T1 Lines For Wireless Internet Service Providers

Wireless Internet service is becoming more available in both cities and rural areas. A WISP or Wireless Internet Service Provider often has the broadband market to themselves in areas where telephone companies have been slow to add DSL capability and Cable TV companies haven't built-out. This is certainly true of low population density agricultural areas, but is often the case with newer residential subdivisions as well.

Wireless service only needs a tower and digital radio transceiver. It's often more practical than trenching wires to every user, especially for competitive service providers who don't already own the landline infrastructure. A WISP can get Internet to the users, but how does the WISP get connected to the Internet?

The best answer is often a T1 Line or multiple bonded T1 lines. Why? T1 was designed from the beginning to be easy to deploy over long distances. Like DSL, it is provisioned on copper wire pairs. Telephone wires work just fine. You need two pairs, one for upstream or transmit and an independent pair for downstream or receive. This gives you full duplex digital service. Unlike DSL, T1 is a synchronized transmission system that can be regenerated every mile or so. It is also compatible with other tariffed telecommunications services, such as DS3 or OCx. Over long distances, your T1 service might be carried part of the way by optical carrier if that is more cost effective for the provider.

T1 service is almost universal throughout the country. If you can get telephone service to a location, chances are you can also get T1 service. That makes T1 carriers perfect for providing Internet service to remote tower sites, housing subdivisions or farms.

T1 line service runs at 1.5 Mbps. You don't share the Internet feed like you do with DSL or Cable, so you get a full 1.5 Mbps of bandwidth all the time. This is generally adequate for serving up to 20 or 25 simultaneous users through a WISP or Wi-Fi hotspot. If you need more bandwidth, you can bond T1 lines together to get 3, 4.5, 6, 7.5 or 9 Mbps. The nice part of bonding is that you can start small and keep your costs low until you get a subscriber base large enough to need and pay for the additional bandwidth.

What does T1 cost? Every installation is different, as T1 circuits are priced individually based on distance to the carrier's POP or point of presence. Even so, T1 prices are highly competitive and quite reasonable for most businesses. We'll be happy to get you competitive quotes and talk about what level of service makes the best sense for your WISP or other business. Simply enter some basic information using our simple Shop for T1 form at T1 Rex anytime.