Here’s why that’s the case. Communications beyond the LAN have been traditionally handled by telecom service providers. In fact, these connections employ telco developed technology deployed originally for use exclusively by the telephone companies. Later, these line services were offered to businesses as computer networking and communication became popular.In recent years, more companies have gotten into the metropolitan and wide area networking business. Most of the newest entrants have designed their core networks around the latest technologies to transport voice, video and data packets with quality of service controls. That’s not a knock on legacy suppliers, who have been transforming their networks from switched circuit to packing switching in line with the changing needs of the marketplace. However, it’s important to recognize that there is much more competition in this field than in decades past and much of it is coming from companies that don’t have huge legacy physical plants to support.
This gives you an idea on where to find immediate cost savings that you can pocket or use to upgrade your current bandwidth. If you bought your circuits years ago and simply renewed contracts as they came up or have been paying on a month to month basis, there’s a pretty good chance that you can get a better offer. How do you go about doing that? The hard way is to do a lot of looking for alternative providers and then put in lots more time making phone calls and negotiating various offers.
The easier way is to let a telecom broker, like Telarus, Inc., pull together a set of competitive quotes tailored to your business location or locations. That’s right, each location that needs service will require a separate quote process. It’s because most bandwidth services are location dependent based on facilities in place at or near that location. You may get one price, while another site across the highway may have a significantly different quote.
What ensures that you are getting the best deals you can is to have multiple carriers vying for your business and going through a large brokerage that can command the best rates from those carriers. You actually have more leverage going through a broker than winging it on your own. The broker’s commission comes out of the carrier’s sales budget, not added to your bill. If this makes sense to you, get a set of bandwidth quotes for your business needs and see what the potential savings are.
The other way to gain bandwidth at the same or lower cost than you are paying now is to switch technologies. A very popular migration right now is from traditional T1 lines to Ethernet over Copper. Both services are highly reliable, have symmetrical bandwidth that is the same for both upload and download, and are provisioned over ordinary twisted pair telco wiring that is usually already installed. The differences are available bandwidth and cost.
T1 lines run at 1.5 Mbps. You can double that to 3 Mbps by bonding two T1 lines together, but your costs double right along with the bandwidth. Ethernet over Copper offers 2 Mbps and 3 Mbps bandwidth service for about the same price as a single T1 line. This makes it easy for a company to double WAN bandwidth or dedicated Internet access without having to raise the telecom budget. In addition, EoC offers bandwidth levels of 10, 15, 20, 30 and even 50 Mbps in some areas. Bonded T1 tops out at around 10 to 12 Mbps with multiple T1 lines.
You can see that there are at least two good strategies to gaining more bandwidth without a corresponding cost increase. The first is to get competitive bids through a large telecom broker representing dozens of service providers. The second is to switch to a newer technology that offers lower costs for equivalent bandwidths. You can take advantage of both these strategies by requesting competitive quotes for available bandwidth services for one or more business locations.
