California and Nevada Get 200 Mbps Bandwidth over Copper

It’s no secret that business bandwidth demands have been skyrocketing in the last decade or so. Companies that used to be successfully connected with T1 lines (1.5 to 12 Mbps) or DS3 (45 Mbps) are now finding that line speeds over 100 Mbps are needed to support HD video, big data and cloud computing.

Companies in California and Nevada now find it much easier to get up to 200 Mbps over multiple copper pair. Notice that I said copper, not fiber. It’s no trick to get bandwidths this high or higher over SONET or Ethernet over Fiber. The big stumbling block is getting the fiber installed.

The beauty of fiber optics is that the bandwidth is nearly unlimited. Once the fiber is in place you can swap out terminal equipment at each end to increase single wavelength fiber speed or install wavelength division multiplexing equipment to multiply the bandwidth capacity of each fiber strand. Now, if there was only a way to get fiber installed without breaking the bank.

You may not have to. Modulation technology developments have given a new lease on life to the same twisted copper pairs that carry your analog business phones or T1 data lines. Standard Ethernet over Copper (EoC) technology uses up to 8 twisted pair to deliver roughly 3 to 45 Mbps. In special cases that has been increased to 100 Mbps. There is no need to install new copper pair to the building, so construction costs are minimized and you don’t have to worry about fiber runs being available in the area.

Technology continues to advance rapidly. Now TelePacific is doubling the current offer of 100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper to 200 Mbps. They call the upgrade EEoC for Enhanced Ethernet over Copper. It’s already available in 247 of their LSOs (Local Service Offices) in California and Nevada. That number is increasing to 284 LSOs this year. That makes EEoC service available to a potential quarter million SMB (Small to Medium size Businesses).

Compare EEoC to services like OC-3 at 155 Mbps or Fast Ethernet over Fiber at 100 Mbps. The speed is higher and you don’t need fiber. For many if not most SMBs a bandwidth of 200 Mbps will meet their needs far into the future. By the time 200 Mbps is no longer adequate, technology will likely increase this speed again or fiber will be pulled into your building by TelePacific or another competitive service provider.

What if you don’t happen to be located in California or Nevada? Are you out of luck for any reasonable amount of bandwidth for your business?

Far from it. There are multiple options available just about anywhere to increase your line speed. The ubiquitous T1 line has been available to business users for decades and is still selling briskly. The only thing that’s changed over the years is the price. Competition from multiple providers and other services has dropped T1 prices significantly. Plus, lines can now to bonded to increase bandwidth from 1.5 Mbps on up to 10 or 12 Mbps. That’s plenty for many smaller companies.

Need more speed? Ethernet over Copper is available nationwide from multiple providers. It’s very easy to get EoC in speeds that range from 3 to 30 or even 50 Mbps in most business areas. Companies that are in smaller towers or out in the countryside are the exception. They’ve always been able to get T1, but now a variation on EoC called EoDS1 gives you Ethernet over Copper using beyond city limits. Fiber optic carriers are also aggressively building out their networks and wiring up multi-tenant buildings as fast as it makes sense. You may not have been able to get fiber last year, but this year could be a different story.

Are you looking for a bandwidth upgrade for your business? Would you be delighted to find out that you can get the same bandwidth you have now or even more for no additional cost? It’s time to check out your options. Get a complete list of options and prices, plus free consulting services to help you choose the best approach. You might be surprised by what’s available today.

Low Latency Fiber Network For Orange County

Businesses are demanding more bandwidth at lower latencies to support demanding applications such as financial trading, business process automation, cloud computing & storage and medical image transmission. This is creating an opportunity for new fiber buildout, like the one underway in the Los Angeles Metro area.

AboveNet, a major provider of fiber optic networking services in the US and Europe, is launching what they call a large “feeder ring” to connect office buildings, data centers, and carrier hotels to an existing fiber optic backbone that now serves the business districts of Irvine and Costa Mesa in Orange County, California.

Fiber optic connectivity has become the new battleground for competitive service providers as well as incumbent telcos. A major push has been the transition from legacy SONET/SDH to Gigabit Ethernet, 10 GigE and 40 GigE, MPLS networks, dark fiber and wavelength services. Networks are becoming more IP oriented, at the expense of traditional switched circuit TDM technologies. This plays well with the dominance of Ethernet networks in business and the move to converged voice, data and video networks.

Cloud services have opened up a further need for increased bandwidth. When companies had on-site data centers for their servers and storage, most traffic was contained within the building or campus LAN. Special links served overnight tape backup at offsite storage centers. Once computing and disk resources move to a colocation facility or a cloud services provider, there is a corresponding increase in WAN bandwidth requirements. With everything “out there,” a much higher portion of traffic leaves the company LAN.

AboveNet and other carriers are in a major push right now to expand their fiber optic network footprints in the US and abroad. Especially important are low latency networks to Europe and Asia to interconnect financial markets and major international businesses. Private networks require an enormous capital investment and the Internet is unsuitable for high performance, secure connections. That’s creating an opportunity for companies that specialize in metro and long haul fiber optic networks to jump in and fill the need.

Some services that are seeing more demand are IP transit to connect with the Internet backbone for companies that don’t have networks large enough to do their own peering, Ethernet Private Line and LAN services, global MPLS networking, and wavelength services that offer both very high bandwidth capacity along with flexibility of protocols.

Competitive pressures have also reduced the cost per Mbps for nearly all leased line services. This is true for even the ubiquitous T1 lines, but even more so for Ethernet connections of all types. Ethernet availability has expanded to such an extent that it is often far less expensive than T-Carrier or SONET in most metro areas. Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE WAN connections are now routinely ordered by larger business and organizations.

Is your company bandwidth starved or simply looking for better prices on existing network services? See if you can do better by checking prices and availability for fiber optic bandwidth.



Note: Orange County, CA photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.