automatically if that circuit fails, so your site stays online. Q: How fast does failover happen? A: Within seconds. The router continuously monitors the primary circuit and moves traffic to the wireless path as soon as it detects a failure or serious degradation. No one has to unplug anything or call for help. Q: Does someone have to switch it back when the primary comes back? A: No. Once the primary connection is stable again, traffic fails back automatically. Our team also sees the event through remote cloud monitoring and follows up if the underlying problem needs attention. Q: What happens if the cellular carrier itself has an outage? A: Dual-SIM and multi-carrier configurations let the router use a second carrier, so a single carrier's outage does not take the backup path down with it. Q: Can we use Always-On Internet if our primary circuit is from another provider? A: Yes. Always-On Internet deploys alongside any primary connection, whether Silver Star provides it or not. Q: Which businesses benefit most from internet backup? A: Any operation where downtime stops revenue or care: healthcare and telemedicine practices, retail and hospitality locations running point-of-sale and card processing, and branch offices or remote workers who depend on VPN, softphones, and cloud applications. Q: Will our phones and card terminals keep working during failover? A: That is the point of the service. VoIP phones, POS terminals, VPN tunnels, and cloud applications continue running over the wireless path so staff and customers see a brief blip instead of an outage. ### Fixed Wireless Internet & Ethernet URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/fixed-wireless Business-grade connectivity from 50 Mbps to 1 Gbps without relying on traditional cable, as your primary connection or a diverse second path. Silver Star Fixed Wireless provides business-grade connectivity without relying entirely on traditional cable infrastructure. With speeds from 50 Mbps to 1 Gbps, it gives businesses across Southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon another option for primary internet access, Ethernet connectivity, and network diversity. Fixed Wireless Dedicated Internet Access supports cloud applications, hosted voice, video conferencing, remote access, file transfers, and everyday operations. Fixed Wireless Ethernet extends Ethernet connectivity over our wireless network for businesses that need to connect locations, extend their network, or meet private connectivity requirements. Features: - Diverse connectivity: Add a connection that does not rely entirely on your local cable infrastructure. - Business-grade internet: Supports cloud software, hosted voice, video conferencing, remote access, and other critical applications. - Speeds up to 1 Gbps: Bandwidth options from 50 Mbps to 1 Gbps, sized to your site. - Ethernet connectivity: Extend business Ethernet services to qualifying locations over our fixed wireless network. - Primary or secondary service: Run it as your main business connection or as part of a broader redundancy strategy. - Local support: A Northwest-based telecommunications team that understands the network behind your business. Who it's for: - Businesses that want an internet path independent of the local cable network - Locations where wired service is limited, slow, or expensive to build - Organizations adding redundancy for phones, payments, and cloud apps #### Build a more resilient network A single connection becomes a single point of failure when phones, cloud applications, payment systems, remote workers, and internal systems all depend on it. A common design keeps your existing cable or wired service as the primary and adds Silver Star Fixed Wireless as a secondary path. Combined with SD-WAN or managed routing, both connections work together for automatic failover and higher overall availability, and we can design it alongside your internet, Ethernet, voice, and managed network services. - Keep your current wired service and add a truly diverse second path - Pair with SD-WAN or managed routing for automatic failover - Protect phones, payments, and cloud apps from a single cut line - One partner for the wireless link and everything it connects to #### Fixed wireless service area Silver Star Fixed Wireless Internet and Ethernet are available in select communities throughout Southwest Washington and Northwest Oregon. Availability varies by address, so contact us to confirm service options and speeds at your location. - Vancouver, WA - Camas, WA - Washougal, WA - Orchards, WA - Battle Ground, WA - Brush Prairie, WA - Ridgefield, WA - Portland, OR - Gresham, OR - Troutdale, OR - Happy Valley, OR - Milwaukie, OR - Clackamas, OR - Corbett, OR FAQ: Q: What is fixed wireless internet? A: Fixed wireless internet delivers connectivity to a business location using wireless network infrastructure rather than relying exclusively on a traditional cable connection to the building. Q: How fast is Silver Star Fixed Wireless? A: Silver Star Fixed Wireless is available with speeds ranging from 50 Mbps to 1 Gbps, depending on the location and network availability. Q: Can fixed wireless be my primary business internet connection? A: Yes. Fixed wireless can be used as the primary internet connection for qualifying business locations. Q: Can fixed wireless be used as a backup connection? A: Yes. Fixed wireless can be used alongside another internet service to provide an additional network path and improve network resiliency. Q: Why is fixed wireless useful for network diversity? A: Using two connections does not always provide true diversity if both depend on the same underlying infrastructure. Fixed wireless offers another access method that can help reduce dependence on the local cable network. Q: What is Fixed Wireless Ethernet? A: Fixed Wireless Ethernet delivers Ethernet connectivity over Silver Star's fixed wireless network. It can support business locations that need Ethernet-based connectivity or private network services. Q: Is fixed wireless available everywhere? A: No. Availability depends on your location, site conditions, and Silver Star's network coverage. Contact Silver Star with your business address to confirm available services and speeds. ### Wavelength Services URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/business/wavelength-services Private, high-capacity optical connections between data centers, business locations, and cloud environments, with dedicated capacity and predictable performance. Silver Star Telecom Wavelength Services provide private, high-capacity optical connections between data centers, business locations, cloud environments, and other critical network facilities. Designed for organizations that need to move large amounts of data quickly and consistently, wavelength services provide dedicated capacity, low latency, and predictable performance over fiber-optic infrastructure. Features: - Dedicated Layer 1 transport: Direct optical connectivity with minimal network processing. - Private capacity: A dedicated wavelength for your organization's traffic. - High-capacity networking: Designed for large-scale data movement between fixed locations. Who it's for: - Organizations connecting data centers or private cloud infrastructure - Teams running replication, backup, AI, or large media workloads - Businesses that need predictable capacity the public internet cannot guarantee FAQ: Q: What is a wavelength service? A: A wavelength service is a dedicated optical connection used to transport data between two locations over a fiber-optic network. Each wavelength acts as an independent high-capacity channel. Q: What is DWDM? A: Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing allows multiple optical signals to travel across the same fiber using different wavelengths of light. This lets fiber infrastructure support multiple high-capacity connections simultaneously. Q: Is wavelength connectivity private? A: Yes. Wavelength services provide dedicated point-to-point optical transport rather than sending traffic across the public internet. Q: What is the difference between wavelength and Ethernet? A: Ethernet is a Layer 2 networking service commonly used to connect business locations. Wavelength services operate at Layer 1 and are designed for extremely high-capacity optical transport between fixed locations. Q: What is the difference between wavelength and dark fiber? A: Dark fiber provides unused fiber infrastructure that the customer must light and manage. Wavelength services provide a managed optical connection without requiring the customer to operate the underlying optical equipment. Q: What are wavelength services commonly used for? A: Common applications include data center interconnect, disaster recovery, storage replication, cloud infrastructure, AI and high-performance computing, media transport, and other data-intensive workloads. ## Residential services ### Home Fiber Internet URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/residential/internet Fast, symmetrical fiber built on the same network we trust for business, now wired to your front door. Streaming, gaming, video calls, and a house full of connected devices all want bandwidth at the same time. Cable and DSL slow down when everyone's online and uploads crawl. Our residential fiber gives you the same dependable, symmetrical speeds we've delivered to Pacific Northwest businesses for 25+ years. No data caps, no surprise throttling, and local support from a team that actually lives here. When you call, you reach people in Washington who know your network, not a script in another time zone. Features: - Symmetrical speeds: Upload as fast as you download, ideal for video calls, backups, and content creators. - No data caps: Stream and game all month without overage fees or throttling. - Local support: Real people in Washington who know the network behind your connection. - Future-ready fiber: A pure fiber path to your home that scales as your household grows. Who it's for: - Households with multiple streamers and gamers - Remote workers who need rock-solid video and uploads - Smart homes with cameras, hubs, and dozens of devices #### Whole-Home WiFi Fast fiber to the house only helps if the signal reaches every room. Our managed whole-home WiFi blankets your space with a self-healing mesh, so the back bedroom and the garage get the same strong signal as the living room. We design, install, and manage it for you, and tune it as your home changes. - Mesh coverage that eliminates dead zones - Managed WiFi, we monitor and optimize it for you - Separate guest and smart-home networks - Easy controls for parental and device management FAQ: Q: Is Silver Star fiber available at my home? A: Availability depends on your address within our Oregon and Washington service area. Contact us with your address and we'll check serviceability and let you know the fastest path to getting connected. Q: Are there data caps on residential fiber? A: No. Our residential fiber has no data caps and no throttling, stream, game, and work from home as much as you want on a connection with symmetrical upload and download speeds. Q: Do you provide whole-home WiFi or just the internet connection? A: Both. We can install and manage whole-home mesh WiFi so every room gets a strong signal, and we monitor and tune it for you, not just hand you a modem. Q: Why is symmetrical speed important at home? A: Symmetrical speed means uploads are as fast as downloads. That matters for video calls, cloud backups, security cameras, and anyone working or creating content from home. Q: Is fiber internet better than cable internet for working from home? A: Fiber is typically a better fit for remote work because it delivers lower latency and stronger upload performance than cable. That helps video meetings, VPN sessions, cloud software, and large file transfers feel steadier during the workday. Q: Can Silver Star help with weak WiFi in parts of my house? A: Yes. We can pair the fiber connection with managed whole-home WiFi designed around your layout, device count, and coverage needs, so bedrooms, offices, garages, and common spaces get a more consistent signal. Q: Will residential fiber help with streaming and online gaming? A: Yes. Fiber's high capacity and low latency help reduce buffering, lag, and slowdowns when multiple people are streaming, gaming, video calling, or using smart-home devices at the same time. Q: Do I need a new router for fiber internet? A: It depends on your current equipment and the service speed available at your address. Silver Star can recommend and install the right router or managed WiFi setup so your home network can actually use the fiber connection. Q: Who supports my service after installation? A: Silver Star provides local support from a Northwest-based team that understands the network behind your connection. If something needs attention, you are not routed through an offshore script or left to troubleshoot alone. ### Home Phone Service URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/residential/voice Reliable home phone over our network, clear calls, keep your number, no surprises. A dependable home line still matters, for elderly parents, home offices, security systems, and the simple peace of mind of a phone that always works. Our residential voice service rides the same resilient network as our business voice, so calls stay clear and connected. Keep the number you've had for years, add the features you actually use, and pay a straightforward monthly rate with no hidden fees. Features: - Keep your number: Port your existing home number, no need to tell everyone you moved lines. - Crystal-clear calls: HD voice over a network engineered for reliability, not best-effort. - Useful features: Voicemail, caller ID, call forwarding, and spam-call screening included. - Simple pricing: One predictable monthly rate, no mystery surcharges. Who it's for: - Households that want a dependable landline-style phone - Home offices that need a separate business-quality line - Families keeping a long-held home number FAQ: Q: Can I keep my existing home phone number? A: Yes. We port your current number over so you keep the line you've had for years, no need to notify everyone of a change. Q: Does home phone service work during an internet outage? A: Our voice service runs on the same resilient network we engineer for businesses. We'll walk you through backup options so your line stays dependable when you need it most. Q: What features are included with home phone service? A: Voicemail, caller ID, call forwarding, and spam-call screening are included, all for one predictable monthly rate with no hidden surcharges. ### Home Security & Cameras URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/residential/security See what matters, get alerted when it counts, and protect your home with cameras and smart security we install and support. Knowing your home is safe shouldn't require wrestling with a clunky app or a DIY kit that quits after a year. We design and install home security around your property, cameras where you need them, sensors on the doors and windows that matter, and monitoring you can trust. Because it runs on a connection we manage, your cameras and alerts stay online. And when you have a question, you reach a local team, not a 1-800 maze. Features: - HD cameras: Indoor and outdoor cameras with night vision and clear, reliable footage. - Smart alerts: Motion and entry notifications to your phone, see and respond from anywhere. - Professional install: We place and wire everything for full coverage, no guesswork or ladders. - Smart-home ready: Integrates with locks, lights, and hubs for a connected, secure home. Who it's for: - Families who want eyes on the door and the driveway - Frequent travelers checking in while away - Anyone replacing a flaky DIY camera setup FAQ: Q: Do you install the cameras and equipment for me? A: Yes. We professionally place and wire cameras and sensors for full coverage of your property, no ladders, guesswork, or flaky DIY kits. Q: Can I view my cameras and get alerts on my phone? A: Yes. You'll get motion and entry alerts and can view live and recorded footage from anywhere on your phone. Q: Does the security system integrate with smart-home devices? A: Our systems integrate with locks, lights, and hubs so your security works alongside the rest of your connected home. ## Fiber internet by city ### Fiber Internet in Aberdeen, WA | Business Fiber URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/fiber-internet/aberdeen-wa Region: Grays Harbor County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides dedicated, symmetrical business fiber internet in Aberdeen, Washington, with service-level agreements, proactive monitoring, and support from a Northwest-based team. Bandwidth is sized to each location after a free account review. Aberdeen is the largest city in Grays Harbor County and the commercial center of the harbor, where the Chehalis River meets Grays Harbor. Its port, healthcare, retail, professional, and public-sector organizations increasingly run on cloud software, hosted phones, and video, and that puts real pressure on the internet connection underneath them. Silver Star delivers Fiber Optic Internet Access built for that workload: the same bandwidth in both directions, committed uptime and response targets in writing, and monitoring that catches problems before your staff does. We design the circuit for your building, install it, and support it ourselves. #### Why fiber matters for Aberdeen businesses Much of the harbor still relies on cable and DSL connections built for downloading, not for the upload-heavy work of cloud backup, hosted voice, and video meetings. When the upload side fills up, calls break up and video freezes even though web pages still load, which makes the problem hard to diagnose. Symmetrical fiber removes that bottleneck. For Aberdeen organizations with a second site in Hoquiam, Montesano, or elsewhere on the harbor, we can connect locations with private Metro Ethernet so traffic between sites never touches the public internet. FAQ: Q: Does Silver Star offer home fiber internet in Aberdeen? A: Silver Star's fiber service in Aberdeen is built for businesses. If you are a homeowner, contact us with your address and we will tell you what is available. Residential fiber plans are available nearby in Elma and Raymond. Q: Can you connect an Aberdeen office to a location in Hoquiam or Montesano? A: Yes. We connect Grays Harbor sites with private Metro Ethernet or point-to-point circuits, so file shares, phones, and applications move between locations with predictable performance and without routing through a VPN over the internet. ### Fiber Internet in Hoquiam, WA | Business Fiber URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/fiber-internet/hoquiam-wa Region: Grays Harbor County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides dedicated, symmetrical business fiber internet in Hoquiam, Washington, with written service-level agreements and local support. We design each circuit around the location after a free account review. Hoquiam shares Grays Harbor with Aberdeen, and together the two cities form the economic core of the county. Hoquiam's port and industrial waterfront, its airport at Bowerman Field, and the businesses that serve traffic heading out to Ocean Shores and the Pacific coast all depend on connectivity that stays up. Silver Star's Fiber Optic Internet Access gives Hoquiam organizations dedicated bandwidth in both directions, committed performance targets, and a support team based in the Northwest. When you call, you reach people who know the circuit they installed. #### Built for industrial and waterfront operations Waterfront, industrial, and logistics sites often run on whatever connection was available when the building went up. A dedicated fiber circuit with an SLA replaces best-effort service with a commitment, which matters when shipping, dispatch, card processing, or remote monitoring stop the moment the connection does. For sites that cannot go dark, we pair fiber with LTE/5G Always-On Internet backup that fails over automatically, so a cut line or a storm does not take operations down with it. FAQ: Q: Is Silver Star fiber available for homes in Hoquiam? A: Silver Star's Hoquiam fiber service is built for businesses. Homeowners can contact us with an address to see what is available. Residential fiber plans are available in Elma and Raymond. Q: What happens to our internet in Hoquiam if the fiber line is cut? A: We can add LTE/5G Always-On Internet backup alongside your fiber. If the primary circuit fails, traffic moves to the wireless path automatically and moves back when fiber is restored, so phones, payments, and cloud apps keep working. ### Fiber Internet in Westport, WA | Business Fiber URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/fiber-internet/westport-wa Region: Grays Harbor County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides dedicated business fiber internet in Westport, Washington, and pairs it with LTE/5G backup so coastal businesses stay online through storms and outages. Every circuit is engineered and supported by a Northwest-based team. Westport sits at the south entrance to Grays Harbor, home to a working marina, the charter and commercial fishing fleet, seafood processing, and a visitor economy built around the coast and the Grays Harbor Lighthouse. Each of those depends on connections that hold up in coastal weather. Silver Star provides Fiber Optic Internet Access for Westport businesses with symmetrical bandwidth, written service commitments, and proactive monitoring. We design for the reality of a coastal town at the end of the road, where a single damaged line can isolate a business. #### Connectivity that plans for coastal weather On the coast, the question is not whether the connection will ever be interrupted, but what happens when it is. Card terminals, booking systems, cold-storage monitoring, and phones all stop at once on a single connection. That is why we usually design Westport service as fiber plus LTE/5G Always-On Internet backup with automatic failover. The wireless path does not share the cable route into town, so it covers the outages a second wired line would not. FAQ: Q: Does Silver Star offer residential fiber in Westport? A: Silver Star's Westport fiber service is built for businesses. Homeowners can contact us with an address to check what is available. Q: Will our Westport business stay online during a storm? A: With LTE/5G Always-On Internet backup, yes in most cases. When the primary circuit drops, traffic fails over to the wireless connection automatically, so card processing, booking, and hosted phones keep working. ### Fiber Internet in Montesano, WA | Business Fiber URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/fiber-internet/montesano-wa Region: Grays Harbor County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides dedicated, symmetrical business fiber internet in Montesano, Washington, the Grays Harbor County seat, with service-level agreements and local support for government, legal, and professional offices. Montesano is the county seat of Grays Harbor County, so much of its daytime economy revolves around county government, the courthouse, and the law, title, and professional offices that work alongside them. Those organizations handle records, filings, and video hearings that cannot wait on a slow or unreliable connection. Silver Star's Fiber Optic Internet Access gives Montesano offices symmetrical bandwidth for cloud records systems and video, committed uptime and response times in writing, and monitoring that flags problems early. We have supported public-sector and professional networks in the Northwest for more than 25 years. #### Reliable connectivity for public-sector and professional offices Government and legal work has moved online: e-filing, cloud document management, remote hearings, and hosted phone systems. Each one fails visibly when the connection is congested or down, and for public offices the cost lands on residents as well as staff. Silver Star designs connectivity for these organizations with service-level agreements, private Metro Ethernet between buildings, managed firewalls, and backup paths for systems that must stay reachable. FAQ: Q: Does Silver Star work with government agencies in Montesano? A: Yes. Silver Star has designed and supported voice and data networks for businesses and government agencies across Oregon and Washington for more than 25 years, including fiber, private Ethernet between buildings, hosted voice, and managed security. Q: Is home fiber internet available in Montesano? A: Silver Star's Montesano fiber service is built for businesses and organizations. Homeowners can contact us with an address to see what is available. Residential fiber plans are available in Elma, about ten miles east. ### Fiber Internet in Elma, WA | Home & Business Fiber URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/fiber-internet/elma-wa Region: Grays Harbor County, WA Yes, Silver Star Telecom provides fiber internet in Elma, Washington, for both homes and businesses. Home plans offer 500 Mbps or 1 Gbps with symmetrical speeds, no data caps, and free basic installation, and businesses can get dedicated fiber with service-level agreements. Elma sits along US 12 in eastern Grays Harbor County and is home to the Grays Harbor County Fairgrounds. It is one of the communities where Silver Star is bringing fiber directly to homes as well as businesses, so residents get the same kind of connection that businesses rely on. For households, that means symmetrical fiber with no data caps and a local team that installs and supports it. For Elma businesses, it means dedicated Fiber Optic Internet Access with committed performance targets and monitoring. #### Fiber for Elma homes, not just businesses Many homes in the area have relied on DSL, satellite, or fixed wireless that struggles with video calls, streaming, and uploads. Fiber changes that: uploads run as fast as downloads, latency drops, and there is no monthly data cap to manage. Silver Star's home fiber in Elma includes free basic installation and a free WiFi router, with mesh WiFi, home phone, security cameras, and structured wiring available as add-ons. FAQ: Q: How fast is home fiber internet in Elma? A: Silver Star's Elma home fiber plans are 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps, both with equal upload and download speeds. Basic installation and a basic WiFi router are included free, and there are no data caps. Q: Is fiber available at my address in Elma? A: Availability depends on the address. Use the form on this page or call (360) 524-7498 with your address and we will confirm service and the fastest path to getting connected. ### Fiber Internet in Raymond, WA | Home & Business Fiber URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/fiber-internet/raymond-wa Region: Pacific County, WA Yes, Silver Star Telecom provides fiber internet in Raymond, Washington, for homes and businesses. Home plans offer 100 Mbps, 500 Mbps, or 1 Gbps with symmetrical speeds and no data caps, and businesses can get dedicated fiber with service-level agreements. Raymond sits on the Willapa River near Willapa Bay in Pacific County, a few miles from South Bend. Like much of the county, it has long been underserved by high-speed internet, and Silver Star is changing that by bringing fiber directly to homes and businesses. Residents get symmetrical fiber with no data caps and a local support team. Raymond businesses can get dedicated Fiber Optic Internet Access with committed uptime and response times. #### Real fiber in a community that waited for it Households in Pacific County have often had to choose between slow DSL, satellite with high latency and data caps, or nothing at all. Fiber gives Raymond homes the speed for remote work, school, streaming, and video calls at the same time, with uploads as fast as downloads. Silver Star's Raymond home fiber includes free basic installation and a free WiFi router, and our refer-a-neighbor program gives you a free month when someone you refer signs up. FAQ: Q: What home internet speeds are available in Raymond? A: Silver Star offers 100 Mbps, 500 Mbps, and 1 Gbps home fiber plans in Raymond, all with equal upload and download speeds and no data caps. The 100 Mbps plan is the most popular. Q: Does Silver Star also serve South Bend and Bay Center? A: Yes. Silver Star provides fiber in nearby South Bend, Bay Center, and Nemah as well. See the South Bend community fiber page for plans in those towns. ## Hosted VoIP by city ### Hosted VoIP in Vancouver, WA | Business Phone Systems URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/vancouver-wa Region: Clark County, WA Silver Star Telecom is a Vancouver, Washington-based provider of hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX phone systems for businesses. Plans are a flat rate per phone per month with 60+ calling features, and installation and support come from a local team headquartered in Vancouver. Vancouver is Silver Star's home. Our headquarters is here, so Vancouver businesses get hosted voice from a provider that is minutes away rather than a national carrier with a call center. The people who design your phone system are the same people who install it and answer when you call. Hosted PBX replaces the phone system in your closet with a cloud platform. You pay a flat rate per phone per month, keep your existing numbers, and get features like auto attendant, voicemail to email, hunt groups, and mobile apps without buying or maintaining hardware. #### One phone system for both sides of the river Many Vancouver businesses also have offices, staff, or customers in Portland. A hosted phone system puts every location on one dial plan, so a receptionist in Vancouver can transfer a call to a colleague in Portland with a four-digit extension and reporting covers the whole organization. Because we are local, moves, adds, new locations, and on-site phone installs happen on a Vancouver timeline, not a ticket queue. FAQ: Q: Is Silver Star Telecom actually based in Vancouver, WA? A: Yes. Silver Star Telecom is headquartered in Vancouver, Washington, and has designed, installed, and supported business voice and data networks across Oregon and Washington for more than 25 years. Q: Can our Vancouver and Portland offices share one phone system? A: Yes. With Hosted PBX, every location runs on the same platform with one dial plan, so staff transfer calls between Vancouver and Portland with an extension and manage everything from one portal. ### Hosted VoIP in Ridgefield, WA | Business Phone Systems URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/ridgefield-wa Region: Clark County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX business phone systems in Ridgefield, Washington, at a flat rate per phone per month with 60+ calling features. Installation and support come from Silver Star's team in nearby Vancouver. Ridgefield, in northern Clark County, has grown quickly, with new neighborhoods, business parks, and commercial development along the I-5 corridor near the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. New and growing businesses here have a choice an older office did not: skip the on-site phone system entirely. Hosted PBX gives a Ridgefield business a professional phone system on day one, with auto attendant, extensions, voicemail to email, and mobile apps, for a flat monthly rate per phone. As you add staff, you add phones, not hardware. #### Start with the phone system you will grow into A business that is opening its first Ridgefield office or moving from a home office does not need a PBX in a closet. With hosted voice, the same platform scales from a few phones to multiple locations, and features that used to cost extra come standard. Our Vancouver team is a short drive down I-5, so on-site installs and phone setup are quick. FAQ: Q: We are opening a new office in Ridgefield. Do we need to buy a phone system? A: No. With Hosted PBX the phone system runs in the cloud. You pay a flat rate per phone per month, and we supply and set up the phones. There is no PBX hardware to buy or maintain. Q: Can we keep our current phone numbers if we move to Ridgefield? A: Yes. We port your existing numbers to the hosted platform, so customers keep reaching you at the same numbers. ### Hosted VoIP in Woodland, WA | Business Phone Systems URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/woodland-wa Region: Cowlitz County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX phone systems for businesses in Woodland, Washington, including cordless DECT handsets and overhead paging for warehouses and shops. Pricing is a flat rate per phone per month. Woodland sits on I-5 at the Lewis River, where Cowlitz and Clark counties meet, and its location has made it a home for manufacturing, distribution, and trades businesses as well as the shops and services that support them. Those operations need a phone system that works beyond the front desk. Silver Star's Hosted PBX supports cordless DECT handsets for staff on a shop or warehouse floor, overhead paging and intercom, and hunt groups that ring the right people, all at a flat rate per phone. #### Phones that work on the floor, not just at a desk In a warehouse or shop, people are rarely at a desk when the phone rings. Yealink DECT cordless handsets let staff carry their extension anywhere in the building, and paging and intercom features reach a whole floor at once. Find-me/follow-me and mobile apps extend that to drivers and field staff, so customer calls reach a person instead of a voicemail box. FAQ: Q: Do you offer cordless phones for a warehouse in Woodland? A: Yes. We supply Yealink W60 DECT cordless handsets that work with Hosted PBX, so warehouse and shop staff carry their extension anywhere on site. Q: Can our phone system do overhead paging? A: Yes. Call paging and intercom are standard Hosted PBX features, and we can connect to existing overhead paging equipment where needed. ### Hosted VoIP in Battle Ground, WA | Business Phones URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/battle-ground-wa Region: Clark County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX business phone systems in Battle Ground, Washington, with auto attendant, hunt groups, and voicemail to email included at a flat rate per phone per month, supported by a local Clark County team. Battle Ground is a fast-growing city in north-central Clark County, and its business community is full of the offices people call every day: clinics, dental and professional practices, contractors, and retail. For those businesses, a missed call is often a missed customer. Silver Star's Hosted PBX makes sure calls get answered. An auto attendant routes callers, hunt groups ring the right team, time-of-day routing handles after-hours calls, and voicemail arrives in email, all for a flat rate per phone per month. #### Built for busy front desks Clinics and service businesses live and die by the front desk. Hosted PBX lets several people answer the same line, sends overflow to a second group, and routes calls differently when the office is closed, so callers always reach someone or a clear message. Silver Star also provides residential fiber in Battle Ground, so we know the area, and our Vancouver headquarters is close by for installs and support. FAQ: Q: Can our Battle Ground office route calls differently after hours? A: Yes. Time-of-day routing is standard. After hours, calls can go to voicemail, an answering service, an on-call mobile, or a different message, and they switch back automatically in the morning. Q: Does Silver Star offer internet in Battle Ground too? A: Yes. Silver Star provides business connectivity in Battle Ground and residential fiber service in the community, and we can design the internet and phone system together. ### Hosted VoIP in Orchards, WA | Business Phone Systems URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/orchards-wa Region: Clark County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX phone systems for businesses in Orchards, Washington, with mobile apps and find-me/follow-me so office and field staff share one business number, at a flat rate per phone per month. Orchards is an unincorporated community in east Clark County just outside Vancouver, with a mix of contractors, trades, service companies, and neighborhood businesses. Many of them have staff who spend more time in a truck or on a job site than at a desk. Silver Star's Hosted PBX gives those teams one business phone system that follows them. The MaX UC mobile app puts the office extension on a cell phone, and find-me/follow-me rings a desk phone and a mobile at the same time, so customers reach a person wherever they are. #### One business number for the office and the field When techs give out personal cell numbers, the business loses track of its customers. With Hosted PBX, every call comes in and goes out on the business number, whether staff are at the shop or on a job, and call history stays with the company. Our Vancouver headquarters is a few minutes away, so setup and support are local. FAQ: Q: Can our field techs make calls from their cell phones using the business number? A: Yes. The MaX UC softphone app puts the business extension on a mobile phone, so calls in and out show the business number instead of a personal cell. Q: Is Orchards in Silver Star's service area? A: Yes. Orchards is part of Silver Star's Clark County service area, a few minutes from our Vancouver headquarters. ### Hosted VoIP in Camas, WA | Business Phone Systems URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/camas-wa Region: Clark County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX phone systems for Camas, Washington businesses, with softphones and mobile apps that give hybrid and remote staff the same extension as the office, at a flat rate per phone per month. Camas, on the Columbia River in east Clark County, combines a historic downtown with a strong base of technology, professional-services, and corporate employers. Many of those teams work hybrid, splitting time between an office and home. Silver Star's Hosted PBX is built for that. Staff use the same extension on a desk phone, a computer softphone, or the MaX UC mobile app, so a call to their number reaches them wherever they are working that day, with voicemail, presence, and call history in one place. #### A phone system for hybrid teams Hybrid work breaks traditional phone systems, which assume everyone sits at a desk. With hosted voice, the phone number belongs to the person, not the desk. Calls ring wherever they are logged in, and administrators manage everyone from the CommPortal web dashboard. For Camas businesses with conference rooms, we also supply Yealink conference phones that join the same system. FAQ: Q: Can remote employees in Camas use the office phone system from home? A: Yes. With the MaX UC softphone on a computer or mobile phone, remote staff use their office extension from anywhere with an internet connection, with the same voicemail and call handling as at the office. Q: Do you install conference room phones? A: Yes. We supply and install Yealink conference phones that run on the same Hosted PBX platform as your desk phones. ### Hosted VoIP in Washougal, WA | Business Phone Systems URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/washougal-wa Region: Clark County, WA Silver Star Telecom provides hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX phone systems for businesses in Washougal, Washington, with disaster routing that keeps calls flowing to mobiles or another location if the office loses power or internet, at a flat rate per phone per month. Washougal sits just east of Camas on the Columbia River at the western gateway to the Columbia River Gorge. Its manufacturers, trades, and small businesses, and the visitor-facing businesses that serve Gorge traffic, need a phone system that keeps working when conditions do not cooperate. Silver Star's Hosted PBX runs in carrier data centers rather than in your building, so it is not taken down by a local power outage. Disaster routing automatically sends calls to mobile phones, another location, or voicemail if your office goes offline. #### Calls keep coming in when the office goes dark Gorge weather, wind, and power outages are a fact of life on the east end of the county. With an on-site phone system, an outage means callers hear nothing. With hosted voice, the platform keeps answering and disaster routing reroutes calls to wherever your team is. Pair it with LTE/5G Always-On Internet backup and the phones keep working even when the primary internet connection is down. FAQ: Q: What happens to our phones if our Washougal office loses power? A: Because Hosted PBX runs in carrier data centers, the system keeps answering. Disaster routing sends calls to mobile phones, another location, or voicemail until the office is back online. Q: Can we keep using our phones if the internet goes down? A: With LTE/5G Always-On Internet backup, yes. Traffic fails over to the wireless connection automatically, so desk phones and softphones keep working. ### Hosted VoIP in Portland, OR | Business Phone Systems URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/hosted-voip/portland-metro Region: Portland, Gresham, Beaverton, Tigard, Tualatin, Lake Oswego, Happy Valley, Milwaukie, Oregon City, Troutdale, Fairview, Wilsonville Silver Star Telecom provides hosted VoIP and Hosted PBX business phone systems across the Portland, Oregon metro area, including Portland, Gresham, Beaverton, Tigard, Lake Oswego, and Happy Valley. Plans are a flat rate per phone per month, supported from Silver Star's headquarters just across the river in Vancouver, WA. Silver Star serves businesses throughout the Portland metro area from our headquarters in Vancouver, Washington, just across the Columbia River. That puts a local engineering and install team within reach of offices across Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties. Hosted PBX gives Portland-area businesses a full cloud phone system at a flat rate per phone per month: 60+ standard features, Yealink desk, cordless, and conference phones, mobile and desktop softphones, and the CommPortal dashboard for managing it all. #### Offices in Oregon and Washington on one phone system Many Portland-area organizations have locations on both sides of the river. Hosted PBX puts all of them on one dial plan, so staff transfer calls between a Portland office and a Vancouver office with a four-digit extension, and reporting covers every location. We also connect those sites with private Metro Ethernet and business fiber, so voice and data run on infrastructure we design and support end to end. FAQ: Q: Does Silver Star serve businesses in Portland, Oregon? A: Yes. Silver Star serves the Portland metro area, including Portland, Gresham, Beaverton, Tigard, Tualatin, Lake Oswego, Happy Valley, Milwaukie, Oregon City, Troutdale, and Wilsonville, from our headquarters in Vancouver, WA. Q: Can one phone system cover our Portland and Vancouver offices? A: Yes. Hosted PBX runs every location on one platform with a shared dial plan and four-digit dialing between offices in Oregon and Washington. ## Insights articles ### How Much Internet Bandwidth Does Your Business Actually Need? URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/business-internet-bandwidth-guide Published: 2026-10-09 Most bandwidth conversations start in the wrong place. Someone looks at a bill, sees a number in megabits, and asks whether a bigger number would fix the problem people keep complaining about. Sometimes it would. Often the complaint has nothing to do with the size of the circuit. Sizing business internet correctly means counting what your applications actually consume, understanding which direction that traffic moves, and being honest about what happens when the circuit goes down. Here is how to work through it. #### Start with what your applications ask for Bandwidth planning is additive. Every simultaneous session takes a slice, and the total has to fit inside the circuit during your busiest hour, not your average hour. A few reference points for planning purposes: - A hosted voice call consumes roughly 100 Kbps in each direction once overhead is counted. Twenty concurrent calls is a couple of megabits, which is almost nothing on a fiber circuit and a serious problem on an oversubscribed cable connection. - HD video conferencing runs in the low single-digit megabits per participant, and it runs in both directions at once. A conference room, three people on calls at their desks, and a weekly all-hands can stack up quickly. - Cloud file sync, offsite backup, and large design or video files are the heaviest consumers, and they are almost entirely upstream. A single 10 GB backup pushed during business hours will saturate a small upload pipe and take the phones down with it. - Everyday browsing, email, and line-of-business SaaS applications are modest per user but numerous. Add those together for peak conditions, then add headroom. Planning to run a circuit at 90 percent of capacity is planning for congestion, because traffic arrives in bursts rather than in a smooth stream. A common rule of thumb is to size so that peak usage lands near 60 to 70 percent of the circuit. #### Upload matters more than it used to For most of the last two decades, business internet was sold on download speed because that is what consumer marketing conditioned everyone to compare. That framing no longer matches how offices work. Hosted voice, video conferencing, cloud backup, remote desktop sessions, surveillance camera feeds sent offsite, and file sharing are all upstream-heavy. On an asymmetrical connection, where download might be ten or twenty times the upload, the upload side is what fails first. The symptom is confusing: web pages still load fine, so it does not feel like an internet problem, but calls break up and video freezes. Symmetrical fiber solves this by giving you the same capacity in both directions. When someone tells you their internet is fast but their phone system sounds terrible, an asymmetrical circuit is one of the first things worth checking. #### Shared versus dedicated is a different question than speed Two circuits can advertise the same speed and behave nothing alike. Shared broadband delivers a best-effort service across infrastructure that many subscribers use at once. The advertised speed is a ceiling, not a floor. Performance moves with neighborhood demand, which is why a connection that tested beautifully on a Tuesday morning struggles at three in the afternoon. Dedicated internet access gives you the bandwidth you purchased, in both directions, with committed performance targets. That commitment is what a service level agreement documents. A real SLA specifies uptime, latency, packet loss, jitter, and response and restoration time, with the remedy spelled out when the provider misses. Ask for those numbers in writing before signing anything. If a provider will not put restoration time in the contract, you have learned something useful. The gap between shared and dedicated shows up in exactly the applications businesses care most about. Voice and video are sensitive to jitter and packet loss, not just raw throughput. A circuit can show plenty of available bandwidth on a speed test and still deliver unusable calls because the path is unstable. #### Count the sites, not just the seats Bandwidth planning for a multi-site business has an extra layer. Traffic between your locations and traffic to the internet are different flows, and treating them as one pool leads to trouble. If your branch offices reach applications, file shares, or storage at a headquarters or a data center, that traffic can ride a private Layer 2 connection instead of the public internet. Metro Ethernet and point-to-point circuits give you predictable latency and throughput between sites, they keep that traffic off your internet circuit entirely, and they avoid the overhead and variability of routing everything through a VPN tunnel. The practical effect is that your internet circuit only has to carry internet traffic. Sizing gets simpler and more predictable, and the site-to-site applications stop competing with someone streaming a webinar. #### Plan for the circuit being down Sizing exercises tend to assume the connection works. Build the plan for the day it does not. Ask what your business actually loses during an outage. For a firm that runs on cloud accounting software and a hosted phone system, an internet outage is a full stop. Card processing fails, calls do not arrive, files are unreachable. Once you can put a number on an hour of downtime, the cost of redundancy usually answers itself. Redundancy has several forms, and they are not equivalent: - A second circuit from the same provider over the same physical path protects against equipment failure but not against a contractor cutting the conduit. - A second circuit over diverse media, such as fiber plus a wireless or 5G connection, protects against physical path failure. - SD-WAN sits above both and makes failover automatic, steering traffic across available connections and moving sessions off a degraded circuit before users notice. Without it, failover usually means someone unplugging something and rebooting a router. For voice specifically, ask whether your provider supports disaster routing, which redirects inbound calls to mobile numbers or another location when a site is unreachable. Calls that reach a person somewhere are better than calls that reach nothing. #### A practical sizing checklist Before you talk to any provider, gather the following: - Peak concurrent users at each location, including hybrid staff who connect back to the office. - Number of concurrent voice calls at peak, plus any contact center volume. - Video conferencing usage at peak, counted by simultaneous participants rather than by license count. - Backup and file sync volumes, along with the window those jobs run in. Moving backups outside business hours is often cheaper than buying more bandwidth. - Applications that live in a data center or at another one of your sites, which may belong on a private circuit rather than the internet. - Growth over the next 24 to 36 months, including any planned locations. - Your tolerance for downtime, expressed in dollars per hour if you can manage it. That list turns a vague request for faster internet into a specific engineering conversation. It also makes competing quotes comparable, because you will be able to tell whether two proposals are actually offering the same thing. #### Getting a real answer for your building Bandwidth on paper is one thing. What can be delivered to your address is another, and it depends on the fiber already in the ground, the building entrance, and the construction required to reach you. Silver Star Telecom has spent more than 25 years engineering fiber, Ethernet, and voice networks across Oregon and Washington, and we design what we sell rather than reselling someone else's circuit and hoping for the best. If you want a sizing review for your locations, along with written service level commitments you can hold us to, call (360) 524-7498 or email sales@silverstartelecom.com. ### SIP Trunking vs. Hosted PBX: Which Phone System Fits Your Business? URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/sip-trunking-vs-hosted-pbx Published: 2026-10-08 Every business replacing an aging phone system runs into the same fork in the road. One path keeps the phone system you own and modernizes the lines feeding it. The other retires the hardware entirely and moves the phone system itself into the cloud. Both are legitimate. They suit different situations, and picking the wrong one usually costs money rather than causing a disaster. Here is how the two approaches differ and how to tell which one fits. #### What SIP trunking actually does SIP trunking replaces the physical lines coming into your building. Instead of copper analog lines or a PRI circuit from the phone company, your calls travel over your data connection as IP traffic. The phone system itself stays where it is. You keep your on-premise PBX, your handsets, your dial plan, and the way your staff has worked for years. What changes is the transport underneath and, usually, the bill. SIP trunks are typically sold by concurrent call path rather than in fixed blocks, so you buy the capacity you actually use instead of buying a PRI in 23-channel increments. SIP trunking makes the most sense when: - You have recent PBX hardware with useful life left, and replacing it now would waste the investment. - Your call flows, integrations, or contact routing are heavily customized and rebuilding them is a project in itself. - You have in-house staff who know the system and want to keep control of it. - You are carrying a PRI you have outgrown, or one you never filled, and want the cost to track real usage. The tradeoff is that you still own a phone system. You own its maintenance, its failure modes, its licensing, and its eventual replacement. When the hardware ages out or the vendor ends support, you are back at this same decision. #### What hosted PBX actually does Hosted PBX, sometimes called hosted voice or cloud voice, moves the phone system out of your building. The call platform runs in a carrier data center, your phones register to it over the internet, and you pay a flat rate per phone per month. There is no PBX to buy, no cards to add when you hire, and no maintenance window when the platform is upgraded. Features that used to require add-on hardware come standard. A typical hosted platform includes direct inward dialing, voicemail with unified messaging, find-me/follow-me, simultaneous ring, hunt groups, paging and intercom, auto attendant with time-of-day routing, and a self-service portal where administrators make changes themselves instead of filing a ticket. Hosted PBX makes the most sense when: - You run more than one location and want a single dial plan, a single set of features, and one bill instead of a phone system per site. - Your PBX is at or past end of support, and the quote to upgrade it is real money. - Staff work from home, on the road, or in the field, and need the same extension on a desk phone, a softphone, and a mobile app. - You would rather have predictable per-seat pricing than a capital purchase every seven years. - Nobody on your team wants to own a phone system, and honestly most teams do not. The tradeoff is dependence on your internet connection, which is a solvable problem and is covered below. #### The multi-site question usually settles it For a single office with a functional PBX, SIP trunking is often the efficient answer. For a business with several locations, the math tends to tip hard toward hosted. With on-premise systems, every location is its own island. Each site has its own hardware, its own configuration, its own maintenance schedule, and its own way of doing things that grew out of whoever set it up. Transferring a call between offices means dialing an outside number. Adding a feature means adding it five times. Standardizing anything becomes a project. A hosted platform gives every site the same feature set and the same dial plan on day one. Four-digit dialing works between buildings. A receptionist in one city can answer for another. Moving a person from one office to another means moving a phone, not reconfiguring two systems. Reporting covers the whole organization rather than arriving as separate reports that do not reconcile. #### What about the copper lines you still have Most businesses that think they are fully modern still have analog lines hiding somewhere. Fax machines, elevator phones, fire alarm panels, gate intercoms, credit card terminals, and modems on equipment nobody wants to touch. These matter more than they seem, for two reasons. First, carriers have been retiring copper facilities and moving customers off legacy TDM services, so the cost and availability of those lines is trending in one direction. Second, some of those lines are life safety devices with code requirements attached, and they cannot simply be unplugged because the phone project is done. Whichever direction you choose, inventory the analog lines first. Some can move to an IP gateway. Some need a purpose-built cellular or IP solution that meets code. A few will stay analog for now. What you do not want is to discover the elevator phone on cutover weekend. #### Do not skip the network assessment Voice quality problems after a cutover are almost always network problems, not platform problems. Before you migrate anything, three things need checking. Bandwidth and symmetry. Each concurrent call needs roughly 100 Kbps in each direction. That is modest, but it competes with cloud backups, video calls, and file sync. Asymmetrical connections with limited upload capacity are a frequent cause of one-way audio and choppy calls. Quality of service. Voice is sensitive to jitter and packet loss rather than raw speed. A circuit can pass a speed test easily and still deliver bad calls. Voice traffic should be prioritized on the local network and, ideally, carried on a circuit with committed latency and loss targets rather than best-effort broadband. Power and cabling. IP phones draw power over Ethernet, which means switches with adequate PoE budget and a UPS on the closet gear. If your cabling is aging, the phone project is the moment to address it, not six months after. Failover. Ask what happens when the circuit drops. Disaster routing that automatically redirects inbound calls to mobile numbers or another location turns an outage into an inconvenience. Without it, calls simply fail. #### Cost comparison, done honestly Comparing a monthly hosted invoice to a monthly SIP trunk invoice makes hosted look expensive, because it is not the same comparison. The trunk bill excludes the phone system. A fair comparison includes hardware and its replacement cycle, software licensing and support contracts, the labor to administer and patch the system, maintenance visits, UPS and equipment room costs, and the staff time spent on moves, adds, and changes. It also includes the cost of what is not available, such as the outages a platform with geographic redundancy would have absorbed. Run the total over five years rather than one. That timeframe is where the difference between a capital model and a subscription model becomes visible. #### Deciding, in one paragraph If you own a recent PBX that fits your business, keep it and modernize the lines with SIP trunking. If your system is at end of life, you operate multiple locations, your workforce is distributed, or nobody wants the job of maintaining a phone system, hosted PBX is the better fit. In both cases, the network underneath decides whether the result sounds good. Silver Star Telecom has engineered voice and data networks across Oregon and Washington for more than 25 years, and we handle hosted voice, SIP and PRI trunking, and analog lines, along with the circuits and cabling that carry them. If you want the two options priced against your actual call volume and site count, call (360) 524-7498 or email sales@silverstartelecom.com. ### Backup and Disaster Recovery: Building a Plan You Can Actually Test URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/backup-disaster-recovery-plan Published: 2026-10-07 Most businesses have backups. Far fewer have a recovery plan, and the difference only becomes obvious on the worst possible day. A backup is a copy of data. A recovery plan is a documented answer to the question of how the business resumes operating, in what order, and how long it takes. The gap between the two is where companies lose weeks. Here is how to close it. #### Start with two numbers Every recovery conversation should begin with two figures, defined per system rather than for the company as a whole. Recovery point objective is how much data you can afford to lose, measured in time. If your accounting system is backed up nightly at 11 p.m. and fails at 4 p.m., you have lost a full business day of entries. If that is unacceptable, your RPO is shorter than your backup interval and the schedule needs to change. Recovery time objective is how long the system can be down before the consequences become serious. An hour for a point-of-sale system. Perhaps a day for an internal file share. Perhaps a week for an archive nobody touches. Setting these per system is what keeps the budget sane. Protecting everything to the strictest standard is expensive and usually unnecessary. Sort your systems into tiers, assign each tier an RPO and RTO, and let those numbers drive the design instead of guessing at a backup product. #### The 3-2-1 rule still holds The long-standing guidance remains sound: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy offsite. The offsite copy is the part that gets skipped, and it is the part that matters most. A backup appliance sitting in the same room as the server it protects is not protection against fire, flood, theft, or a burst pipe in the ceiling. It also provides limited protection against ransomware, which increasingly targets backup repositories before touching production data. Modern practice adds a fourth consideration: at least one copy should be immutable or otherwise isolated, so that credentials stolen from your network cannot be used to delete it. Offsite backup managed by a provider, with retention policies you cannot casually override, covers this in a way that a NAS in a closet does not. #### Back up more than the file server Ask most businesses what they back up and you will hear about the file server and maybe the accounting database. Then the outage comes and the list of things nobody copied gets long. Work through this inventory: - Servers and virtual machines, including the operating system and configuration rather than only the data volumes. - Workstations and laptops, particularly for staff who keep working files locally regardless of policy. - SaaS platforms. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace protect their own infrastructure, not your data from your own users. A deleted mailbox, a mass file deletion, or a compromised account can exceed the provider's retention window. Third-party SaaS backup exists for a reason. - Network device configurations. Switch, router, and firewall configs represent hours of work and are trivial to capture and easy to forget. - Line-of-business applications with their own databases, license keys, and integration settings. - Surveillance footage, where retention may be governed by policy or regulation. - Documentation itself, including passwords, vendor contacts, and the recovery plan. A plan stored only on the server you are trying to restore is not a plan. #### Untested backups are assumptions The failure mode is consistent. Backup jobs report success for months. An outage comes, the restore begins, and the data is incomplete, the images will not boot, or the restore takes three days when the business assumed three hours. Testing has to be scheduled, not intended. Monthly: restore a handful of individual files from different systems and confirm they open correctly. Quarterly: perform a full restore of at least one critical system into an isolated environment. Time it. Compare the actual duration to your RTO, because the two are almost never the same on the first attempt. Annually: run a tabletop exercise. Gather the people who would be involved and walk through a realistic scenario end to end. Who declares an incident. Who calls the insurer and the provider. How staff are notified when email is unavailable. Where the plan is stored when the network is down. Which system comes back first. Write down what failed during the test. The value of testing is the list of gaps it produces, and a test that surfaces no problems usually means the test was not realistic. #### Recovery is a sequence, not an event Restoring systems in the wrong order wastes hours. Dependencies matter, and they are rarely documented until someone is forced to work them out under pressure. Domain services and authentication generally come first, because most other systems depend on them. Networking and connectivity come next, since without a working circuit the cloud-hosted pieces stay unreachable. Then the tier-one applications the business cannot operate without, then everything else. Write the sequence down and include the practical details: which vendor to call, which account numbers apply, which credentials are needed, and who has authority to approve decisions. During an incident, nobody is thinking clearly, and a plan that assumes clear thinking will not be followed. #### Connectivity belongs in the plan Disaster recovery planning tends to focus on data and skip the network, which is a strange omission for a business running cloud applications and hosted voice. If the circuit is down, restored data is not reachable and phones do not ring, regardless of how good the backups are. Include in the plan a redundant path for internet access, ideally over diverse media so that a single cut cable cannot take out both. SD-WAN can make that failover automatic, steering traffic to the surviving connection and moving sessions off a degraded circuit before staff notice. For voice, disaster routing that redirects inbound calls to mobile numbers or another site keeps customers reaching a person during the worst of it. Also plan for the scenario where the building is unavailable. Staff working remotely need access, authentication, and phones, which is considerably easier when the phone system is already hosted and the applications are already reachable from outside the office. #### Where managed services fit The reason backup plans decay is rarely ignorance. It is that verifying jobs, patching systems, testing restores, and updating documentation are recurring work that competes with everything else, and the consequence of skipping a week is invisible until it is severe. A managed arrangement puts that recurring work on someone whose job it is. That typically includes monitored offsite backup with verified job completion, 24x7 monitoring and alerting on the systems and circuits, patch management on a defined schedule, endpoint detection and response, and a documented escalation path when something breaks at 2 a.m. For businesses handling health information or card payments, it also means the controls and documentation those frameworks require rather than a good-faith effort. The measure of the arrangement is simple. Ask when the last restore test was performed, ask to see the result, and ask how long the restore took. #### Next step If you are not confident your business could recover from losing a server tomorrow, the useful first move is small: pick your two most critical systems, write down their RPO and RTO, and test a restore against them. Silver Star Telecom provides offsite backup, 24x7x365 monitoring and incident response, managed routers and firewalls, and SD-WAN failover for businesses across Oregon and Washington, with HIPAA and PCI compliance certifications behind the practice. To review your current backup and recovery posture, call (360) 524-7498 or email sales@silverstartelecom.com. ### A Network Security Checklist for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/network-security-checklist Published: 2026-10-06 Small and mid-sized businesses are attractive targets precisely because they are not large enterprises. They hold customer records, payment data, and sometimes health information, and they usually protect it with a fraction of the staff and budget. Most successful attacks against them are not sophisticated. They exploit a missing patch, a reused password, an open remote access port, or an employee who clicked something on a Tuesday afternoon. That is good news, because unglamorous problems have unglamorous fixes. The checklist below covers the controls that matter most, in roughly the order worth addressing them. #### 1. Know what is on your network You cannot protect an asset you have not counted. Before anything else, build an inventory of devices, users, and applications: servers, workstations, laptops, phones, printers, cameras, access control panels, point-of-sale terminals, and anything else with an IP address. Two things usually surface during this exercise. First, devices nobody is responsible for, often installed by a vendor years ago and never patched since. Second, accounts belonging to people who left the company. Both are common entry points, and both are fixed with an afternoon of work. Include your SaaS applications in the inventory. Shadow IT, meaning tools individual departments signed up for without telling anyone, is where a surprising share of company data lives. #### 2. Patch on a schedule, not on an impulse Unpatched software remains one of the most reliable ways into a network. The issue is rarely that patching is hard. It is that it is nobody's specific job, so it happens when someone remembers. Define a schedule and hold to it. Critical vulnerabilities on internet-facing systems within days. Operating systems and browsers monthly. Firmware on firewalls, switches, access points, cameras, and network video recorders on a defined cycle, since network appliance firmware is among the most neglected and most targeted software in a typical building. Patch management is a core component of most managed service arrangements for exactly this reason. It is routine work with severe consequences when skipped. #### 3. Put multi-factor authentication on everything that supports it Stolen credentials are sold in volume, and password reuse means a breach at an unrelated service can become a breach at yours. Multi-factor authentication is the single highest-value control available to a small business relative to its cost. Prioritize email, remote access and VPN, administrative accounts, financial systems, and any application reachable from the internet. Prefer authenticator apps or hardware keys over SMS where you have the choice, since SMS is vulnerable to number porting attacks. Pair this with the principle of least privilege. Most users do not need administrator rights, and administrators should use separate accounts for administrative work rather than browsing the web while logged in as a domain admin. #### 4. Take the firewall seriously A firewall that was configured once at installation and never revisited is a liability with a green light on it. Review the rule set. Look for rules added temporarily for a project that ended two years ago, remote desktop exposed directly to the internet, and any-to-any rules that were meant as a troubleshooting step. A properly managed firewall does more than allow and deny ports. It inspects traffic, blocks known malicious destinations, and logs enough to reconstruct what happened after an incident. Those logs are worth little if nobody reviews them, which is why monitoring belongs with the firewall rather than as an afterthought. #### 5. Segment the network A flat network means anything that reaches one device can reach everything. Segmentation limits the damage. At minimum, separate guest wireless from your business network. Beyond that, put point-of-sale systems, surveillance cameras, access control panels, building automation, and other operational technology on their own segments. Internet-connected cameras and controllers are frequently shipped with weak default credentials and rarely updated, which makes them a common foothold. There is no reason a camera should be able to reach the accounting server. For businesses subject to PCI requirements, segmentation is also what keeps the scope of an audit manageable. #### 6. Deploy endpoint detection and response Traditional antivirus matches known signatures. Modern attacks routinely evade it. Endpoint detection and response watches behavior instead, flagging the patterns that precede an incident, such as a process encrypting files rapidly or credential dumping tools running on a workstation. The important part is that alerts reach someone who acts on them. An EDR console nobody watches is a record of what happened, not a defense. This is where 24x7 monitoring earns its cost, since attacks are disproportionately launched outside business hours, on weekends, and during holidays. #### 7. Treat email as the primary attack surface Phishing remains the most common initial access method, and business email compromise causes more direct financial loss than ransomware for many organizations. Implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC so that your domain is harder to spoof. Filter attachments and links. Then train staff, with real examples and with simulated phishing rather than a once-a-year video. Add a procedural control that technology cannot provide: require verbal verification through a known phone number for any change to payment details or any unusual wire request. The most expensive incidents at small businesses frequently involve no malware at all, just a convincing email about an updated bank account. #### 8. Back it up, offsite and out of reach Ransomware operators target backups first. A backup that a compromised administrator account can delete is not a recovery plan. Keep three copies of your data on two types of media with one offsite, and ensure at least one copy is immutable or otherwise isolated from your production credentials. Then test restores on a schedule, because untested backups are assumptions. Time the restore and compare it to how long your business can actually tolerate being down. #### 9. Secure the physical side too Network security stops at the door of an unlocked server closet. Physical and digital security fail together more often than most plans acknowledge. Control access to network equipment rooms, and log it. Use access control rather than keys where staff turnover makes rekeying impractical, since a credential can be revoked in seconds and a copied key cannot. Position cameras to cover entrances, equipment areas, and points of sale, and confirm that recordings are retained long enough to be useful and stored somewhere an intruder cannot simply carry out of the building. Cameras and access control are IP devices on your network, which brings this back to inventory, patching, credentials, and segmentation. Designing physical and network security together avoids the common outcome where a surveillance install quietly introduces the weakest devices on the network. #### 10. Write the incident response plan before you need it Decide in advance who declares an incident, who is called first, how staff are notified when email is unavailable, when legal counsel and insurers are contacted, and what your notification obligations are under applicable regulation. Keep a printed copy, because a plan stored only on the affected network is not available during an incident. #### Where to start If this list feels long, start with the three controls that block the most common attacks: multi-factor authentication everywhere it is supported, patching on a defined schedule, and tested offsite backups. Those three address a large share of real-world incidents at small businesses. Silver Star Telecom designs, installs, and manages network and physical security together for businesses across Oregon and Washington, including managed firewalls, 24x7x365 monitoring with threat detection and endpoint detection and response, patch management, offsite backup, surveillance, and access control, with HIPAA and PCI compliance certifications behind the work. For a review of your current posture, call (360) 524-7498 or email sales@silverstartelecom.com. ### FCC Network Modernization: What the Copper-to-IP Transition Means for Your Organization URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/fcc-copper-to-ip-transition Published: 2026-09-03 For decades, traditional copper telephone lines formed the backbone of communications across the United States. They carried everything from everyday phone calls to fax machines, alarm systems, elevator phones, emergency lines, and other critical services. That infrastructure is steadily being replaced. The Federal Communications Commission has been overseeing the industry's transition from traditional time-division multiplexed (TDM) networks and copper facilities toward modern Internet Protocol (IP), fiber, and other next-generation technologies. The FCC describes this as a nationwide, multi-step transition with implications for consumers, businesses, public safety, competition, and emergency communications. For businesses, municipalities, schools, healthcare facilities, and other organizations, the important question is no longer whether telecommunications networks will modernize. It is whether your organization is prepared when the infrastructure supporting an older service changes. Why are copper networks being retired? Traditional copper networks were built primarily to provide analog telephone service. While they proved extraordinarily reliable for decades, the communications environment has changed dramatically. Organizations today rely on high-speed internet, cloud applications, hosted voice, video conferencing, remote access, and connected security systems that simply were not contemplated when much of the traditional telephone network was constructed. Fiber and IP-based networks support significantly broader capabilities while allowing providers to consolidate infrastructure that would otherwise require maintaining separate generations of technology. In March 2026, the FCC adopted additional reforms intended to accelerate network modernization. Among other changes, the Commission streamlined certain technology-transition and service-discontinuance procedures and reduced regulatory requirements associated with maintaining and changing legacy networks. The FCC said its objective was to make it easier for providers to invest in modern, high-speed networks while retaining protections for consumers and public safety, including continuity of 911 services. For organizations still dependent on legacy infrastructure, that makes planning increasingly important. A 'phone line' may be supporting more than your phones. One of the biggest challenges with network modernization is identifying everything still connected to traditional telephone infrastructure. An organization may have moved its primary business phones to a hosted or IP-based platform years ago while still maintaining analog or legacy lines for specialized systems. Those systems can include fire and security alarm panels, elevator emergency phones, building entry and intercom systems, fax machines, modems and telemetry equipment, gate and door access systems, emergency or backup phones, point-of-sale or specialized business equipment, and older equipment that communicates through an analog modem. That means seeing a few analog-line charges on a telecommunications bill and simply cancelling them can create an entirely different problem. Before changing or eliminating a legacy service, organizations should determine what is actually connected to every line and whether that equipment is compatible with the proposed replacement service. The FCC has long identified interoperability with important applications, including 911 and alarm-related systems, as a key consideration during technology transitions. There is no reason to wait for a last-minute notice. The copper-to-IP transition is not a single nationwide event where every traditional telephone line stops working on the same date. It is happening network by network, market by market, and service by service. However, the overall direction is clear. The FCC's 2026 modernization order is specifically intended to remove barriers that can slow the retirement of aging infrastructure. The final rule was published in April 2026, with major portions becoming effective beginning May 20, 2026. That makes a proactive inventory significantly better than waiting until a carrier announces a change affecting a particular location. What should businesses and government organizations do now? A good modernization plan starts with understanding the current environment. First, inventory your existing telecommunications services: traditional analog lines, PRI or other legacy voice services, internet circuits, SIP trunks, hosted voice, and any specialty connections at each location. Second, determine what every legacy line supports. Do not assume an unfamiliar phone number is unused. Trace lines to alarms, elevators, fax machines, access systems, emergency devices, or other equipment before making changes. Third, verify equipment compatibility. Some older equipment was designed specifically for traditional analog telephone networks. Moving the underlying connection to IP, fiber, or wireless technology may require new equipment, an adapter, configuration changes, or a different communications solution. Fourth, review power and network resiliency. Traditional copper telephone service and modern IP-based communications do not necessarily behave the same way during a power or internet outage. Critical applications should be designed with appropriate backup power, secondary connectivity, failover, and disaster-routing capabilities. Fifth, develop a migration plan before you are forced to make one. Planning ahead provides time to test replacement services, coordinate vendors, budget for equipment changes, and migrate individual systems without disrupting operations. Modernization is an opportunity, not just a requirement. Moving away from legacy infrastructure can also be a chance to simplify an organization's communications environment. Instead of maintaining separate providers and aging technologies for internet, voice, connectivity, and backup services, organizations can increasingly design these systems as part of a coordinated network. Silver Star Telecom provides businesses and government organizations with business fiber, Hosted Voice, SIP and PRI trunking, analog lines, Metro Ethernet, managed network services, structured cabling, and LTE/5G backup connectivity. That allows organizations to address legacy requirements while building toward a more modern communications environment. The right answer is not necessarily to replace every analog service immediately. It is to understand what you have, what your organization actually requires, and how each service fits into a longer-term network strategy. The FCC's technology-transition policies make one thing increasingly clear: America's communications infrastructure is moving toward modern, IP-based networks. Organizations that plan ahead can make that transition on their own timeline instead of reacting to a carrier notice, equipment failure, or unexpected service change. Silver Star Telecom can review your existing voice and network services, identify legacy dependencies, and help develop a practical migration strategy. Contact us today for a free account review. ### How SD-WAN Keeps Business Apps Online When a Circuit Fails URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/sd-wan-keeps-business-online Published: 2026-06-24 Most businesses have learned the hard way that a second internet circuit does not automatically mean resilience. If the primary connection fails and someone still has to unplug cables, update routes, or tell users to switch networks, the backup path is only partly solving the problem. SD-WAN changes that by watching the available connections and steering traffic according to business policy. Voice, video, payment systems, cloud apps, and general web browsing do not all need to be treated the same. The network can prioritize the applications that matter most and move them to the healthiest path when conditions change. That matters for offices with fiber plus broadband backup, multi-site operations, and teams that rely on cloud software all day. Instead of waiting for users to report a slowdown, SD-WAN can detect packet loss, latency, or outage conditions and shift traffic before the problem spreads across the workday. The planning still matters. A good SD-WAN design starts with knowing which applications are critical, which sites need redundancy, what circuits are available, and how security policies should follow users and traffic across paths. For many businesses, SD-WAN is the difference between having a backup connection on paper and having a network that actively keeps people working when a carrier, circuit, or site has a bad day. ### Planning Structured Cabling Before an Office Buildout URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/structured-cabling-office-buildout Published: 2026-06-17 Structured cabling is easy to overlook during a move, remodel, or buildout because it disappears behind walls and ceilings. But once the office is open, every access point, camera, phone, workstation, display, and conference room depends on those runs being in the right place. A useful cabling plan starts with the way the space will actually be used. How many people will sit in each area? Where will phones, printers, conference systems, cameras, access control, and WiFi access points live? Which rooms may change later? The answers affect cable counts, pathways, closet sizing, and labeling. Documentation is just as important as the pull itself. Clean labels, tested drops, patch panel organization, and as-built notes turn future troubleshooting from guesswork into a quick check. Without that, even a small move or new device can become a hunt through mystery cables. It is also worth planning for headroom. Pulling one more cable while the ceiling is open is inexpensive compared with coming back months later after furniture, people, and finished walls are in place. The goal is simple: a cabling foundation that supports today's network cleanly and leaves room for the next camera, access point, desk move, or bandwidth upgrade. ### Business Security Cameras and Access Control: What to Plan First URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/business-security-access-control-planning Published: 2026-06-10 Buying cameras and card readers is the easy part. The harder and more important work is deciding what the system needs to prove, protect, and simplify for the people running the business. Start with coverage. Entrances, reception areas, loading zones, parking areas, restricted rooms, and cash or inventory locations may all need different camera angles and retention requirements. A camera mounted in the wrong spot can miss the moment you installed it to capture. Access control needs the same planning. Who should enter which doors, during what hours, and how quickly can access be changed when an employee, vendor, or tenant relationship changes? Those rules should be clear before hardware is installed. Connectivity is often the piece that gets overlooked. Cameras, recorders, controllers, and remote viewing all rely on the network. If the connection is unstable or the cabling is messy, security tools become harder to trust and harder to support. A well-planned system brings physical security and network design together: clean cabling, reliable connectivity, useful coverage, and access policies that match how the facility actually operates. ### Fiber vs. Cable for Business: What Actually Matters URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/fiber-vs-cable-for-business Published: 2026-05-12 Most business internet decisions come down to a single number on a sales sheet: download speed. But for a company running on the cloud, that number hides the things that actually determine whether your connection helps or hurts. The first is symmetry. Cable connections are asymmetrical, fast down, slow up. The moment your team starts backing up to the cloud, hosting video calls, or running VoIP, that thin upload path becomes the bottleneck. Fiber is symmetrical: upload is as fast as download. The second is the service-level agreement. Consumer and cable plans are best-effort, with no committed uptime and no real support path when something breaks. Business fiber comes with an SLA, written commitments on uptime, latency, and response time, because for a business, downtime is lost revenue, not just inconvenience. If your business depends on the internet to operate, the right question isn't 'how many megabits?' It's 'is this connection symmetrical, supported, and accountable?' That's the difference fiber makes. ### Why Multi-Site Businesses Move to Hosted Voice URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/multi-site-hosted-voice Published: 2026-04-03 Running phones across five offices the old way meant five PBXs, five sets of maintenance contracts, and a dial plan stitched together by hand. Every move, add, or change was a service call. Hosted Voice collapses all of that into one cloud system. With Hosted Voice, every location shares the same dial plan, the same features, and the same management. An employee in one office can transfer a call to another site as if they were in the next room. Remote and hybrid staff get the exact same phone experience from home. Just as important, the cost becomes predictable. Instead of capital outlays for hardware at each site and surprise repair bills, you pay a flat monthly rate per user, and changes happen in software. For multi-site businesses, the move to Hosted Voice isn't just a phone upgrade, it's turning a fragmented, hardware-heavy system into a single, manageable, and far more flexible one. ### Managed Services: When It's Time to Hand Off the Network URL: https://www.silverstartelecom.com/insights/managed-services-when-to-hand-off Published: 2026-03-18 Most growing businesses don't decide to outsource their network, they hit a wall. The wall looks different for everyone, but the signs are consistent. You're spending more time fighting fires than improving things. Security patches slip because nobody owns them. A single person holds all the knowledge about how the network is wired, and you'd be in trouble if they left. Backups exist, but nobody has tested a restore in a year. Managed services exist for exactly this moment. Instead of stretching a lean team across networking, security, backup, and connectivity, you hand the infrastructure to engineers who do it all day, with 24/7 monitoring, proactive patching, and one accountable point of contact. The goal isn't to replace your team; it's to extend it, so your people focus on the work that moves the business while the network simply runs. If the signs above sound familiar, it's worth a conversation.