DS3 Bandwidth Alternatives

DS3 WAN connections are popular with companies needing more bandwidth than they can get from T1 lines but less than moving up to a full OC-3 fiber optic SONET service. So, why would you bee looking for other options? It generally comes down to either cost or performance. Most often, cost.

Yes, there are other bandwidth options available that can do the job that your current DS3 is doing. Let’s take a look at options available today that maybe didn’t exist when you signed your DS3 lease.

DS3 straddles the telecom border between copper wireline and fiber optic bandwidth services. It was originally part of the T-Carrier specifications developed by the Bell System for telephone trunking between switching centers. T-Carrier options include T1 and T3. DS3 is the service that rides on the T3 physical circuit.

Today the terms DS3 and T3 are used interchangeably. In practice, you’ll be hard pressed to find a T3 physical circuit. At one time they were available over microwave relay or waveguide pipes. The actual interface to your router is two coaxial cables with BNC connectors that plug into a DS3 interface module. Those cables have a distance limitation of 450 feet. So, how does DS3 service get from the Central Office (CO) to your location?

Most of the distance is covered by fiber optic cabling that doesn’t have this distance restriction. The DS3 signal is often multiplexed onto a higher bandwidth OC-3 SONET circuit. There may be other DS3 services sharing the same OC-3. Yours is dropped off at your building where it is converted to the industry standard coaxial connections.

This suggests a couple of alternatives to DS3. Before you jump into anything new, though, consider that you may not be getting the best price on your current DS3 service. Prices on telecom services in general have plunged in recent years owing to deregulation and considerable new competition. Perhaps the local telephone company was your only provider choice when you had the service installed. Now there may be several competing providers that are ready, willing and able to do the same job. Get multiple price quotes, preferable from a major bandwidth broker like Telarus, Inc., before you conclude that you need to dump your DS3 only for cost reasons.

Something else to consider is how much bandwidth you really need. Did you contract for DS3 because your T1 line was out of capacity? There’s a big gap between T1 at 1.5 Mbps and DS3 at 45 Mbps. Do you really need the full 45 Mbps or is that simply all that was available at the time?

If you really need, say, 10 Mbps, you can achieve it by scaling up from T1 or down from DS3. T1 lines are now readily bonded together to increase bandwidth. The practical limit is 10 or 12 Mbps without distance limitations. DS3 service can be rate limited to create what’s known as fractional DS3. In other words, you still have a DS3 interface installed but the actual line speed you pay for is 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps, 30 Mbps or some other option.

Both these approaches may save you money compared to what you pay now. An even more attractive option is Ethernet. With Ethernet over Copper you can get bandwidths ranging from 3 Mbps on the low end up to 45 Mbps and sometimes higher on the high end. Prices per Mbps are generally lower, sometimes even half the cost, than the older T1 and T3 technologies. The hitch with Ethernet over Copper is that it is distance sensitive. The farther you are from the CO, the lower the line speed you can achieve.

Ethernet over Fiber picks up where Ethernet over Copper leaves off. Fiber optic Ethernet service is often available from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps. Popular options are 10 Mbps standard Ethernet, 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and 1000 Mbps Gigabit Ethernet. The speed of the port installed at your facility sets the maximum, not minimum, speed you can achieve. Common practice is to install a 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet port.

Fiber connections aren’t available for every building, but carriers have been so competitive in building out their networks that more locations that ever before are “lit” for fiber and others can be easily connected. Ethernet over FIber is easily scaled so that you can increase your bandwidth quickly by making a simple call to your provider. This means that you only need to order the bandwidth you need today along with a port speed capable of handling whatever speed you expect to need in the foreseeable future.

Ethernet over Fiber is a bargain compared to other telecom arrangements, if you can get it. If not, you might be able to get SONET fiber optic service to your premises. The lowest speed service is OC-3 at 155 Mbps, but in some cases this can be rate limited to provide fractional OC-3 service.

One final option is fixed wireless. This is unlike the lower speed 3G or 4G cellular wireless that is now available to business. Fixed wireless at 50 Mbps or more is a line of sight microwave service only available in major metro areas in the business districts. If your location qualifies, you can get fast and inexpensive installation compared to constructing a new fiber optic run.

So, how do you decide on the optimum solution for your company? Doing the research yourself can be time consuming and you may miss out on some opportunities that aren’t well advertised. Instead, run a quick online business bandwidth availability check for the options you want to consider and compare competitive pricing. You may be surprised by what has become available recently.


Note: Photo of BNC connector courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Is MagicJack The Next Ma Bell?

The telephone industry is in trouble, we're told. Young people are shunning the traditional landline phone service that their parents and grandparents treated as a necessity of life. The breakup of the Bell System into smaller independent companies serving regional areas says that there will never again be anything like the ubiquitous "Ma Bell" that served every home and business. Clearly, the once proud telephone network is a goner. Or is it?

It's true that cell phones have replaced traditional analog phone service for about a third of the population. Those in their teens and 20's don't remember a time when there wasn't wireless. They got their first cell phone in high school or college, in much the same rite of passage as teens traditionally get their first cars. Once untethered, why go back and pick up something as archaic as a telephone with a wire?

It's also true that the breakup of the Bell System resulted in such an upset in the industry that it will never be the same. For awhile the technology remained the same and only the names of newly competing phone companies changed. The one key resource was the copper telephone cable that had been installed to virtually every home and business over the preceding 100 year build-out of universal telephone service. CLECs or Competing Local Exchange Carriers leased these lines at cost from the ILECs or Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers, who maintained ownership of the wires. That worked just fine until the ILECs persuaded the government to let them charge retail, not wholesale, prices for leasing their lines. That ensured they could easily make a profit. It also changed a competitive playing field to one where the CLECs could no longer compete, and they pretty much all fell by the wayside.

Not being able to compete on analog phone service, savvy competitors found a way to bypass the ILECs and the high lease prices they demanded to use "their" phone wires. Instead, they leveraged another set of wires that came into most every home and business. Those were the wires that delivered broadband Internet service. By piggybacking on the broadband connection that people were already paying for, VoIP phone service providers essentially got their phone wires for free.

That's why VoIP providers can offer such good deals on bundled local and long distance service. They use the Internet to transport digitized phone conversations between your location and their facilities. At those facilities they "terminate" or connect with the traditional PSTN, or Public Switched Telephone Network, so that VoIP users can call landline or cell phone users.

It looked like VoIP companies were in the catbird seat until yet another type of phone company came on the scene. Instead of charging around $20 a month for unlimited local and long distance service, this company was offering unlimited bundled service for around $20 a year, over a 90% cost cut. How can any company offer prices this low and still survive? How can VoIP providers stay in business any more than wireline CLECs could when they lost the competitive advantage?

The company that's causing the latest upset in the telephone business is MagicJack. The secret to their business model is that they are a hybrid between a traditional wireline telephone company and a VoIP provider. The parent company of MagicJack, YMax, is a registered CLEC throughout the country. In essence, YMax is a nationwide phone company in the image of Ma Bell, sans the traditional analog phone wires. They get around this limitation by using your broadband Internet to connect with their central offices.

Owning their own network to carry the calls saves YMax the cost of leasing other people's facilities. They still have to pay termination fees for calls that leave their network, but they also collect termination fees from other phone companies when someone calls a MagicJack number. So if the majority of users had MagicJack, YMax would collect far more in termination fees than they would spend. At some point they would become the default nationwide phone company and claim the title of Ma Bell II. Maybe Momma Jack or MoJo would be more appropriate.

Now you can see the method behind the magic of offering MagicJack phone service for the cost of the USB hardware that connects your phone to your computer so it can use the DSL or Cable broadband line, plus about $20 a year for service instead of a monthly phone bill. The MagicJack is reportedly selling at a clip of 9,000 to 10,000 units per day. If they can keep this up, how long will it be until the tipping point is reached and they own the residential landline business?

OK, but what about those younger and more mobile users who don't want a wire of any kind tethering their phone to a particular location? YMax is getting ready to go after a slice of this market with a new product called the FemtoJack. It will also plug into your computer. But instead of a wire to your home phone, it will connect wirelessly to your cell phone. The idea is that while you are home you'll make your calls over the Femto Jack instead of burning your monthly minutes on the cellular network. If your house has a dead zone for cellular, this will be an even better deal.

The next question is whether YMax will settle for having a major piece of the residential phone service business, assuming an even savvier competitor doesn't come on the market. Or, will they start working their way into the business market or launch a VoIP wireless network to really take on the cellular carriers? Those would be even more ambitious projects, but they are the key to dominating telephone service in the future.