No Luck Returning Christmas Gifts? Recycle!

The holiday whirlwind is subsiding. Most of the wrapping paper has been rounded up and set out at the curb in a bulging plastic bag. What’s left is a pile of stuff under the tree that needs to go somewhere. Not the decorations, mind you. They have a box in the basement. It’s all those new gifts that loving friends and family showered upon you this year. You didn’t have the heart to tell them that you already have a smartphone or game console or MP3 player or navigation device or even a laptop computer that’s better than the new one in the box. Now what?

The week after Christmas is traditional for schlepping gifts back to the store from which they came. Another item or, better yet, a cash refund is your reward for standing in long lines to present your paperwork for inspection.

Oh, no. You have no paperwork. These gifts did not come with a refund register slip. The giver never thought of that or was so sure they were giving you the gift of a lifetime that you wouldn’t consider exchanging it for something else. Are you going to tell Aunt Millie, your mom or your bosses boss that you really don’t want that electronic whatever?

Save yourself the embarrassment and the standing in lines. There’s a much easier and more discrete way to unload a Christmas burden... er... gift. Just go ahead and recycle it.

What? Stick that new e-reader in the curbside recycling bin? That’s nuts!

Of course it is. I’m not talking about trashing a valuable piece of new electronic or photographic gear. What I’m suggesting is that you quickly and easily sell your new, but unwanted, stuff for cash to an online recycler. They’ll take care of finding it a new home where it will be wanted and you’ll be all the richer. Best of all, nobody’s going to rat you out to the boss or relatives.

How much can you get? The best way to see is to find your item on the Gazelle website. They maintain an up-to-date database of all the stuff they buy, with an instant online offer. You simply find the item you have to sell, check a few boxes indicating condition and available accessories, and then click a button to get an offer. If you like what you see, you accept the offer and you’ll get a free postage paid shipping box sent to you. Then carefully pack your item in the box, wish it the best for a new life, and drop it off for shipment. Once your item has been received and evaluated, you’ll get a check. It’s that easy.

What sort of gadgets does Gazelle buy? All sorts of cell phones, digital cameras, desktop computers, external drives, tablets, video games, PDAs, calculators, streaming media, e-readers, movies, gaming consoles, LCD monitors, home audio, laptop computers, GPS devices, camera lenses, projectors, MP3 players, camcorders, satellite radios and Blu-Ray players.

You’ll get the most money for new items, but you can also sell used devices of recent vintage in good condition. Cell Phones that have just come out of service are excellent candidates for resale. Sometimes you can get paid a good chunk of change for a cell phone that you got free from your provider. It’s well worth your while to check offers for every piece of qualified gear that you have around the house or office.

Now that you know how to convert gifts to cash the easy and discrete way, go ahead and get all that unwanted but valuable stuff out of your way before you have to find a place to store it. Once you have cashed-in unwanted gifts, you can look the givers in the eye and honestly say that you wound up with exactly what you wanted.

Add International Capability To Your Cell Phone

The move from landlines to wireless phones is picking up steam. That offers an opportunity for mobile professionals to always be able to connect with prospects, customers and suppliers. One limitation, though, is that cell phone plans tend to exclude international calls or impose rates that make international long distance service impractical. Is there a solution?

There is a terrific solution in the form of a third party add-on service that integrates seamlessly with whatever cellular service you have now. Technically, it’s called international dial-around. You are not changing providers. Instead, you use the dial-around service to literally “dial around” your current cellular service when you need to make overseas calls from the US and Canada.

TEL3Advantage is a leader in the international dial-around space. Take one look at the per minute rates to the destination of your choice and you’ll see why. Let’s just choose to call China, for instance. The Flex Plan rate is 1.32 cents per minute. You read that correctly. It’s cheaper to call your contacts in China using Tel3Advantage than it is to call another city with most landline long distance services. Actually, this service will work just as well from a landline as a cell phone, so it makes sense to get Tel3Advantage and use it from all your phones.

By the way, you can call China for 30 days at just a penny a minute using the special Promo Plan when you sign up for Tel3Advantage service. Compare quality and service with your current long distance service or the calling cards you get at the convenience store. You’ll be so impressed by the calling rates, connection quality and customer service that you’ll gladly continue after the 30 day introductory period is over.

Give it a fair test. The stated rates are impressive enough. But note that there are no hidden fees involved like you run into with prepaid calling cards. Did you know that you almost never get the stated rate from a calling card? There are connection fees, inactivity fees and so on that reduce the number of actual minutes you get for your dollar. The true rate is often several times what’s printed on the face of the card when you actually start making calls. With Tel3Advantage you’ll pay the stated per-minute rates. You only get charged extra for calls from a payphone, if you can even find one anymore, or if you call from Alaska, Hawaii or US territories beyond the 48 continuous states.

Also note that your cellular provider will probably charge you minutes for the time spent calling through Tel3Advantage unless you are making calls during the free nights or weekends provision of your plan. That’s probably not important for most users, since you are paying for a bundle of minutes per month anyway. It can be a consideration for pre-paid cellular plans. Even so, just where are you going to get cheaper international rates even including the per minute charges of a pre-paid cell plan?

So, how does this service actually work? It’s pretty easy. You dial a local or toll free access number to reach the Tel3Advantage platform. Then you dial the international number you want to reach. There are no long PIN numbers to remember. You register your phone numbers with Tel3 and the system recognizes your phone when you call. You can avoid even dialing the access number yourself by downloading a TEL3App for your iPhone or smartphone. Then it’s no harder to make an international call than to place a call to a business across town.

Do you have a need to make low cost international calls from a landline phone, a cell phone or both? If so, learn more, compare rates and check out additional free minute offers for TEL3Advantage International Calling Service.

Note: Globe image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Easy Way To Host Lots Of Domains

With more and more businesses moving online, companies are finding that one domain name is no longer adequate. You may very well want an individual domain name for each product line you offer. Online marketers will definitely find themselves constructing separate web sites to be fine tuned for each type of product sold or even each demographic group being targeted. The problem then becomes how to host all those domains.

The traditional difficult and expensive hosting solution is to buy a separate hosting service for each domain you register. Even at $5 to $10 per month each, that can get expensive for smaller businesses and independent marketing people. If all you have is a few domain names and that’s all you ever expect to need, then go ahead and add hosting services at the same time you buy your domains. For only a few domains it won't get that pricey and you'll avoid paying for a large hosting account that you’ll never need.

So how can you host a dozen or more domains without breaking the bank? One approach that is often touted for this purpose is to start with a single hosting account and then purchase “add on” domain hosting. Usually for a couple of bucks a month each, the hosting service will program their servers to allow you to have an additional domain on your shared hosting service. The way this works is that a separate folder is created within your public HTML hosting space where you put the files for this extra site. It’s just like any other folder, except that the system knows to direct the visitor to those files for the “add on” domain. As you add more domains, you add more and more folders.

I’ve used this approach and, while it works, you still have only one control panel and one htaccess file to cover all domains. Frankly, I much prefer the flexibility and independence of giving each domain its own cPanel and being able to allocate storage and bandwidth quotas depending on the size and traffic for each site. You’ll really appreciate this if you need to do some experimenting during development of a brand new site and don’t want to risk affecting the operation of your existing sites.

Does this mean you need to stick with individual hosting plans for each domain to decouple them? No, not at all. The solution you want is called reseller hosting. It was intended for Internet development businesses that support many clients and want to give each of them their own separate account. With a reseller account, you can create web sites for many businesses and then let them make their own updates, confident that one customer can’t do anything to damage the site of another customer. You can also use reseller hosting to rebrand the hosting plan so you can sell hosting accounts to your customers.

The name “reseller” pretty much describes a service that is intended to be split into smaller accounts and resold at a profit. You can also keep all of the accounts for yourself and treat each web site you construct as if it were for a separate customer. The difference is that you personally maintain all the sites by logging into a separate control panel for each site. You also get a master control panel called the WHM or Web Host Manager to create, upgrade and delete all those individual sites.

Why would you want to buy something for your own use that is designed to be resold? Simple. The price is right. For instance, You can get a HostGator reseller web hosting account for $24.95 a month. That gives you 50 GB of disk space and 500 GB of bandwidth to host unlimited domains.

You read that correctly. You can host all the domains that will fit into your reseller account for $24.95 a month. Let’s say that you want to host 25 sites on your account. You can assign each site 2 GB of storage and 20 GB of monthly bandwidth. The cost spread across all sites comes to $1 per site for hosting. Just where are you going to get professional grade web hosting with free website templates, free site builder software, unlimited MySQL Databases, unlimited sub domains, and unlimited POP 3 email accounts for a buck a month per site?

With the $24.95 per month reseller hosting account, you may find that you can host dozens and dozens of small “mini sites” or affiliate marketing customized sites to support Internet sales. One beauty of this approach is that you can always add another site at a whim when a bright idea occurs. Just buy a domain name, set the name servers for that domain to the ones for your reseller hosting, and create an account for your new domain. In a matter of hours or less you can have a completely new site up and running, even in the middle the night. I know, I’ve done it many times to capture a new business opportunity that suddenly emerged.

By the way, you are not limited to 50GB disk & 500 GB bandwidth. If you need more, order a larger reseller account up to 200 GB disk & 1400 GB bandwidth for $99.95 per month. Beyond that, you may ready to move up to virtual private hosting or a completely dedicated server. All of these are available and fully explained at HostGator.

Note: Photo of server rack courtesy of William Viker on Wikimedia Commons.

PRI Lines For Domestic Call Centers

Domestic call centers have become a popular option for many companies. These range from in-house customer contact centers to independent call centers that contract for the customer service of other businesses. One thing that is common to all call centers is telephone service. The most popular option in telephone service is PRI lines. Let’s see why.

PRI stands for Primary Rate Interface. It is part of the ISDN or Integrated Services Digital Network specification. ISDN was envisioned as a way for all telephone lines to move from analog to digital. The basic service is called BRI or Basic Rate Interface. It offers two phone lines, a phone line and a 64 Kbps data service or a 128 Kbps data service.

ISDN BRI never took off to become the popular small business and residential service that was intended. What happened is that DSL and Cable broadband emerged to deliver much higher bandwidths. Telephone service has made a major transition to cell phones and VoIP. Even so, BRI is still popular, where available, for radio station remote broadcasts & interviews.

ISDN PRI, the big brother to BRI, is now the most popular way to connect to a PBX telephone system for businesses and other organizations. As a digital phone service it is configured into 23 separate digital telephone lines plus a data channel for switching and Caller ID.

PRI service is available just about everywhere. That’s because it was designed to ride on a common 24 channel T1 line provisioned on two twisted pair copper wires. Nearly all businesses have bundled twisted pair cables already installed for multi-line telephone service. A couple of extra pairs can easily be put to use to bring in ISDN PRI, also called T1 PRI.

When businesses get to a size where they need 10 or 12 outside phone lines, it generally makes sense to replace all those separate lines with a single ISDN PRI digital trunk. You don’t need to run a PRI at full capacity. You can save money over analog service by using only half the 23 line capacity.

Most call centers can easily use 23 phone lines. So what do you do when you run out of capacity? That’s easy. Just install a second PRI line and get 23 additional outside lines. The PBX phone equipment used to manage those lines for the agents comes with ISDN PRI connectivity already built-in or easily added with a circuit card. Many circuit cards can handle up to 4 PRI lines for a total of 92 outside lines. Larger systems can handle multiple interface cards.

How can those lines be configured? That’s up to you. The lines can be set up to handle any combination of local, long distance, incoming only, outgoing only, incoming & outgoing calls, toll free numbers, and DID or Direct Inward Dialing that gives every phone its own unique number.

The competition to ISDN PRI lines is SIP trunking. Both types of line services will work with either conventional PBX or the newer IP PBX telephone systems. Which is optimum for the call center connectivity you need? Get customized pricing and availability of digital phone line service for your business location so you can make the best decision.

Small Business Merchant Accounts

Are you losing potential business because you don’t accept credit cards? You may think that it is just too expensive and way too complicated to accept credit cards and debit cards in your retail business. It certainly can be if you try to figure it all out for yourself. But if you have the right processing company on your side, it can be a very simple and easy process.

Don’t construe this to mean that the credit card processing procedure is simple. It is anything but that. There are banks, credit card companies, merchant service providers, computer networks and specialized equipment involved. The good news is that you don’t have to worry about any of that arcade detail. It’s all taken care of for you by Elite Processing Systems.

EPS has the knowledge, procedures, financial relationships, equipment and networks needed to make it possible for you to accept credit cards, debit cards and EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) at your point of sale. They’ve been doing this successfully for small businesses like yours for almost a decade. When you become an Elite merchant you’ll get 24 hours US based customer service, individual account management and rate schedules that are customized and competitive.

Any business that wants to accept electronic payments needs what is called a merchant account. That’s how the customer’s payment gets to you. Elite Processing Systems will provide you with that account and everything you need to make it work. But they also offer a lot more in the way of support for your business.

For instance, do you cringe when a customer starts writing out a personal check? Most of them will be perfectly all right, but what about the one’s that aren’t? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get instant verification that the check was good while the customer was still standing there? You can with the Telecheck service provided by Elite. Verify funds electronically at your POS and avoid the traditional four day delay involved in receiving the check, bringing it to the bank and waiting for it to clear. You’ll breathe a lot easier when you have Telecheck working for you.

Do you have trouble securing working capital when you need it? That’s not unusual in these economic times. EPS has a partnership with Merchant Money, Ltd. to make cash advances available to you based on your credit card processing future receivables. It’s linked to your processing account so you never have to write a check and funds are taken back through your credit card sales. Request funds today and have them available tomorrow.

How about other business services that you use regularly, such as payroll and insurance? Elite Processing Systems offers payroll solutions powered by ADP for efficiency and security. Other available services include life insurance, health insurance, disability and simple IRA plans.

Credit Card Processing by Elite Processing Systems a registered ISO/MSP of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. Walnut Creek CA.

Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours. We’ll be back next week with more from Telexplainer.

Metro E Prices Reduced

Metro Ethernet prices have been reduced for business users across the country. Just in time, too, as the economy is poised to start picking up steam in a big way. No need to settle for less bandwidth or lower quality digital services. Metro E is affordable and available the configuration you need.

If you are currently using a limited bandwidth service, you may well benefit from an upgrade to Metro Ethernet. What’s that going cost and what can you get? How about twice the bandwidth for the same money you are spending now?

I don’t blame you for raising an eyebrow. The entire bandwidth game has changed in the last few years. Just as T1 lines became the de-facto digital telecom service for small to medium businesses, Carrier Ethernet was standardized and deployed for metropolitan and long haul networks. Ethernet services are now spreading like wildfire in support of all size businesses.

In a sense, what we have is a changing of the guard. The digital telecom services we’re most familiar with, T1, DS3 and OC3, are actually telephone technologies that have been adapted to carry data packets rather than digitized phone calls. However, what’s deployed on just about every computer network is the Ethernet protocol. It only makes sense to extend that Ethernet protocol into the wide area networks as well.

This is what Metro E is all about. It’s Ethernet that connects your LAN at one location to your LAN at another location across town. If you like, you can set this up for strictly point to point service, called Ethernet Line, or as a multipoint service called Ethernet LAN.

Metro E networks are designed from the ground up for ease of bandwidth provisioning. With T1 lines, for instance, you generally have to settle for increments of 1.5 Mbps and wait for entire new lines to be installed to increase your bandwidth. With Ethernet, you order an Ethernet Port that is capable of a maximum speed. Then you are free to order the level of bandwidth you need for your current applications. If you need to increase your network capacity to meet an increased need, a simple phone call to your service provider is often all you need to have your Ethernet line speed turned up.

Metro Ethernet offers bandwidth options from 1 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps. Popular speeds are 3 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 50 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps. Of course, you can order speeds in-between these levels so you only need pay for what you need. The lower bandwidth options up to 45 Mbps are provisioned on twisted copper pair and called Ethernet over Copper or EoC. High speed Ethernet services are provisioned over fiber optic cable. These range from 45 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps.

Metro E is also popular as an access connection to larger networks. Ethernet dedicated Internet access provides rock-solid bandwidth to the public Internet. MPLS networks and Ethernet are highly compatible. Worldwide Ethernet service using Metro E connected to a large MPLS networks is now readily available.

Don’t forget the price savings. In most situations, your least cost per Mbps or Gbps will be an Ethernet service. Currently, 3 Mbps Ethernet is going for about the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. Even larger savings are available as bandwidths increase. How much can you save? Find out by checking Metro E prices and availability now.



Note: Photo of city lights courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Find A T1 Line For Your Business

You’re not too happy with your digital connectivity options. DSL and Cable services have attractive pricing, but bandwidth varies all over the place and outages don’t seem to get resolved as fast as you’d like. Perhaps you’ve moved to a location beyond the reach of DSL or Cable broadband. Well, there’s Satellite Internet. It has extensive latency by nature, limited bandwidth, and the signal goes out when the weather gets heavy. Are there any better options?

The gold standard for small business wireline services is T1. These lines are available nearly everywhere, offer a rock solid bandwidth with equal speed for both upload and download, are highly reliable and get fast service in the rare event of a problem. They also give you options for secure connection between business locations and digital phone lines for your PBX telephone system that aren’t offered by other types of digital services.

But what about the cost? T1 lines were once the exclusive domain of the telephone companies to connect their switching centers. Later, they were offered to businesses at prices only larger companies could afford. Today, T1 lines are so prolific and there is so much competition between service providers that T1 lines are affordable by nearly all small to medium size businesses that have their own business locations. Home offices and residential users don’t generally qualify for this service.

Let’s have a look at what a T1 line can do for your business and then see how to find providers and prices quickly and easily.

The most popular use for T1 lines today is for dedicated access to the Internet. This is a broadband service that offers 1.5 Mbps for both upload and download. If you need more than that, you can order additional T1 lines and have them bonded together to create one large bandwidth connection.

Note that this is called dedicated access. What that means is that you always have the full bandwidth of the line available for your exclusive use. What many people don’t realize is that DSL and Cable services share their available bandwidth among many subscribers to keep the cost low. Unfortunately, if others are heavily using the Internet your available line speed will slow, sometimes to a crawl. T1 is always available at full bandwidth.

Another configuration for T1 lines is for private point to point connections. This is like having a direct digital wire linking two business locations. There is no connection to the Internet. It’s an empty pipe that is for your exclusive use to upload and download data between locations. This service is particularly popular for linking branch offices to headquarters.

Finally, T1 lines can be ordered in a special configuration called T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. This is a telephone service. A single T1 PRI line can bring in up to 23 separate telephone lines plus Caller ID service. Many call centers, sales offices and medium size office businesses use T1 PRI as a lower cost connection for their PBX telephone systems than bringing in multiple business phone lines.

There is also a special service called Integrated T1 that combines up to 12 telephone lines and broadband Internet service on one T1 line. Small sales offices can often save money by using this service in place of separate telephone and broadband connections.

So, how do you find a T1 line for your business? The best way is to use the Shop For T1 real-time quote engine. It’s an online service that’s available 24/7. You simply enter some basic information about your company and the program will automatically generate a list of T1 line services and their prices for your location. Be sure to specify if you want high speed Internet, dedicated voice service or integrated voice and data by using the drop down menu for service type. If you wish, an expert consultant will be happy to go over the entire range of options available for your location and make recommendations. There’s no charge for this service.

100 Mbps Corporate Ethernet

A new standard connection speed for medium to larger organizations is getting to be 100 Mbps. It may sound like an expensive and unnecessarily large network capacity, but it is actually neither. Fast Ethernet is the new DS3.

For those who remember only a few years ago when a T1 line offering 1.5 Mbps was considered a high bandwidth connection, the notion that 100 Mbps is now the benchmark may be a bit unnerving. A lot has changed over the last decade. Application requirements have increased dramatically. We might have settled for fuzzy slow motion video conferencing when even that was a novelty. Now it’s full motion HD two-way video and telepresence. E-commerce has gone from an add-on service for a bricks and mortar facility to the dominant way that many companies do business. Dynamic interactive web pages with video have replaced low resolution static HTML brochure pages.

There are also many businesses that can’t operate electronically without high bandwidth connections. These include video production, content delivery and medical imaging. It’s 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps... or forget it.

There’s no reason to forget it anymore. High bandwidth services are readily available and lower in cost than you may imagine. That’s the other big change between the start of this decade and the end. Line prices have plummeted as new competitive carriers with the latest network technology have come on the scene. While T-Carrier and SONET may be the entrenched legacy carrier services, Ethernet has become the bandwidth solution of choice. On a Mbps and Gbps basis, Metro Ethernet and Carrier Ethernet solutions are often a fraction of the price demanded for T-Carrier or SONET and a small fraction of standard pricing ten years ago.

Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps makes a lot of sense as a bandwidth requirement for dedicated Internet access or point to point and multipoint connectivity. The standard Ethernet LAN speeds are 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps. In some cases, that’s been increased to 10 Gbps. Many, Many networks have most of their nodes running at 100 Mbps simply because so much equipment has network interface cards standardized at 10/100 Mbps. The big speed bump has been at the edge of the LAN where it connects to the outside world. Fast Ethernet may be more than adequate for internal file transfers. But going from 100 Mbps inside to a 1.5 Mbps T1 line outside can slow traffic to a crawl.

Medium and larger companies have reduced the speed bump by upgrading from T1 to DS3 connections. DS3 offers 45 Mbps, a bandwidth increase of 28x when line overhead is factored in. The new replacement for DS3 is Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps. That’s more than double the bandwidth, a protocol that is directly compatible with corporate LANs, and a cost savings to boot. What’s not to like?

Is your company missing out because you thought that 100 Mbps was beyond your reach? Take a few minutes right now to get 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet prices and availability. You may well be able to get more bandwidth for less than you spend now.



Note: Photo of network switches courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

Ethernet over Copper Is The New Telephone Line

Twisted pair copper has been the standard way to connect telephone service for over 100 years. Guess what the latest in telephone line technology is? Why, it’s twisted pair copper!

You might see this as an example of “everything old is new again,” but this technology is a twist on the old twisted pair. While analog signals defined telephony in its first century, digital will rule the next century. What remains the same is the actual physical copper wireline.

Why does this make sense in an age of fiber optic communications? It’s a matter of economics. If we were made out of money, the thing to do would be to rip up all that copper in the ground and replace it with unlimited bandwidth glass fibers. But we’re not made of money and it turns out that voice-grade copper line has far more capability that we ever thought possible.

When we think of the copper phone wires that come into our homes and businesses, we think of telephone handsets for talking and 56 Kbps modems for our computers. That was last century’s technology. By switching from analog to digital transmission, you can have business grade telephone service and broadband up to 20 Mbps on those same copper phone lines.

How is this different from DSL? DSL is actually a hybrid of analog telephony with digital data sharing the same line at frequencies beyond the range of human hearing. It’s a way for residential and small business users to add broadband Internet service to their existing phone line. As a "best effort" information service, DSL was designed to optimize cost and has some well known performance and availability issues.

This is something different. It is based on Ethernet over Copper technology that bonds multiple dry copper pair to deliver a highly reliable and solid bandwidth all-digital signal to business locations only. It’s not a residential service. It’s intended for businesses that require a robust voice and data service similar to what they may be getting from an Integrated T1 line.

TelePacific, a major competitive carrier serving California and Nevada, calls their service SmartVoice. It’s an enterprise VoIP telephone service using SIP signaling. This voice service is combined with either dedicated broadband Internet access or MPLS network service. You would choose broadband to have both telephone and Internet brought in on the same line. You’d choose MPLS to link multiple business locations for both telephone and data exchange.

TelePacific maintains high voice quality by dynamically integrating the voice and data traffic on the line. Lower grade VoIP services simply use a broadband line for both telephone and computers. When data traffic gets high, voice quality suffers and calls can even be dropped. Dynamic line service actively manages packet priority so that telephone calls have priority and get the bandwidth they need for best operation. The remaining line bandwidth is assigned to data transmission. You are far less likely to notice or be annoyed by small variation in data rates than garbled and broken conversations. Once a phone call is finished, the bandwidth it had been using is reassigned automatically to the bandwidth pool for data. That’s the dynamic aspect to the technology.

What advantages does Ethernet over Copper have over the older Integrated T1 line service? Lower cost is one big advantage. EoC is lower in cost and offers more bandwidth options. You can typically get 1 to 20 Mbps bandwidth with EoC. T1 lines are fixed at 1.5 Mbps, although they can be bonded to deliver higher speeds.

Is Ethernet over Copper voice or data service the best cost/performance option for your company? You may be missing out on a major cost savings, so check Ethernet over Copper prices and availability now.



Photo of Thomas Edison courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Pick Unlimited Toll Free Numbers

You know that having a toll free number is good for business. In fact, it’s so good for business that customer calls can start flooding in once you’ve gotten the word out that people can call you for free. Now, if you could just protect yourself against the cost of that onslaught. Wait! You can.

The service you want is unlimited toll free numbers. By unlimited, I mean you pay one small price per month for the complete sophisticated toll free service. No ugly surprises on your credit card. Within the limits of fair use, your toll free service is one flat rate and that’s that.

Well, you actually get a lot more than simply the peace of mind that comes from knowing what your toll free bill will be each month. This unlimited toll free service has over 30 features that you might think would cost extra. Not with iTeleCenter unlimited toll free numbers. Their toll free service offers an auto attendant or main greeting feature so you don’t need to hire a receptionist to screen your calls. You not only get voicemail, but voicemail messages sent to email or text to your cell phone. You also get online faxing and follow me call forwarding. Plus there are 30 other calling features, too.

Don’t these features sound like something you’d expect to pay big bucks for with a sophisticated business phone system? Yes they do. What’s more, with most phone services you have to pay extra for a toll free number and then pay extra per minute for every call you receive. Outrageous! That’s yesterday’s telecom service. Today’s service is one flat monthly rate that includes all phone services plus the toll free number of your choice.

Yes, you get to select your toll free number from an inventory of 800, 866, 877 and 888 numbers that are all set up and ready to use. Other companies expect you to wait for days or weeks while they do their job of preparing a toll free number of their choice for your use. Forget that. You pick the number using the handy number search box (like the screen shot shown on this page) and then proceed to grab it for your exclusive use. How long does that take? Just a few minutes. The entire process is automated online and available 24/7. If you want toll free service at 3 in the morning, go right ahead and get it. They’re always open for business.

What you get with this unlimited toll free number service is pretty amazing. What you don’t have to deal with is equally impressive. You don’t get stuck paying per minute charges for your incoming toll free calls. They’re all included in the low monthly rate. You don’t pay any activation fees. Those can be substantial with other services and you may not even find out about them until you are ready to check out. There are no extra fees for any of the calling features - they are all included. There are no surcharges or hidden fees, either.

Sounds pretty good, but you’re still not sure? What would you say if I told you that there are no contracts involved. What if it were so completely risk free that you can try it for free? That’s right. You can start your 14 day free trial right now. Give it a good shakedown and then decide if this unlimited toll free number service is right for your business. Chances are that you’ll like it so much that you’ll never shop around again.

I’ve saved the best for last. This impressive service is just $49 per month for unlimited calls. Yes, that low rate plus NO contracts to sign and a 14 day FREE trial just to make sure you’re happy. Would you like to get started right now? Go ahead, choose your number, get complete terms and start your unlimited toll free service free trial now.

MPLS Network Services

Wide area networks are almost a utility service for businesses today. You can’t get much done without broadband connectivity and the ability to securely transfer information between business locations. Do you really want to go back to FAX messages and overnight mail to conduct business? On the other hand, can you afford to do everything you need to do electronically? You can with the right WAN connections.

The idea behind MPLS networks is the ability to send anything, anywhere, anytime without in any way affecting the voice, video or data involved. Many networks can’t do this very well. Take the Internet, for example. It definitely lets you connect to anybody, anywhere on Earth. How robust that connection is and how transparent it is to the packets that traverse it is another matter.

The whole reason for using TCP/IP to transmit data is to ensure that what you send gets delivered intact at the other end. It won’t necessarily happen on the first attempt. If is doesn’t work, TCP gives it another try. Eventually, everything you need to recreate a file on the far end that exactly matches the one that was sent arrives and can be re-assembled in order.

Time sensitive transmissions, such as interactive voice and video, may not fare so well. Just about any little upset causes them to glitch noticeably. Video may pixelate. Audio starts to distort and break up. As delays in transmission time mount, it may be hard to maintain an interactive conversation. You just don’t know when the other person will start speaking.

Little wonder that companies tend to stick with legacy technologies, like analog voice, that they know work, or create their own proprietary and very pricy internal networks. At least when you build it yourself, you have some control of the results.

The high cost and labor intensive nature of private networks combined with the flakiness of the public Internet is what makes MPLS networks shine. An MPLS network is a carefully engineered and managed wide area network for hire. MPLS networks have a regional, national or international footprint. You connect each of your locations to the network through an access connection, which may be anything from a T1 line or ISDN PRI, to a DS3, SONET/SDH, or an Ethernet over copper or fiber service.

MPLS networks are often referred to as “cloud” networks. You connect to and from the cloud, but don’t have to worry about managing the internals of the network. What’s happening inside the MPLS cloud is that special tags are added to your packets as they enter the network and removed when they leave. While on the network, those tags are used to route your packets from source to destination. The actual content of your packets is not disturbed in the process.

The MPLS network itself has to be transparent to all the traffic flowing through it. That means having adequate bandwidth available to support all users. MPLS supports all types of traffic, including IP data transfers, VoIP telephony, ISDN PRI telephony, video conferencing, video streaming and so on. You can specify the quality of service characteristic for each of your packets and the network will ensure that you have the bandwidth, jitter, latency and packet loss characteristics to support that quality. The MP in MPLS stands for Multi-Protocol, and that’s exactly what it is.

MPLS networks have largely replaced Frame Relay networks, a lower speed & less sophisticated approach to the same service. They are also replacing proprietary corporate networks constructed from multiple point to point line services. When it comes to connections that span the country and even reach out to international destinations, MPLS networks offer significant cost savings while maintaing high quality of service.

Do MPLS Networks make sense for your operation? Find out by checking the cost and availability of MPLS Network Services. Then compare price, effort and quality with what you are doing now to make the best decision.

Colocation vs Cloud Services

The classic make/buy decision revolves around doing things in-house versus outsourcing. For IT managers, this has often come down to a comparison between running an in-house data center and moving everything to a colocation facility. Now there’s a third wrinkle. It’s the cloud.

Both colocation and cloud services have the similarity of being purchased from outside vendors. To the end user, the difference may be trivial. But to someone close to the situation there is a world of difference between colocation and the cloud. Or, is there?

The advantage of colocation facilities is that they provide a physical environment optimized for information technology needs. The colo center is a robust building with rack space all set up with power and cooling. It’s the same support system you would install yourself to support your servers and other data center equipment. You’ll need backup power, of course, fire suppression and physical security. You can’t afford to turn your back on expensive, demanding and possibly temperamental systems, so you need technical staff on duty or nearby. Then there’s the matter of bandwidth connections.

One factor driving many companies to colocation facilities is the need for far greater levels of bandwidth than are available at their current location. This is especially true in smaller towns and rural areas. You need fiber optic services and the best you get is bonded T1. But move to a colo and you’ll be surrounded by carriers who have points of presence in-house and within an easy drop of your equipment cage. You can get all the bandwidth you need, virtually on demand, and at lower prices than you’ll find locally. Why move the whole company when you can simply move a few racks of gear and meet your requirements?

This is the territory that is also now being served by the cloud. The “cloud” is a nebulous (pun intended) term for outsourced information technology services owned and operated by a third party. With a colo center you buy a server and ship it to the colocation operator. In some cases, you rent a server and perhaps the tech support to manage it. But you are responsible for the applications software and operation of the system. When you buy from the cloud, you don’t worry about hardware or software. You are simply purchasing a service. The mechanics behind how that service operates belongs to the cloud service provider.

What can you get from the cloud? Perhaps a specific service. Perhaps everything you need to run your business. This is a new field exhibiting the rapid growth that typifies introduction of a disruptive technology. Buy supercomputing in the cloud when you can’t justify or afford full-time use of a supercomputer on-premises. Get all your office applications through the cloud and say goodbye to software patches and upgrades, not to mention racks of servers in the back room. Perhaps all you need is cloud networking to create a worldwide converged voice and data network for your international business.

What’s best for your business? The answer will very specific to your needs. Perhaps all three approaches will work, but one will have a superior cost/performance characteristic for what you are doing right now. Want some help getting the numbers together? Get quotes for colocation and cloud networking services quickly and easily. Then work through the options and pick what’s optimum for your business.



Note: Photo of clouds and building courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Moving on From SONET To Ethernet

Technology change is something we’re all familiar with. Every year, there’s a new bevy of cell phone models that make the old ones look tired and obsolete. Tablets are moving into to take over from netbooks even before netbooks completed taking over from laptop computers. It’s only in the staid world of telecommunications that technology time stands still... or does it?

Actually, there’s been a revolution brewing in telecom for decades. It’s all about move from circuit switching to packet switching technologies. Circuit switching got established from the days of Alexander Graham Bell and only became more entrenched as capital investment in central office switches and digital transmission equipment accumulated.

So, what’s wrong with circuit switching? Technically, nothing. It’s a mature technology honed by a century of refinement. So what’s the motivation to move away from a sure thing?

It’s all about computer networks and especially the Internet. While once there were many architectures and protocols, now the lion’s share is Ethernet. Except for a few special situations that still benefit from non-IP network designs, everything is supporting Ethernet. The economy of scale in manufacturing has operated as a positive feedback loop to ensure that you need a very good reason and deep pockets to select anything but off-the-shelf Ethernet interfaces.

The battlefront is at the interface between LANs and the outside world. It’s Ethernet inside and something else outside. That something else is telecom standardized circuit switched wireline and fiber optics. The need to succeed has made the two compatible through specialized interface hardware and software. But how long will this standoff continue?

Not much longer by the looks of things. Competitive carriers have build their new networks with IP cores rather than adapting traditional SONET fiber optic switched circuit services to transport their Ethernet offerings. SONET/SDH is the high end of circuit switching development and likely the end of the line for this technology path. It has a maturity level and deployment that far exceeds the upstart Carrier Ethernet. Ethernet is the future, SONET is the present and, more and more, the past. At some point, the momentum will switch and the Ethernet takeover will ensue en-masse.

That point may be sooner than any of us think. As evidence, a major competitive carrier, XO Communications, has announced that they are not planning to buy any more SONET moving forward. That’s especially significant since XO is rolling out a major network upgrade over the next few years. This should put a smile on the face of product managers in charge of Ethernet switches, routers, multiplexers and the like. It should have the opposite effect on those planning development and production of SONET equipment. If more carriers follow suit, you’ll see Ethernet lines becoming more robust and SONET heading for end-of-life management.

You can see the handwriting on the wall by comparing Carrier Ethernet line services with their SONET equivalents. On a Mbps and Gbps basis, Ethernet is getting cheaper faster than SONET in most areas. As the price gap widens, IT managers will need more and more justification for choosing SONET over Ethernet. Even if there’s capital investment involved in switching over to all-Ethernet networking, it will increasingly be seen as a smart move.

How about your high bandwidth connections? Could you be benefiting from Carrier Ethernet right now and not realize it? Time is money, so don’t wait any longer to find out. Get Carrier Ethernet service prices and availability now. You, too, may become part of the stampede from SONET to Ethernet.



Note: Fisheye photo of data center courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Ethernet over Copper Rising Rapidly

A combination of improved business conditions and productivity enhancements from automation are nudging, even pulling, companies toward higher bandwidth network connections. Rather than just order more of the same T1 or other line services, savvy managers are taking a fresh look at new technology that offers more bandwidth for less money. What’s the hottest WAN network service of them all? It’s Ethernet over Copper.

Ethernet over Copper, or EoC as it’s called for short, is pretty much what it sounds like. It is an Ethernet line service delivered over ordinary twisted pair copper wiring. That’s the same twisted pair copper that is now bundled into a multi-pair cable and already installed in nearly every business location. Some of those wires are used for multi-line telephone service. Others for T1 or other broadband line service.

What an EoC provider does is lease some of the copper pairs from the incumbent local telephone company that owns them. Just the bare wires are needed without signals of any kind. Then the provider installs special terminal equipment at each end of the circuit. This terminal equipment uses efficient modulation techniques along with interference cancellation technology to get the highest bandwidth possible consistent with maximum reliability.

So what can Ethernet over Copper give you that T1 lines can’t? For one thing, the interface between LAN and WAN is trivial. Since you already have Ethernet running on your local area network, it is directly compatible with an Ethernet service connecting you to the outside world. Just plug the WAN Ethernet service into your edge router and you are connected. There is no need for special CSU/DSU interface cards or other equipment to translate between dissimilar protocols. It’s Ethernet all the way.

T1 lines tend to be provisioned in units of 1.5 Mbps. If you want more bandwidth, you need to install another line. Still need more bandwidth? Then order another line to be bonded-in and wait for it to be installed.

Ethernet bandwidth tends to be highly scalable. Ethernet over Copper service typically starts at 1 to 3 Mbps and goes up to a maximum of 45 Mbps in just about any increment you want. The sweet spot is around 10 Mbps. That’s the bandwidth that many companies desire and it is easily delivered over copper. How much bandwidth you can get at any location depends on how close you are to the provider’s POP or Point of Presence. Nearby, it’s easy to get high bandwidths. A few miles away, you may have limited choices.

Just how hot is Ethernet over Copper. TelePacific, a major competitive service provider, is adding dozens of new Ethernet over copper wire centers by the end of 2011 just to meet the rising demands in its service footprint. High bandwidths up to 1 Gbps will be provided over fiber optic connections.

The rush to EoC is about more than bandwidth. It’s highly influenced by the lower costs that Ethernet services offer. Nationwide, you can typically get 3 Mbps Ethernet for the cost of a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. Cost savings at higher bandwidths are as good or better. The only thing limiting the meteoric rise of Ethernet right now is how fast carriers can deploy the service to every business location.

Could you benefit from the EoC revolution? Find out quickly and easily with a quick cost and availability quote for Ethernet over Copper service.

Sell Your Free Cell Phone For Cash

You were smart about where you bought your new cell phone and got a state-of-the-art smartphone for free with your service order. You didn’t pay more for service because you know those plans are the same price no matter where you get them. It’s the price of the phone that varies from store to store.

Now your contract has expired and it’s a good time to upgrade to a newer model phone. Once again, you want to shop around and get the one you want free or at a deeply discounted price. But, what about that phone that just came off contract? What are you going to do with it?

Most people toss their old cell phones in a drawer, figuring they’re too good to throw in the trash and might be useful someday. We’ll at least they don’t go in the trash. There are materials inside those phones that become toxic when they decay in the environment. But once in the drawer, a cell phone rarely goes back into service. Hey, it was a free phone so who cares? It’s not worth anything, right?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because YOU didn’t pay for the phone doesn’t mean it has a lower value. That marvel of technology may have cost hundreds of dollars to manufacture. You took good care if it and everything works just as well as it did a couple of years ago when it was new. That gadget has residual value that you can extract, once again because you are smart.

Here’s the smart thing to do with a free phone that has just come off of contract. Move as fast as you can to sell your cellphone for cash online. Technology has a limited shelf life. The older it gets, the less it is worth. The very best you can do is sell your unwanted phone immediately after you are done using it. Pocket the cash and use it for whatever you want. After all, you’re getting your new phone free too.

It’s an easy process. All you have to do is look up the particular make and model phone you have, check a few boxes about the condition of the device and what accessories you still have, and request an offer. You’ll get an instant online offer for your phone. If you like what you see, then click through and request a postage paid shipping box so you can send it in at no cost to you. Once your phone has been checked out, you’ll get a check in the mail. Mmmm. Money in the mailbox for something you didn’t pay for. Does it get any sweeter that this?

What about new phones that never went into service? You got a holiday or birthday present from a well-meaning relative, but you have no use for this thing. You don’t want to pay for a contract to put it into service. What to do?

A simple “thank you” will suffice. Then, when you are sure they are not looking, check the value of your gift and send it in for cash. Since it is brand new, it will be worth more than one that’s been used for a year or two and is no longer the latest model. You could be looking at a hundred bucks or more in your pocket if you act quickly.

Here’s another little secret to getting money for stuff you don’t want. Gazelle also offers to buy electronic games, navigation devices, digital cameras, laptop computers and many other recent vintage technology gear. It’s a virtual gold mine right after the flurry of holiday gift giving has subsided. It’s also a way you can regularly get cash for stuff you are upgrading any time of year. Who knew that free electronic gadgets could be worth so much?

What Leased Line Service Providers Offer

Most businesses get their telecommunication services from leased line service providers. That includes telephone, Internet, and point to point line services. You probably have some of these contracts yourself. But do you know about the cost reductions and all of the new services that have become available recently?

The nature of telecommunications services has changed dramatically in recent years. The two biggest changes are cost savings that come from a flurry of new competitive service providers and the introduction of new technologies that offer additional services.

You can still get most of the telecom services that were available a decade or so ago. The most popular line service is T-carrier, especially the T1 line. T1 is a telephone company technology and comes in several flavors. The original use was a digital trunk to carry multiple phone calls between telco switching centers or into a multi-line business phone system. An upgraded version of the T1 telephone line is called T1 PRI or ISDN PRI. It gives you up to 23 outside phone lines plus a data channel for dialing, switching and Caller ID. Nearly every PBX phone system and many key telephone systems can be easily configured to use T1 PRI.

Another use for T1 lines is to provide point to point connectivity between two business locations. A point to point T1 line offers 1.5 Mbps in both directions simultaneously. If you need more bandwidth than this, you can get bonded T1 service that combines multiple T1 lines up to about 10 or 12 Mbps total.

A related service is the T1 access line. This is a last mile connection to a larger network. At one time, the larger network was called Frame Relay. Nowadays, MPLS networks have taken over this role of connecting business locations on a regional, national or international basis. MPLS networks have the advantages of nearly unlimited bandwidth that can transport just about any voice, data or video protocol.

T1 Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is the choice for broadband Internet access for many smaller businesses. The cost is only a fraction of what it was a decade ago. As a professional grade telecom service, you enjoy a reliability and constant bandwidth not typical of consumer oriented services like DSL and Cable.

The new competition to T1 lines is coming from Carrier Ethernet services, including Metro Ethernet. Like T1, Ethernet is a wireline service. Also like T1, it is delivered on multiple twisted pair copper wiring for lower bandwidth services. That copper wiring is generally already installed for multi-line telephone service. Ethernet offers the same point to point and Internet connections you may be using with T1 lines now. But Ethernet can also give you layer 2 switched network service between several or more locations around town or over a wider area, including overseas offices.

Ethernet is gradually taking over from T1 in metropolitan areas where it is most available. A popular service is 3 Mbps Ethernet for about the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. For more demanding uses, 10 Mbps Ethernet is becoming a popular standard.

Once you get into the higher bandwidths, 45 Mbps and above, fiber optic cabling takes the place of twisted pair copper. DS3 is the T-carrier upgrade to T1. It is now delivered over SONET fiber optic services at 45 Mbps. The Ethernet equivalent is 50 Mbps Ethernet service, although Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps is an industry standard and the speed of many local networks. Like copper-based Ethernet services Ethernet over Fiber tends to offer much lower costs per Mbps than equivalent traditional SONET telecom services.

You should also know that both T1 and Ethernet services have an option to get both telephone and Internet over the same line. Integrated T1 is the legacy wireline service. SIP trunking is the IP service that gives you VoIP telephony and broadband Internet access.

Have you been wondering if you are paying too much for the wireline services you’ve just kept renewing over the years? Find out by getting up to date quotes for both Ethernet and T1 or SONET wireline services from dozens of competitive service providers. The range of services and their current costs may astound you.



Note: Photo of multipair cable courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Is Metro Ethernet Available?

You’re looking to initiate or expand bandwidth for your company. What type of service should you go with? Metro Ethernet is in the news these days. You may have heard that it offers more bandwidth for less money than traditional telecom solutions. But, is Metro Ethernet even available?

There’s a quick way to find out. Use an Ethernet service finder to get a map of the lit buildings near you. What’s a lit building? No, that doesn’t refer to how many lights are on in the offices. It refers to the presence of fiber optic service to that building. Lit means that the service is turned up and active with laser light shining through the fiber. There’s also such a thing as dark fiber, which is just the fiber optic cabling installed but not connected to anything.

Why are lit buildings important? Because those are places where you can get fiber optic service quickly and easily. All the hard work of digging trenches or attaching new fiber cables to utility poles has already been done. It’s just a matter of connecting to an almost limitless supply of bandwidth available through the fiber.

If you are in or can readily move to a lit building you can almost certainly get Metro Ethernet service at an attractive price. You might even decide to share a high bandwidth connection with other tenants to get an even lower price that comes with high volume usage. But what if your building has no fiber optic service yet? Is there any chance you can get Metro E?

There certainly is. If the building next door has fiber coming in, chances are high that you can get the same service. Most of the hard work has been done already in getting fiber strung from the carrier POP (Point of Presence) to the telecom room in the facility. It’s not that big a deal to extend fiber next door. In fact, you may pay little or nothing to get your building lit if you require a reasonable level of bandwidth.

What if there is no fiber anywhere nearby? That’s a little more tricky. It depends on where you are and how much bandwidth you require. You may not realize it, but Ethernet can be delivered on twisted pair copper telco cables as well as fiber. Not every business requires Gbps data pipes. In fact, two of the most popular Metro Ethernet services are 3 Mbps and 10 Mbps. Both of those easily qualify to be brought in on existing copper cable. You can be several miles from the nearest point of presence and still get Ethernet over Copper. Speeds up to 45 Mbps are available, but you’ll need to have a carrier POP much closer for those higher bandwidths.

Is Metro Ethernet available out in the boonies? Probably not. That’s what the “Metro” part implies. Even so, you may be able to get something called EoDS1 or Ethernet over DS1. That services uses T1 lines to bring in Ethernet service. Alternatively, you could simply order a T1 line or multiple bonded T1 lines to meet your bandwidth needs no matter where you are located.

Ready to see if Metro Ethernet is available for you? Simply enter your business address (not for residential locations) in to the Shop For Ethernet WAN Search box and have a look at the map results. You’ll see just how close you are to a lit building. Then get availability and pricing for Ethernet and other telecom services from our Telarus consultants. Your location probably qualifies for more services at lower prices than you expect.

Internet Bandwidth Connections For Business

Internet access can be divided into three categories. Consumer residential broadband, dedicated business bandwidth, and 3G/4G mobile. Mobile broadband serves both individuals and business users. But fixed wireline is either business or consumer, but not truly both.

Why is that? There’s as cost vs performance decision that separates the two. Consumer services, and that includes home based businesses, are not even classified as telecom services. They have a designation as “information services.” What that does is keep them relatively unregulated with few commitments to the customer. In return, costs are kept low so that they are affordable by most households.

Business bandwidth is a regulated telecom service with high performance expectations. Unlike consumer connections, your business line services have a dedicated bandwidth level that is available 100% of the time. You can use that line up to its full capacity without bandwidth caps.

Business bandwidth also tends to be symmetrical. That is, you get the same bandwidth in both directions. An example is 10 x 10 Mbps Ethernet. What that means is that you get 10 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. Contrast that with consumer DSL, Cable and wireless services that favor the download direction by a large margin. That’s because most consumers download far more data than they upload. Business use tends to be more balanced.

Business bandwidth services are designed to be highly reliable. After all, the telecom companies and network carriers use the same line services themselves. Many come with an SLA or Service Level Agreement. That document defines the performance and availability of the line. If it goes down, it gets fast attention from the service provider. Most outages are restored in a matter of hours or less. There is no such commitment for consumer services. It’s a “best effort” arrangement with multi-day outages undesirable but not unknown.

Business Internet bandwidth is also called “dedicated” access. The dedicated term means that you and you alone have use of that much bandwidth. That may seem obvious, but do you realize that consumer broadband services are called “shared” and not dedicated? What the service provider does is purchase a large dedicated line service and then share that bandwidth among the user base. How much bandwidth you have at any given time is a function of how much your neighbors are also using. Bandwidth slowdowns during peak usage times are to be expected. This is why consumer bandwidth is sold as “up to” a certain Mbps.

Popular Internet bandwidth connections for business are T-Carrier, SONET and Ethernet. T-Carrier includes the popular T1 lines that offer 1.5 Mbps bandwidth and are available just about anywhere you can get telephone service. SONET is the big brother of T-Carrier. It is a fiber optic service with designations such as OC-3, OC-12, and OC-48. Ethernet can be provided on either copper or fiber. Ethernet over Copper is available in metropolitan areas at bandwidths up to 45 Mbps. Most popular are 3 Mbps and 10 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. They typically offer more Mbps for your bandwidth dollar, where available. Ethernet over Fiber offers near limitless bandwidth, although 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gbps Ethernet are popular standard line speeds.

Are you frustrated by a poorly performing Internet connection or just want to compare pricing to ensure that you are getting the most for your money? If so, get competitive pricing and availability for business Internet bandwidth services now.