Today’s Best Business Broadband Options

By: John Shepler

If you are still using a copper wireline service, such as DSL or T1, for your business Internet connection, it’s time to upgrade your service… before you are forced to.

Forced to? Why would that be? Fact is, the major telecom companies are all in the process of decommissioning their copper wire assets. Basically anything that uses century-old twisted pair wiring is on the way out.

Technology marches on. T1 lines were once considered broadband. They don’t even qualify with today’s standard. DSL? Pretty much an obsolete system that was once a good way to re-purpose standard telephone lines for fast Internet access.

AT&T and others have made it clear that they are either pulling up old copper lines or abandoning them to rust in place. The wire centers or central offices that connect to these lines are being repurposed as data centers for the insatiable needs of AI.

So what are better options? Surprisingly, one of the best is also an older technology that has continuously upgraded to keep it competitive with the times.

Cable Broadband Is a Great Deal for Small Business
That coaxial cable that plugs into the back of a set-top box or cable modem has been a familiar tech standard for many decades. Physically, it’s the same. What’s changed is the signal that comes out that center wire.

Cable was originally analog, just like TV signals back in the day. When the Internet came along, some of the unused TV channels were set aside for digital transmission using a standard called DOCSIS or Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, an invention of the industry’s R&D organization CableLabs. The current standard is DOCSIS 3.1 with a migration underway to DOCSIS 4.0.

Today’s cable modems are cable of gigabit speeds, with common service levels of 300 Mbps downstream, 30 Mbps upstream. That’s fast enough for pretty much all web browsing, video streaming and data transfer. What’s hard to beat at those speeds is the price. Cable is easily affordable by both consumers and smaller businesses, often with telephone service included.

Wireless Broadband is Now Both Mobile and Fixed
Like cable, cellular wireless had humble beginnings as a mobile telephone service, but has kept up with the times through multiple technology advancements. The first standard that really supported broadband as well as telephone was called 3G. That’s evolved to the current standards of 4G LTE and 5G. With 300 Mbps or so, an iPhone has all the bandwidth it can really make use of.

That high bandwidth, which can reach a Gigabit per second near some of the 5G towers, is easily competitive with fixed broadband services. The capacity limits have been largely eliminated with 5G buildouts and the extra spectrum acquired from government auctions of unused television bandwidth. Now the wireless companies are in a competitive battle to roll out cellular modems that work like cable modems but without the wires. You can put one at a construction site or a pop-up store in minutes. If you move soon, take it with you and have connectivity at your next location.

Cable broadband is being built into laptop computers and tablets and other devices, called the Internet of Things. Remote data acquisition and control are now possible in remote areas that have cell towers but no other connectivity.

Fiber, The Gold Standard and Secret Backbone
The magic that makes cable and cellular broadband so fast is the fiber optic lines that feed these services. It’s all behind the scenes, of course. Even so, you may want to connect directly to fiber yourself.

What’s the fiber advantage? Nearly unlimited bandwidth for one thing. Today’s service levels run from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps just about everywhere, with 100 Gbps service available in some metro locations. That’s important for medium and larger enterprises with many employees who need simultaneous Internet access.

Another big advantage is symmetrical bandwidth That means if you have 1 Gbps downstream, you also have 1 Gbps upstream. Contrast that with most cable and wireless services that offer much higher download than upload speeds. If you need to transfer files up and down regularly or have demanding video conferencing requirements, this can be important.

A third advantage is very low latency and jitter with minimal congestion. This is because fiber is usually a dedicated service, not shared like cable and cellular. For even higher performance, consider a dedicated line between your company and your cloud service that bypasses the Internet completely.

Need the ultimate in performance? Dark Fiber that you “light” with your own equipment gives you complete control of protocols and bandwidth allocation. It’s like having your own network extended across town or across the country.

Do you need a replacement Internet connection or are ready for a bandwidth upgrade or perhaps even a cost saving? Check out the Business Broadband Options available right now.

Overbuilding Offers Broadband Choices

By: John Shepler

There was a time when you had just a single choice for Internet connectivity. That was the incumbent local phone company. Now you may have many other choices, as competing networks move into your area. Let’s have a look at overbuilding and the opportunities it provides.

In the Beginning…
In the beginning there was only one network and that was the PSTN or public switched telephone network. The phone network is the original telecom network that started with Alexander Graham Bell and expanded to cover the world. It’s a very specific network, designed for voice communications. Computers came later. Any computer that wanted to talk to any other computer had to mimic human telephone users. Hence, the acoustically coupled audio modem.

That had to change fast. First, with ditching the acoustic coupling. Then overcoming the 64 Kbps limits of a standard phone line. Telephone companies developed digital phone lines to multiplex or combine multiple circuits in to one larger capacity circuit. Business quickly adapted the copper DSL and T1 lines, and then SONET fiber optic lines, for computer connectivity.

Still, there was one place to get service and that was the phone company. After all, Ma Bell owned all the wires. Even when “deregulation” was introduced, those competitive carriers were simply rebranding telco lines they got at wholesale rates.

Cable: The First Overbuilder
Each town has a single incumbent local phone company. But each town also can have a community antenna company, later called a cable company, to deliver television. Utility poles might have power, telephone and cable wires running one above the other all over town.

The cable companies made technical upgrades. First, they added modem service to offer Internet access. Then they converted their networks to digital, with fiber optics as the backbone and coaxial copper as the drop to the premises. This, plus regular modem standard upgrades, allows cable to offer broadband Internet service that meets or exceeds what the phone company can provide.

When two different providers install networks to serve the same locations, that’s called overbuilding. It’s one on top of or over the other. It could also mean excessive building, but that hasn’t generally been the case in the almost insatiable demand for broadband.

Fiber Overbuilds in Cable Territory
Cable pretty much overtook landline telephone, including DSL broadband, for residential and small business Internet. So much so, that the telephone companies are decommissioning their copper assets. Twisted pair copper technology just couldn’t keep up.

What the telcos have done is overbuild their own copper networks with fiber optic cables. They actually had a specialized fiber service called SONET before cable came around, but it was too expensive for residential and smaller businesses. They’ve now adopted the more standard Carrier Ethernet over Fiber technology that is directly compatible with most computer networks.

Recently, competing fiber optic network companies have been overbuilding both cable and telco networks with their own fiber. Some cities have contracted with these companies to install fiber that passes every home and business. This is in direct competition with cable broadband that is already serving many if not most of those customers.

Telco Overbuilds with Fixed Wireless Access
The telcos have been busy building out wireless networks to serve mobile phones and computing devices. It this case there may be several competing wireless companies serving each town. The big three in the US are AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. You never had a choice in landline phone service or cable, but you have had this advantage in wireless.

Now wireless is challenging cable and even fiber. As cellular networks upgraded to 4G LTE and 5G, the broadband speeds have increased. In areas where microwave 5G bands are installed, the speeds can easily compete with cable and fiber.

A proliferation of towers, large and small, is expanding the coverage so that a cellular modem, basically a phone that does just broadband, can provide primary broadband service for residential and business users. If the wireless companies have their way, they’ll displace cable in the same way cable displaced landline phone.

What does all this overbuilding mean for you? The competition tends to lower prices and increase service bandwidth. In other words, you wind up getting more value for less cost.

Which broadband option is best for your business? Check pricing and coverage for fiber optic, cable broadband and fixes wireless access now.

What Replaces DSL, T1, ISDN PRI, EoC?

By: John Shepler

Have you seen recent cost increases for your copper-based telecom services? Did you even get a letter saying that service will be discontinued? This situation will only get worse, as telcos sunset their aging copper wire assets in favor of more modern technologies such as fiber and wireless. It’s time to make a change.

The Copper That Isn’t Going Anywhere
The copper that’s in trouble is twisted-pair analog copper telephone lines. They started the electronic communication revolution over a century ago and have run their course from innovation to obsolescence. There is another copper network line, however, that is still going strong. That is cable broadband using coaxial copper cable as a curb to premises connection.

The copper nature of cable services is something of a fooler. The vast majority of the network is fiber optic based. Only the last few hundred feet is the well known RG-6 terminated with an F-type connector. You might think of this wiring as old-school, but with the latest DOCSIS modems, it can easily deliver Gigabit broadband up to 10 Gbps.

Cable companies offer television, broadband and telephone service over the same cable line at a very reasonable cost that is attractive for small businesses, especially those that can use the TV feature for their customer waiting rooms.

Fiber Optic: The New and Improved Copper
The telephone and network industry standard that is replacing twisted pair copper is Ethernet based fiber optic service. The original standard, SONET, is still the backbone of many networks, but has actually transitioned from carrying channelized telephone calls to packet based Ethernet network traffic. Newer networks are all Ethernet, to reflect the standard Ethernet protocol used in the majority of digital networks worldwide.

Ethernet over Fiber has the advantage that it plugs directly into company routers and is vastly scalable, from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps just about everywhere, and up to 100 Gbps in many metro locations. Fiber takes over from copper data services, include DSL, T1, DS3 and even the newer Ethernet over Copper. EoC was meant to provide higher bandwidth using the same twisted-pair infrastructure, but is falling victim to the decommissioning of the copper bundles themselves.

Business telephone, which standardized its own analog and digital networks, is largely switching to a computer networking standard of Voice over IP or VoIP. This offers the benefit of supporting many newer technology features and allows computers and phones to share the same company Local Area Network.

To make VoIP work, your phones need to connect to the Public Switched Telephone Network to make and receive outside calls. This is done using a standard called SIP or Session Initiated Protocol that runs on the network and connects to your phone service provider over an Ethernet WAN connection, using fiber. Both the Internet and direct connections can be employed. SIP trunks replace analog phone lines and ISDN PRI trunks to carry telephone traffic to the PSTN.

The Special Case of POTS Replacement
In many cases, the move to fiber optic private line and Dedicated Internet Access will handle business needs for voice, video and data traffic. There are special cases of FAX, fire alarms, burglar alarms, elevator phones, analog point of sale systems and some others that are specifically designed to phone company standards and don’t work well on packet based networks, such as the Internet.

For these uses, you may want to look into specialized POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) replacement options. These usually work wirelessly through private connections to the LTE cellular phone network and don’t traverse the Internet at all. An advantage of POTS replacement equipment is that it connects directly to the systems you already have.

Fixed Wireless Where There Is No Fiber
The day may come where fiber is everywhere, but today were are still in the build-out phase. Fiber is going into the ground at a rapid pace, but in more rural locations are still waiting for access. Even metro areas that don’t have lit fiber installed may be faced with huge construction costs to connect to the fiber access points.

The alternative is to skip the fiber but get high speed Ethernet bandwidth using Fixed Wireless Access. FWA is similar to cellular broadband but is intended to connect to in-house networks rather than cell phones. In fact, the major cellular companies are in competition to offer 5G Fixed Wireless broadband service to both residential and commercial users.

Other wireless companies, often called WISPs for Wireless Internet Service Providers, don’t handle cell traffic but have towers that serve a limited area with wireless Internet access.

Other microwave-based FWA providers focus on business customers with high bandwidths that can reach 10 Gbps. This can be private line as well and Internet service. An advantage to business FWA is that a small dish or other antenna can be installed on your building for reliable operation and service can get started in days rather than weeks or months for fiber construction.

Are you facing a loss of your traditional DSL, T1, ISDN PRI, EoC or analog telephone service and need replacement soon? If so, you may have an opportunity to upgrade your service and save money at the same time. Check out telephone and network replacement options now.

Copper Decommissioning Expands Demand for Metro Ethernet

By: John Shepler

If you are still getting by with last mile Internet over DSL, T1 lines, or Ethernet over Copper, you should take a serious look at Metro Ethernet over Fiber. You’ll get more bandwidth, better pricing and… it will continue to be available.

Copper Decommissioning is Now
Copper based telecom services have been the go-to technology for the last century, but not this century. The ubiquitous twisted pair telephone line has supported our needs from the introduction of the telephone through the fevered growth of the commercial Internet. But, like cellphones the size of a brick, the technology has run its course. Copper just can’t keep up with today’s and tomorrow’s needs.

The phone companies know this. The network operators know this. They are well aware that we are way past “peak copper”. As you read this, copper lines nationwide are being retired or “decommissioned”. In some cases the copper is physically ripped out of conduits so that fiber optic cables can be pulled right back in. In other cases the copper bundles in the ground are simply disconnected and left to rust away on their own. In the coming years there will be fewer and fewer copper options available to order, until a copper wireline is as rare as a cranked telephone set.

Fiber is the Future AND the Present
The replacements for copper telco right now are Cable in the form of hybrid fiber/copper systems, Fixed Wireless Access, and Fiber Optic bandwidth. Fiber in cities is also called Metro Fiber or Metro Ethernet. Most urban, suburban and even small town businesses now have access to Metro Ethernet and its flexible options.

Fiber is your most flexible option for several reasons. First, fiber optic strands offer extremely high bandwidths, to 10 Gbps or more. With wavelength division multiplexing, you might get a dozen or more 10 Gbps lambdas, each a virtual fiber in itself. Now, consider that nearly all fiber cables have multiple strands, even dozens, and you can see how fiber bandwidth is nearly unlimited. Once installed, that fiber will likely last as long as you need.

Second, fiber, unlike cable or most wireless, can provide exclusive dedicated line services. You can order private point to point connections and have all of the bandwidth available for your traffic. Compare that to the consumer-oriented broadband services that share bandwidth among many users to keep the cost down. With dedicated Internet access or private point to point lines, you won’t be competing with everybody else for limited resources at high traffic times. This can be especially valuable in connecting your network to a distant cloud provider that hosts business critical applications.

In addition to massive available bandwidth, fiber service is also very scalable. You can typically start off as low as 10 Mbps at pricing comparable with a current T1 line, but with over 6x the bandwidth. Many smaller businesses find that 100 Mbps is plenty, but Gigabit bandwidth is easy to come by and very affordable. If your applications demand it or your workforce is substantial, 10 Gbps is easily available on fiber. Even 100 Gbps is now being offered to larger companies and hospital complexes, content developers, etc.

Why Ethernet over Fiber
The earlier implementations of fiber optic service were based on a telephone company standard called SONET that offered fixed bandwidth levels and was designed for voice calls, not data. While protocol conversion circuitry made SONET the backbone of the Internet, Carrier Ethernet is now the standard to be embraced. This is the same switched Ethernet that runs on your local network, but extended to transport packets over hundreds or thousands of miles.

Metro Ethernet uses the Carrier Ethernet standard running over fiber optic cabling. This makes it virtually plug-and-play with your network. You can even set it up so that your business locations all over the state or country act like they are on one big network. Metro Fiber Ethernet is the new standard for business connections. Network connections within the metro area are often referred to as MAN or Metropolitan Area Network, while those more distant are referred to as WAN or Wide Area Network.

Are you ready to replace aging T1, DS3, DSL or other network services with something more modern that is future-proof and likely less expensive? Check your Metro Fiber Ethernet options for one or more business locations now.

Is It Time To Go Fiber Optic Internet?

By: John Shepler

You’ve outgrown the Internet service that has served you well all these years. Business has changed and yours has expanded to the point that your Internet connection is getting in the way. Everyone would be more productive and less frustrated with a connection that didn’t impose limits. So, what should you do?

More Choices, Less Cost
You might be cringing at the thought of shopping for better Internet access. The last time you did that, pickings were slim. Few providers offering few services, most of which were very expensive. You may have wound up with a T1 line or DSL from your telephone company or a business cable offering from your Cable TV company. Has anything changed?

Oh, yes. Pretty much everything has changed. Actually, the choices have expanded and gotten cheaper across the board. You can still still order T1 lines. Today you’ll find there are more providers vying for your business and the prices may be a fraction of what you paid to sign your service contract years ago. Other than cost, though, T1 is still a 1.5 Mbps service. It may be adequate for the smallest businesses, but most everyone else will find the 1.5 Mbps limit stifling.

A more expansive option may be Ethernet over Copper. This is newer technology running on the same twisted pair telco lines. Bandwidth options vary from 1 Mbps up to typically 15 or 20 Mbps. Pricing is maybe half the cost of T1 per Mbps.

How about business cable? Yes, it’s still here but better. Modems have been upgraded a couple of times and now easily offer 100 Mbps, 300 Mbps and even 1,000 Mbps on the same coaxial cable. You may even get that 1,000 Mbps for the what you are paying for the old T1 line. Just be aware that the bandwidth on the cable line is shared and may vary during the day. Upload speeds are maybe a tenth of the download speeds.

How About Fiber?
Fiber optic Internet service was beyond the reach of all but the largest companies for decades. No more. A technology improvement from the old telco SONET to competitive Ethernet over Fiber has caused prices to plummet and options to multiply. You can pretty much dictate your bandwidth from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps and order what you need without over paying. Later, when your needs expand, you can scale up your line speed, usually without changing hardware.

Ethernet over Fiber has the options of speeds as high as 100 Gbps that are easily scalable, highly reliable, dedicated and symmetrical. More and more, those options include ready availability from one and often several vendors. Most providers are aggressively building out their networks and may be able to minimize or even waive construction costs. It just depends on what’s available near your location and how much competition there is.

I Want Fiber. How Do I Get It?
You’ll probably never regret taking the plunge on fiber optic Internet service. Unlike older copper-based technologies, fiber is pretty much future proof as well as minimizing limitations such as latency, packet loss and jitter. It’s the transparent connection you are longing for.

Now, how to get service. Your best option is to work with a bandwidth broker like Telarus. They have contracts with dozens of providers serving the nation with connections that can go around the world. Your cost will be no higher than if you found a particular carrier yourself and probably less, since there are often multiple providers to choose from. Want to see what’s available right now? Get a quick budgetary quote online now and followup with possible special deals that aren’t advertised.

Metro Fiber Ethernet Gets You The Bandwidth You Need

By: John Shepler

Back when your company was smaller and business was slow, the old DSL or T1 line offered plenty of bandwidth to get the job done. Not so much anymore. Things have picked up and more of the content you need involves higher resolution graphics and video. Network congestion has your business throttled and that’s a bad situation.

Metro Fiber Ethernet Means Bandwidth
There is a clear trend in the telecom and network connection field. It is a gaining momentum toward everything fiber. That’s right, the fiber optic connections you used to take a pass on because of high cost or lack of availability are now ready for your business and at much better prices.

Fiber has the advantage over traditional twisted pair copper and wireless distribution because there is just about no limit to how fast those glass strands will run. Technology advances take the same glass fibers and increase the carrying capacity every few years. Too much data in the fiber bundle is a problem for the distant future, if ever.

What level of bandwidth is available now? Business users can generally get anything from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps, with 100 Gbps in selected areas. Once your have the fiber installed, it’s your choice how much capacity to order. Same line, multiple bandwidth options.

Pay For Just What You Need
As fiber optic installations are multiplying, another technology is also taking over. That is, Carrier Ethernet. Yes, this is a compatible protocol with the Ethernet you already use on your Local Area Network. You simply plug into the Carrier’s termination, often a managed edge router, and you are connected to the Internet or via a private line across town or some other business location in the world.

Another beauty of Ethernet service is that there are no fixed bandwidth levels as there were with the older SONET fiber service. If you want 400 Mbps, you can get that. If you’d prefer 100 Mbps or 1,500 Mbps you can order those levels too. As long as the Ethernet Port installed at your location can handle the bandwidth, you can run at just about any speed.

This suggests a major cost savings for you. If your business level only requires 100 Mbps today, then order that. You may soon need 1000 Mbps, also called Gigabit Ethernet. No problem, call up your carrier and tell them to increase the speed of your line. They likely do that without any hardware changes and simply adjust your bill to reflect the increase in service level. You know that you have the flexibility to incrementally increase bandwidth as you really need the capacity.

More Availability, Less Money
You are no doubt aware that smartphones are getting faster and faster. 3G broadband is pretty much on the way out. Now it’s 4G everywhere, with 5G trials underway. One effect of this is that the old T1 lines that powered cell towers through 2G and 3G don’t have the capacity to support 4G and certainly not 5G. Support of high speed wireless has ironically caused fiber optic installations to boom. Fiber used to be rare and extremely pricey. Not so anymore. Pretty much all communication infrastructure being installed right now is fiber or wireless towers… or both.

All this fiber means capacity galore and lots of competition between a myriad of providers, all vying for businesses of all sizes. Even the Cable companies have gotten into the act recently. They’re offering access to their fiber optic networks that have the same quality of service as other business fiber services.

Why Metro Fiber Ethernet?
As the name suggests, metro fiber is more for locations within populated areas than out in the boonies. Metro also includes smaller cities, suburbs and business parks, not just major downtown areas.

What you want is competitive pricing on fiber based Ethernet bandwidth in a given metro area. Fortunately, that’s easy to find if you have the right tools. Want to see just how much bandwidth you can get for much lower prices than you’d expect? See how many Metro Fiber Ethernet Services are available for your business (not residential) location in a matter of a couple minutes.

Is There Business Fiber Optic Internet Near Me?

By: John Shepler

Are you still struggling with DSL or some other Internet service that is burdened by low speeds, network congestion, high latency, packet loss or all of these? It’s a frustration, isn’t it? What’s more, you are probably losing more money every month than you would spend to upgrade to high performance fiber optic broadband service. The big question: “Is there business fiber optic Internet near me?”

Times Have Changed
When you first moved up from dial-up ISDN, or X.25 connectivity to broadband, options were probably few. There was a time when DSL was state of the art. Even ADSL shared on a standard phone line offered a huge advance in line speed over what else what available.

If you could afford them, T1 lines were a lot more stable and reliable, although speed was capped at 1.5 Mbps… still plenty in the early days of e-commerce.

Many businesses opted for satellite as a way to connect retail locations to the home office. High latency and weather outages were just something to be dealt with.

But, this is ancient history. The whole nature of business operations has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades. The Internet isn’t just for email or looking up information anymore. It’s IS your connection to all-things in the cloud and around the world. There’s no good reason to just get by with whatever connectivity you’ve had. That is, not when fiber optic Internet might be right next door and a fraction of the cost it was when you last took a look.

Fiber Has Been Sneaking Up on You
It’s a fact that conduits full of fiber optic cables have been quietly being trenched into both urban and rural right of ways all across the country. You don’t see headlines about this anymore, because it isn’t breaking news that somebody just put a fiber cable in the ground like it used to be. Fiber is now considered vital infrastructure and is being routinely installed, just like gas pipes and power lines. You almost have to be a little careful where you plant a shovel in the ground these days. You might just chop a fiber cable in two…. and that is one expensive situation to fix.

Who’s Burying Fiber Cables Nearby?
The telephone company is the traditional installer of telecom infrastructure including copper and fiber lines. In fact local telcos pretty much own all of the twisted pair copper in the ground and on the poles. Fiber… not so much.

While telephone companies are, indeed, in a mad dash to upgrade their physical plants to meet the nearly insatiable bandwidth demands of 4G and soon to be 5G wireless, cloud services and video distribution, there are other major players too.

You might think of cable companies as married to coax copper lines. That’s what they install in your building, after all. What you don’t see is that those coax lines terminate to fiber lines not far away. Cable fiber forms the backbone of their networks. It’s only recently that the major cable companies have offered business users fiber connections to their network. Get business cable fiber and you’ll have almost unlimited bandwidth, low latency and minimal packet loss, all at a reasonable price.

Independent network companies are the other big source of fiber optic infrastructure. These companies have built out their own regional and national fiber networks and may well completely bypass both the telephone and cable companies to hook you up directly.

So, How Do I Get Fiber?
You can get out there and do your own research, but you may miss some of the best fiber providers. They don’t necessarily have a local office or advertising. Your best shot to get the most options at the best competitive pricing is to go through a bandwidth broker. This is a company that has relationships with dozens of service providers and the service maps to know exactly what is available and how close it is to your location. You might even be surprised to learn that the building next door is already lit for fiber broadband and it is no trouble at all to get you a connection quickly.

Want to find out right now where fiber optic Internet services are relative to your business (not residential) address? Take a minute or so to enter your address and get a map and list of fiber optic Ethernet broadband near you. Then use the handy inquiry form to describe just what you are looking for and how you’ll use it to get pricing and install times for the best service options.

Can Satellite Be The Answer to Your Business Broadband Needs?

By: John Shepler

You’re totally frustrated. Doing business today needs an Internet connection even if you only sell to local customers. You’ve checked out cable and DSL options. No way. Not where you are located. Hey, it’s not like you’ve left civilization. There must be SOME way to get high speed Internet… isn’t there?

In most cases, the answer is yes. You just have to forget about cables and fiber lines. If they aren’t already connected or very near by, it will cost a fortune to bring them in. Instead, look to the sky! Here’s a quick video that explains why:


Here are 10 key points to remember:

1. Satellite Internet for business can provide both primary and backup connectivity.

2. Available satellite broadband speeds have increased to surpass traditional T1 lines and DSL, even to rival fractional DS3 and cable carriers. Exede offers up to 15 Mbps download with 4 Mbps upload capability.

3. Since service is delivered via dish antenna, not even a traditional telephone line is needed, much less high speed telecom infrastructure. That makes it possible to have broadband connections to fishing camps, farms & ranches, rural agri-businesses, and any other enterprise that isn’t served by even 3G or 4G cellular. All you need is enough power to run the satellite receiver/modem, and that can come from power mains or a solar/battery & inverter off-grid system.

4. Primary 15/4 business Internet is available throughout the eastern half of the USA, plus the west coast and partial coverage in Arizona and Colorado. National coverage and higher speeds are coming with a new satellite in 2017. Lower speed 5/1 redundant services is available now in nearly all of the continental USA.

5. Installation can be completed in just 3-5 business days. No need to wait for massive construction projects.

6. Business data plans are available from 20 GB to 200 GB/month with the option to purchase additional data. For many smaller business operations, this is more than enough, although not suitable for frequently streaming HD movies and other video entertainment.

7. Latency is greater than you’d experience with land based fiber, wireless and optical services due to the 22,000 mile path up to the geosynchronous satellite. This may or may not be noticeable depending on how you use the Internet. VoIP telephone works over the satellite, but you need to allow a half second or so between speakers.

8. You’ll need a clear view of the southern sky about half way up from the horizon for the dish to “see” the bird.

9. Pricing is similar or even less than what you’d pay for a dedicated Internet line running 1.5 Mbps upload/download or many of the business cable broadband plans.

10. Don’t think that you are left out of the world of ecommerce or unable to interconnect your many branch offices or stores due to lack of telecom support. Satellite might be just the answer.

Learn more about VSAT satellite broadband Internet service and other available broadband options for your business location now.

Internet SDN Mimics MPLS At Much Lower Cost

By: John Shepler

High performance, high cost. Low performance, low cost. This has been the story of WAN bandwidth connections for business. You can save a bundle with Cable or DSL Internet broadband, but the reliability and performance variations may drive you nuts. Or, you can pay up for a proprietary private line solution or MPLS network and enjoy high reliability, low latency and consistent line speed… if you can afford the price. If there was only a way to make the Internet perform like an MPLS network, that would be a huge cost saver. Well, thanks to SDN, now there is.

What SDN is All About
SDN is the latest buzzword for the cutting edge of telecommunications connections. Sometimes you’ll see it described as Hybrid SDN or SDN-WAN. Here’s what those acronyms mean and how they can work to your advantage.

SDN simply means Software Defined Network. That’s to distinguish it from the traditional hardware-based networks that were pioneered by the telephone companies and later used to create digital private lines and the backbone of the Internet. Today’s IP networks are chock full of individual routers and switches that set the architecture of the network. MPLS networks have an even more rigid topology created from specialized label switches that do the traffic routing.

A software defined network moves the intelligence of how the network makes decisions away from the pre-determined and hard to change path and routing assignments to a software program that orchestrates how the hardware elements behave at any given time. SDN-WAN is a Wide Area Network running under SDN control. This may be a hybrid of Internet, private line and MPLS networks all connected together to make one virtual WAN network.

What’s Holding Back The Internet?
The lure of the Internet is a siren song that has been easy to embrace, but, sometimes, with dire consequences. The reason is that the Internet was never designed to be a replacement for the hardware defined circuit switched telecom networks. It was meant to be a shared pool of resources that moves packets of data from one place to another accurately, no matter what goes wrong on the network. TCP/IP ensures intact files. It doesn’t offer any guarantees as to when those files will get to their destination. Your files aren’t any more or less important than anyone else’s.

Consequently, today’s Internet users experience variations in performance that might be annoying to a home user trying to watch a movie, but a productivity killer to a business running software as a service in the cloud. Voice and video two-way communication is dicey because network neutrality means there is no way to prioritize traffic. The streams of VoIP packets take their turns with huge file transfers. When the paths get congested, conversations become garbled and calls sometimes drop.

Making The Internet Great For Business
Take a closer look at what’s going on in the Internet and you’ll see that most of the problems are concentrated in “the last mile” connections and not the core network. The reasons that compromises are made to keep the cost of connecting low. For instance, DSL and Cable, the two lowest cost wireline broadband access technologies, include shared and asymmetrical bandwidth with no service level agreements. You take what you get in the way of instantaneous bandwidth, network congestion, latency, packet loss and reliability.

You can improve on this by moving to Dedicated Internet Access or DIA. That includes T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth, OCx SONET, Ethernet over Copper, and Fiber Optic Carrier Ethernet. All of these “carrier grade” solutions provide a more solid connection to the Internet, but at a price. That price is anywhere from 2 or 3x the cost on up to 10x or more.

Where Do Private Lines and MPLS Fit In?
You can get the highest performance network in terms of high bandwidth, low latency, jitter and packet loss, and availability by building your own private Internet. A classic way to do this is to run dedicated private lines between every location you wish to connect. That gets very pricey very fast. MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) networks improve on cost by essentially giving you a private Internet among all your desired locations for a price that’s better than dedicated private lines but still much higher than the Internet.

Companies have embraced MPLS for their internal communications among headquarters, branch offices and data centers when performance is paramount.

How SDN Mimics MPLS at Lower Cost
Truth be told, the performance of Cable Broadband solutions is far superior to what you could get a decade ago. You can get bandwidth levels of 100 Mbps or even 1 Gbps at bargain rates. It’s the variability that’s the bugaboo of Cable, DSL, 4G Wireless and the Internet itself.

What SDN controllers do is manage your connectivity resources on a continuous basis. You’ll need more than one connection for the SDN to have something to manage. These might include Cable broadband, DSL, 4G, Dedicated Internet access, private lines and even satellite in remote areas. The SDN will decide what traffic goes over what circuit depending on the characteristics of each network moment by moment. If no circuit is perfect, it might send the same traffic over multiple paths. More critical applications, such as VoIP and video conferencing, will get priority on the higher performance paths.

In essence, you are creating classes of service to prioritize your traffic even though the Internet itself does no such thing. Your costs will be lower than an all-private solution and you have the added advantage of being able to connect anywhere on Earth, including to your customers and suppliers, via the Internet. The world-wide core infrastructure is already in place and the cost is being amortized over many millions of users.

Do you suspect that you are paying much more that you could be for your wide area network connections? Find out now if there is a readily available lower cost SDN-based bandwidth solution that meets your requirements.

When Broadband is Hard to Find

By: John Shepler

If your business is located downtown in a major metro area, the idea of network and telecom services being hard to find seems a little odd. You probably have at least a couple of competitive providers vying for your business, as well as the local telephone company. Your challenge is to find the best deal on connectivity, trunk lines and cloud services. There are likely options available that you don’t even know about.

If you are located in a rural area or working from a home office, this wealth of opportunity may be missing. You may feel that nothing is available or you are stuck with a single option that’s a real stretch for your budget. Actually, there may be more bandwidth options available than you think.

T1 Lines are Readily Available
Businesses with their own commercial addresses have it the easiest. They can almost always get at least some traditional telecommunications services. These include POTS phone service and T1 lines. Both use the same twisted pair copper cables that connect nearly every building.

T1 started out as a telephone trunking service, but has been used for dedicated private lines and Internet access for decades. Each T1 line provides 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. Today that’s pretty low-end broadband, but it’s more than sufficient for credit card verification, email and simple Web access. You can also run backups to the cloud and connect with headquarters.

Boosting T1 Bandwidth
Not enough bandwidth? T1 lines can be bonded together to create a larger data pipe. Two bonded lines gives you 3 Mbps, 4 lines offer 6 Mbps and so on up to 10 or 12 Mbps. Bonded T1 is highly reliable and readily available. You might find it a bit pricey because there is no economy of scale. Two lines cost 2x one line. Even so, out in the boonies T1 and bonded T1 is likely well worth the cost. That cost has dropped precipitously in the last few years, by the way. If you haven’t taken a look at T1 lately you may be surprised by the value. Even so, expect to spend a couple hundred dollars a month or more for T1 service.

Broadband From Space
Another service almost universally available is two-way satellite or VSAT. Many small retail locations use satellite for their transaction processing and connectivity to HQ. Satellite bandwidth has been similar to T1 at a somewhat lower cost. More advanced satellites now offer bandwidths of 10 Mbps or more for a higher price. The thing to know about satellites is that they can connect anywhere in the country with a clear view of the southern sky. You can even power the equipment “off the grid.” Limitations are that bandwidth is shared and you are generally limited in the amount of data you can upload or download each month. Latency is also high, making the service hard to use for VoIP telephony. Compare that with dedicated line services that offer low latency and have no usage limits.

Broadband From Cell Towers
If your needs are modest, you may get by with 3G or 4G fixed wireless. This is a fancier “all office” version of a smartphone hotspot. If you can get smartphone broadband at your location, this service should work for your office or store. Just know that usage is limited and sometimes involves overage charges. It’s great for transaction processing and simple Internet usage, but not for heavy video usage and software downloads.

What’s Available for the Home Office?
SOHO (Small Office Home Office) users generally choose DSL or Cable broadband because of the low cost with decent performance. It’s not uncommon to get all the speed you need for $50 or so. You won’t find anything like those prices with T1 or bonded T1 lines. That’s because the bandwidth is shared among many customers and is a “best effort” rather than guaranteed availability service.

I often get inquiries from home office users who can’t get or don’t “like” their cable or DSL choices, but are shocked at the cost of more reliable and higher performing business telecom services. Are there any other options available?

You, too, can get two-way satellite service. You may be quite happy with it or be frustrated by the latency (time delay hesitation), usage limits, and interruptions during bad weather. It depends on what you are doing.

Fixed Wireless for SOHO Use
How about fixed wireless? If you can get good cellular service, you might consider something like a “Mi-Fi” hotspot that creates a WiFi hotspot using bandwidth on your 3G or 4G LTE cellular plan. This lets you use your desktop and laptop computers, tablets and other Internet devices on the same Internet access available from your smartphone. Once again, this is “light duty” service that is great for limited or emergency usage, but not for consistently heavy traffic.

Other Wireless Options
Another option that’s available in some areas but not others is non-cellular fixed wireless. These are WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers. Generally, these companies install a small dish or antenna on your home or office building and give you a wired connection for your router. You’ll need to look for these locally, as they are typically local enterprises not connected with nationwide providers. You also need to be within line of sight from their tower or towers and not too far away.

Call for Fiber… Maybe
How about fiber optic service? Verizon, Google and other companies have been building out fiber systems in select locations around the country. If you are lucky enough to be within one of these service footprints, you can get a lot of bandwidth for the money with FTTP (Fiber to the Premises).

Finding Home Office Broadband
If you are have a home office, you can try checking for DSL/Cable services or 3G/4G cellular wireless. You can also do an Internet search for satellite broadband from Dish Network, DIRECTV and others. Look locally for non-cellular fixed wireless.

Finding Business Location Bandwidth
If your business has a commercial location, then the Telarus GeoQuote search on Megatrunks.com is for you. This service gives you instant pricing for T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth, Ethernet over Copper, fiber optic and business grade Cable broadband. A quick inquiry will also get you quotes on VSAT and high capacity fixed wireless services appropriate for your business locations.


Note: Photo of Monument Valley courtesy of Josep Renalias on Wikimedia Commons.

13 Hot Business Bandwidth Options

By: John Shepler

You may think that your business has one or two options when it comes to bandwidth connectivity. If fact, you may have a baker’s dozen or more different technology options to choose from and multiple vendors for each. Of course, the closer you are located to a major business district, the more variety of services and providers you’ll have to pick from. Even so, there are often at least a few options available even out in the boonies. Let’s take a look at at thirteen hot business broadband options you should know about.


1. DSL - Digital Subscriber Line is a broadband service that is delivered over regular telephone lines. It may share a line with a phone or have a line all to itself for more bandwidth. Bandwidth starts at under a Mbps and goes up around 7 Mbps, depending on how far you are from the telco office. Both asymmetrical and symmetrical options are available.

2. Business Cable Broadband - This is very similar to residential cable broadband but designed to serve businesses locations. You often get static IP addresses and more responsive customer service. Bandwidths can range from around 5 Mbps on up to over 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. You can get just broadband, or a combination of broadband, telephone and television service. Once catch is that the cable has to pass by your location for you to be connected.

3. Fixed 3G and 4G Wireless - This is cellular broadband designed to support business applications. Specialized equipment gives you highly reliable signal. Since it uses cell tower signals, you can get service out in the country pretty much anywhere you can get cell phone service. This option is especially popular for credit card verification in temporary retail locations and construction job sites. Bandwidths are similar to a T1 line (1.5 Mbps) for 3G service and Cable broadband (10 Mbps) for 4G.

4. Satellite - Two way satellite transmission is popular with retail stores and any remote locations. Bandwidth has been similar to 3G, but is now available at 4G levels. You put a dish on the roof and you have broadband virtually anywhere. One limitation is that heavy rain and snow can interrupt service.

Note that these first 4 bandwidth options are the lowest cost you can find, but have some important limitations. They are shared bandwidth, which means your speed will vary depending on what other users are doing. Both satellite and fixed wireless have monthly download limits. Most are asymmetrical, which means that download speed may be 10x upload speed. This works well for typical Internet access, which is what they are designed for. Geosynchronous satellite has high latency (time delay) that makes it unsuitable for real time applications like VoIP. Service reliability and speed of repair typically fall short of what you get with dedicated telecom services.

5. T1 Lines and Bonded T1 - T1 has been the workhorse of business connectivity. The bandwidth is limited to 1.5 Mbps, now too low for many applications. Bonding T1 lines together can create a larger pipe up to 10 Mbps. Available just about anywhere you can get landline telephone service. Popular as a point to point service, Internet access or PBX telephone trunking.

6. Ethernet over Copper - The new competitor to T1. Uses the same telco lines as bonded T1, but a different transmission technology. Bandwidths range from 3 to 50 Mbps typically, with some installations capable of 100 Mbps or more. The tradeoff is distance. Bandwidth drops off as you get farther away from the telco office. Cost is usually lower than bonded T1, sometimes half as much. Can be point to point, point to multipoint or Internet access.

7. DS3 - A hybrid between fiber and copper. The service is delivered to the curb over fiber optic line but then connected via coaxial cable. Runs at 45 Mbps. This is a well established service that is available in many locations, but losing out to less expensive Ethernet copper and fiber services in many areas. Can be point to point or Internet access.

8. OC3, OC12, OC48 - These are traditional fiber optic services using SONET technology developed by the telephone companies. OC3 is entry level at 155 Mbps. OC12 takes you up to 622 Mbps. OC48 is 2.4 Gbps for businesses needing very high bandwidth. SONET is well established and available from multiple vendors within metro areas. Not generally available in rural areas. Point to point or Internet access.

9. Ethernet over Fiber - Like Ethernet over Copper, fiber is taking over from T1 lines and even DS3, this is the new competing service to SONET. Bandwidth is highly scalable between 10 Mbps and 10 Gbps, with 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps as popular service levels. Cost is generally lower than SONET and making changes is easier and faster. Also, EoF supports Ethernet services like E-Line and E-LAN. Can be point to point, point to multipoint or Internet access.

10. Microwave FIxed Wireless - Like 3G cellular, no landlines or fiber are needed. This is strictly a point to point wireless connection using licensed microwave band frequencies. Limited to line of sight from provider to an outside antenna on your building. High bandwidths of 100 Mbps are available, but generally only downtown in major metropolitan areas.

11. Wavelength Service - Gives you a dedicated “color” or independent channel on the laser beam. Bandwidth is typically 2.5, 5 or 10 Gbps. You can choose the protocol you want to run, including IP and TDM. Bandwidths of 40 and 100 Gbps are now becoming available for very demanding applications.

12. Dark Fiber - Have all the wavelengths to yourself when you lease an unlit fiber strand between two locations. The ultimate in bandwidth and flexibility, but you have to provide and maintain the terminal equipment on each end. For the most sophisticated users only.

13. MPLS Networks - Not an access service, but rather a way to connect many business locations in a regional, national or international area. Think of MPLS as a private version of the Internet. You have guaranteed bandwidth with class of service. Also, high security because there is no public access.

Note that all of the services from #5 on are considered professional telecom services that often come with service level agreements that guarantee performance. Bandwidth is dedicated, not shared, and symmetrical. If performance is more important than bargain basement pricing, these are the services you should be considering. If your needs are modest and you just want a connection to the Internet for email and Web access, then lower end options may well meet your needs.

Not sure how to choose the best bandwidth for your operation or how to find vendors for all these services? Get fast quotes on multiple bandwidth technology services for your business locations, plus recommendations from a bandwidth product specialist.

Asymmetric Bandwidth is Hot for Business

By: John Shepler

What has characterized serious bandwidth for business applications has been symmetry, or having the same Mbps capacity in both the up (transmit) and down (receive) directions. That’s being challenged, now, by new service products that promote asymmetry. Asymmetry means having a different bandwidth available depending on whether you are uploading or downloading. Let’s have a look at why this is happening and if it can be advantageous for your business.

Symmetry has its roots in telecom services that go back to the development of digital line transmission a half-century ago. The inventor of the T-Carrier standards, including the ubiquitous T1 line, was Bell Labs. Bell’s mission was to serve the telephone companies, so the digitization of telephone calls preceded computer to computer communications by decades. Switching from analog to digital long lines virtually eliminated the noise, distortion and crosstalk effects that plagued domestic long distance and international phone calls. It also enabled systems that could transmit hundreds and thousands of simultaneous phone calls on a single circuit.

Why symmetrical operation? Phone calls are bi-directional in nature. It doesn’t matter which end of the call you are on. You need the same line characteristics so that you can talk and listen simultaneously. This results in transmit and receive paths that are identical in design.

When T1 lines, DS3 connections and fiber optic circuits were pressed into service to meet the demand for computer communications, they automatically came with symmetrical bandwidth as well as dedicated circuits, synchronized channels and low latency and jitter. These features of Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) get the job done, but at a price.

Asymmetry has its roots in the rise of the Internet and consumer based Internet Service Providers (ISPs). When you access a web site, you send a small burst of packets to tell the server what you want and get back a large burst of packets that carry text, images, audio and video. Nearly all web access by users requires a lot more bandwidth in the download direction than in the upload direction.

This works well for telephone companies providing DSL over shared phone lines and cable companies using spare channels to deliver broadband Internet. Cable, especially, is a one-way medium. When TV was the only service, all channel content went from the head end to the consumer. For asymmetrical broadband, many fewer channels have to be allocated for the upload direction. That leaves the rest available for higher download speeds at premium pricing.

What some businesses, especially the smaller ones, have found is that asymmetrical DSL, cable, wireless and satellite broadband meet their needs just fine. This is especially true when their employees use the Internet primarily for web access and occasional email. Cable broadband is readily available and gives you higher download speeds for a fraction of the cost of a T1 line. When you get into higher bandwidths, say 10 to 100 Mbps, the cost differences are like night and day.

There are some hitches in this rosy scenario. Asymmetry is only one reason why DSL and Cable are cheaper than T1, DS3, Ethernet over Copper and fiber. A big driver in this cost reduction is shared rather than dedicated bandwidth. With shared bandwidth, the Mbps you have in either direction varies constantly depending on what your neighbors are doing. It’s one big bandwidth pool and the more users who are swimming in it, the less bandwidth is available to each user. This can get annoying when you have a critical project in the works and you can’t get much done because other people are downloading high definition videos.

Another difference between the symmetrical and asymmetrical services is that the symmetrical ones tend to be tariffed telecom services with Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that specify repair times for circuit outages, usually in a matter of a few hours. The consumer oriented asymmetrical services tend to be classified as “data services” and are provided on a best effort basis. The carrier will take your complaints seriously, but they may not be able to get the line fixed for some time.

Asymmetry doesn’t work for everyone. Applications like disaster backup and recovery, video conferencing, PBX & enterprise VoIP telephony, cloud computing and large file transfers between multiple business sites really need line symmetry for optimum performance. Companies running these applications also tend to need dedicated bandwidth and service level agreements to ensure maximum productivity.

Even so, the heavy competition from cable and other service providers is causing some major telecom carriers to rethink their service offerings. MegaPath, for instance, is rolling out asymmetrical service to customers at a cost savings. They are still differentiating their service with dedicated bandwidth, SLAs and Quality of Service (QoS) options for business applications that need these characteristics. Other big telecom carriers are expected to follow suit.

With so many service providers and connectivity options, how do you choose the optimum service that gives you the performance you need for the least expense? The best way is to get help from a bandwidth broker who works with many service providers and has the volume to get you the best discounts. Get instant online pricing and available consulting for bandwidth services available for your business locations.

When Asymmetrical Bandwidth Works Just Fine

Asymmetrical bandwidth has been pooh-poohed for business applications in favor of symmetrical bandwidth options. In some cases, you can wind up spending too much for the service you really need. In other cases, picking the wrong option will leave you frustrated and unproductive.

How do these symmetries work? Symmetrical bandwidth means that the upload and download speeds are exactly the same. You’ll see this identified as 3 x 3 Mbps Ethernet or 100 x 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet. The classic example of symmetrical bandwidth is the venerable T1 line. It offers a fixed 1.5 Mbps in the upload or transmit direction and 1.5 Mbps in the download or receive direction.

T1, DS3 and SONET are all symmetrical bandwidth services. The reason for this is historical. These are standards developed by the telephone companies to transport phone calls in bulk. The same bandwidth is needed for talk as well as listen on both ends. Ethernet over Fiber and Copper also tends to be symmetrical. It’s because these services were designed as replacements for T1, DS3 and SONET when used in business.

Asymmetrical bandwidth is characterized by differences in the upload and download speeds. This can be as much as an order of magnitude or 10x. You might order a service with 20 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload or 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload.

Asymmetrical bandwidth is dominant in consumer broadband services. These include DSL, Cable, 3G and 4G wireless, two-way satellite, WiFi hotspots and WiMAX. Why? It’s the nature of the Internet.

Most people browse the Web or download software and video while they are online. When you are doing these things, you are sending commands via your keyboard to the remotely located Web server. These commands are inherently low bandwidth and are based on text you type or links you click on. Neither of these has very many bytes of data involved. Downloads are another matter. Web pages, video clips and streams, music and other audio, software updates and large files are all bandwidth intensive because of their large file sizes. You want the maximum bandwidth available for downloads to minimize load times. You don’t need much bandwidth at all in the upload direction for the usual Web browsing.

What changes this picture? Any process that results in sending out large files as well as receiving them. Examples are remote backups, video conferencing, posting photos and movies online, and making large updates to Web servers. Most consumers do some of these things some of the time. Businesses are far more likely to be sending as much as they receive. But... not all.

If you are heavily involved in big data, cloud computing, enterprise VoIP, video production and distribution, medical image transmission or similar large file operations, you’ll want to opt for symmetrical bandwidth. Fast download speeds may not be so valuable when you wait forever to upload something or try to conduct an HD video conference.

Why pick asymmetrical bandwidth options? The primary reason is to save money. The asymmetrical services like Cable, DSL and 3G wireless are usually priced at a fraction of the cost for symmetrical services. This is generally due to more than symmetry. Asymmetrical services are most often shared rather than dedicated bandwidth. This reduces costs dramatically but means that your bandwidth will vary depending on what other users are doing. There are generally no service level agreements or performance guarantees on asymmetrical bandwidth services. That may be changing as business service providers begin offering dedicated asymmetrical bandwidth options.

What is the best bandwidth option for your business? Find out by comparing prices and features for a wide variety of asymmetrical and symmetrical bandwidth options on carriers serving your business location. Free consulting is also available to help you make the appropriate choice.

T1 or Better Internet Service

Have you been running “business” grade DSL or Cable broadband and find yourself dissatisfied with the results? Let’s take a look at why that may be and what the options are for higher performance business broadband connections.

First of all, there’s nothing inherently bad about DSL and Cable Internet services. Millions of people are quite happy with the performance of their services, especially for the price they pay. Therein lies the dilemma. Companies salivate at the low cost of these broadband options but are disappointed when the telecom-grade performance isn’t there. The more you think that broadband-is-broadband, the more likely you are to think that it’s all a vast conspiracy to deny you the performance that the technology is capable of.

The truth is that bandwidth is a scarce resource. Like electricity, water, gasoline and other commodities, pricing is set by the cost of acquisition and the forces of supply and demand. Where does broadband come from? The Internet isn’t one big pipe somewhere. It’s a collection of thousands upon thousands of networks. These days, most of those networks have fiber optic cores. If you’ve ever watched a utility crew slowly trenching conduit and big rolls of fiber cable underground, you can understand why there is considerable investment in metropolitan and national fiber networks.

We get lots of inquiries from residential users and home office businesses who think that business broadband services like T1, DS3 or Ethernet over Copper are going to be priced incrementally higher than the consumer broadband they have now. It always comes as a shock for them to see the quotes at 10x or more what they expect to pay. There is no gouging involved. Business telecom services are priced lower today than they’ve been in recent memory and an order of magnitude below what they were when most Internet access service was through dial-up modems. You just aren’t going to get dedicated access connections with consumer grade pricing.

What’s the difference if the Internet is the Internet at its core? There’s no difference between the price that businesses pay for a high performance Internet connection and what your Internet Service Provider (ISP) pays. It’s exactly the same line service. The problem is that nobody but businesses who generate revenue through their Internet connection can afford the cost of this service.

So, here’s what happens. The ISP buys their bandwidth at wholesale rates at the going price for 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps or more. Then they divvy up that bandwidth among hundreds or thousands of their customers. Each customer pays a small amount, say $20 to $60 a month, for their slice of the bandwidth pie. All together, the revenue collected from all those subscribers more than pays for the cost of the ISP’s Internet connection.

That’s right. As a consumer you don’t have an assigned direct pipe to the Internet. What you are doing is sharing a pool of bandwidth provided by your ISP. How fast your service runs depends on how many of your neighbors are in the pool at the same time. If every teenager in the neighborhood is streaming vampire flicks in high def, your line will slow to a crawl. In the wee hours of the night, you may be zipping along at high speed. There will be a maximum you can’t exceed even if nobody else is on. The ISP limits your speed to the service tier you are paying for. But... there’s no lower limit. You could be getting dial-up speeds if everyone absolutely, positively has to be online at once. The reason most customers remain satisfied is that only some customers are actually sitting at their computers at any given time. Anyone not home or doing something offline is effectively donating their share of bandwidth to their neighbors.

Businesses struggle with this kind of service. They all tend to work the same business hours, so every business is a heavy user for 8 hours or so a day and very little after hours. You can’t have your activities come to a halt because the company across the street is hogging all the bandwidth. This is why businesses who don’t like the performance of shared bandwidth services go with dedicated bandwidth. Dedicated bandwidth means that you are assigned a certain guaranteed line speed that doesn’t vary. If you buy 10 Mbps, you’ve got 10 Mbps all day every day whether you use it or not. It doesn’t go into any pool at night. It just sits there waiting for someone to come to work and download files.

You pay higher rates for dedicated line services but you gain important benefits. First, that bandwidth is always available. Second, it is the same bandwidth in both the upload and download directions. Consumer services and business services based on the consumer model have much higher download than upload speeds. That matches the way most personal users access the Internet. However, if you are running a server or upload large files a lot of the time, you’ll run out of bandwidth more often than not.

The third difference involves Service Level Agreements or SLAs. These are guarantees by the ISP as to how quickly they’ll hop to it and repair an outage and what parameters like bandwidth, latency and jitter you can depend on. Don’t know about these? They’re unheard of in consumer circles. Unless you have an SLA, you are dependent on the good intentions of your ISP. They all mean well, but as their ads say, “you get up to so many Mbps of bandwidth.” That means you can’t get more but you can surely get less.

What dedicated Internet services are available for business? These include T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps, bonded T1 from 3 to 12 Mbps, Ethernet over Copper (EoC) from 2 to 45 Mbps, DS3 at 45 Mbps and fiber optic services up to 10 Gbps. The higher your bandwidth, the lower your cost per Mbps but the higher your payments each month. In case you are thinking that you might pony up for one of these in your home office, forget it. It’s rare that any telecom providers will install dedicated services to a residence. You need your own business address.

Do you have such a business address and a burning desire for more dependable and higher performing Internet access? If so, then check prices and availability for dedicated business Internet solutions in your area.

What’s The Best Business Internet Service?

Does your new business need Internet service for the first time or does your established business need improved access? Perhaps you just have a nagging feeling that you could be getting more bandwidth for less money. You might be right. To answer all these questions, let’s take a look at what’s available in the way of business Internet service now.

The preferred professional-grade business Internet connection has long been the T1 line. Why? It is highly reliable and has a rock solid bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. This is called symmetrical bandwidth. You’ll see that not all Internet connections are symmetrical. The rock solid nature of the bandwidth is also not guaranteed on some of the other services. T1 is a dedicated bandwidth service. That means that you have 1.5 Mbps set aside for your exclusive use. Once again, not all Internet connections are exclusive. Service reliability is often guaranteed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that spells out how fast line problems will be fixed and what the remedies are if the provider fall short of the agreement.

In addition to these attributes, T1 is popular because it is almost universally available. Would you be surprised to learn that T1 technology, also called T-Carrier, was developed over 50 years ago? Using T1 to connect to the Internet is much newer. It was originally developed for telephone trunk lines. For both applications, T1 is provisioned over one or two pair of twisted copper telco wiring. That wiring is available in nearly every business location.

The two drawbacks of T1 is that it is relatively expensive compared to low-end data services and the 1.5 Mbps limitation. A decade or two ago, 1.5 Mbps was a lot of bandwidth for most businesses. Today it still works for smaller concerns but is too little for medium and large companies. You can work around this limitation by bonding multiple T1 lines together to achieve anywhere from 3 to 12 Mbps of total bandwidth.

A similar but newer technology service that is catching on fast is Ethernet over Copper (EoC). It also uses multiple telco pairs to transport the signal, but works a bit differently. T1 bandwidth is always 1.5 Mbps no matter how far the line runs, even into rural areas. EoC offers higher bandwidths near the central office and less farther out. Several miles is the distance limitation of Ethernet over Copper. However, if you are within the service footprint, you can easily get 10, 20, 30 or even 45 Mbps. Sometimes even 100 Mbps on EoC. The other big advantage of EoC is cost. You can get twice the bandwidth for the same price as a T1 line or the same bandwidth for half the cost of bonded T1 lines.

Small retailers, especially chain stores or franchises, have used two way satellite Internet for years. Satellite will work anywhere you have a clear view of the Southern sky, even in the back woods if power is available. Satellite is often less expensive than T1, although the difference is shrinking. It has limited bandwidth available and latency, or time delay, makes it unsuitable for telephone or two-way video. It does work well for point of sale terminals and general Internet access.

Like T1, satellite has a newer competitor. This is 3G fixed wireless. It is a business grade Internet service similar in bandwidth to T1 lines or satellite but using the broadband capability of the cellular phone network. Unlike simple wireless aircards, 3G fixed wireless service uses a special antenna and modem system that makes the system more reliable and usable in most all business locations nationwide and in Canada. The cost is about half that of T1 service. It is perfect for POS terminals and is offered with PCI level security for credit card transactions.

If your application needs more bandwidth, Ethernet over Fiber or SONET fiber optical services will provide all you can use up to 10 Gbps. This level of bandwidth costs more, of course, and isn’t available for all locations. Construction costs to connect a particular building are often the deal breaker.

Two asymmetrical, shared bandwidth services of note are DSL and Cable broadband. These were designed for the consumer market and cost considerably less per Mbps than dedicated telecom services. However, you do get what you pay for and shared bandwidth services achieve their cost savings by creating a “party line” arrangement where you and many other users share the same bandwidth pool. That means your bandwidth will vary up and down all the time. There are also no SLAs because these are “information services” not telecom services. Even so, with Cable business broadband you can get 100 Mbps download & 10 Mbps upload for about the price of a T1 line. If the cable passes your business and cost is paramount, this service might well meet your needs better than any other connection.

Scratching your head as to which way to go? A more business-like approach is to get availability, features, and prices for several business Internet service options suitable for your location and needs. You may be surprised by how much has become available recently and at reduced costs compared to years past.

Why T1 Is Available Where Other Line Services Aren’t

If your businesses is located off the beaten path, you may have experienced the frustration of not being able to get the same network services offered to companies downtown. You might even have come to the conclusion that there’s really nothing available to you. Oh, but there one highly reliable and reasonably priced digital telecom service that you can get almost anywhere. What is it? It’s T1.

There are a couple of misconceptions about T1 that go back to when this was something of an exclusive service. They are that T1 lines are very expensive and only available in certain areas. Neither of those is true any longer. T1 lines are available for most every business location. T1 lines are also quite reasonably priced for businesses, although not competitive with or available as residential services.

The fact that you can get T1 and not some of the “bargain” services like DSL and Cable broadband may actually be to your advantage. Those lower cost services have lower prices not because of any special technology, but because they are shared rather than dedicated bandwidth and because they are offered as “information services” with no particular guarantees of availability. Your bandwidth can vary all over the place and if the line goes down, it will get fixed when it gets fixed. T1 lines come with a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that guarantees such things as bandwidth, jitter, latency and mean time to repair.

Why would anyone buy a low budget information service instead of a professional grade telecom service? In some cases, it’s because the person placing the order isn’t all that familiar with the differences between bandwidth services and goes for the lowest price option available. In other cases, it’s because the service is being used to power a free WiFi hotspot as a service to visiting customers or for casual Internet activities that aren’t all that critical to the daily operation of the business.

T1 is so universally available because it is a highly mature technology, originally developed by the phone companies to transport two dozen phone calls at a time between switching offices. As such, it was designed to use two pair of twisted copper wires as part of a multi-pair bundle installed into nearly every business. Some of the wires in the bundle are used for phone service essential to any business. Others can be used to provide T1 line service.

T1 was also engineered with optional regenerator boxes that could be installed every mile or so to clean up and boost the signal to extend its range. This way, T1 lines can be run far out into the countryside with the same performance as those in town. That’s not so for DSL and Cable, which are pretty much constrained within the city limits and not much further.

T1 is a highly versatile line service. You can use it for dedicated Internet access, multiple telephone line trunks or as a point to point dedicated private line. It’s possible to get T1 private lines that span the nation. In this case, the are multiplexed onto long haul fiber optic circuits for most of that distance and only delivered as copper at both ends of the run.

T1 lines give you 1.5 Mbps of rock-solid exclusive bandwidth in both the upload and download directions. You don’t have to contend with any other users when you want access to the line. Prices start at under $300 a month in many locations nationwide. In lesser populated areas, the prices will be higher due to the extra effort install all the needed equipment, including regenerators, to your location.

What if 1.5 Mbps isn’t enough? You have to option to bond multiple T1 lines together to get a single larger bandwidth service. If you double bond, that is use 2 T1 lines, your bandwidth will be 3 Mbps. The number of lines you can bond together varies with location, but 10 to 12 Mbps is a practical limit in most locations. That’s plenty for most business needs.

Now that you know that T1 lines are very likely available to you at reasonable cost, how about getting T1 line service pricing and options for your business location? It sure beats having to move just because you didn’t think you could get connected.

What’s Wrong With Bring Your Own Bandwidth?

When you go out to contract new IT services, you are often faced with a choice. You can start fresh with both services and connectivity from your new provider. Otherwise you can layer the new IT services on the network setup you have now. Seems that if your MAN and WAN connections are working to your satisfaction, it would be smart to leave well enough alone. But, what other considerations should play into this decision?

Not every service provider deals in bandwidth. Many VoIP, cloud computing and other service providers specialize in the specific service they offer. They may make recommendations, but getting connected from your facility to theirs is your responsibility.

Other companies have a far larger array of services to offer. Some started off as competitive telecom carriers and later added other services such as colocation, cloud infrastructure, hosted PBX, Software as a Service and so on. Talk to these companies and they’ll express a definite preference for providing both the IT or telecom service plus the connectivity. Is this simply being offered as a convenience to the customer, a desire to get as much of the client’s business as possible, or are there other reasons? If so, what would they be?

A common industry term for using the network connections you have now is “bring your own bandwidth.” You’ll hear this term used most often by VoIP, hosted PBX and cloud computing providers. There’s a reason that this expression keeps coming up in provider literature and consulting discussions. It’s far more than just industry jargon.

What’s unique about cloud services of all sorts is that the performance of the cloud service is highly dependent on the performance of the connection between your facility and your provider's. Issues with customer provided bandwidth pop up so often that providers have become wary.

A common application is hosted VoIP. Unless you have an IP PBX switching system in-house, any VoIP service you are using is probably hosted VoIP. Hosted means that the service provider owns and operates the switching system and the trunk lines to the public telephone system. You only need to have IP phones and perhaps a gateway device in-house.

Hosted VoIP can best the best thing that ever happened to your company or an unmitigated nightmare. In fact, the very same service that works beautifully for one company can be a disaster for another. Why? It’s because voice services, particularly network voice services like VoIP, are highly sensitive to the characteristics of the long haul network connections to them.

Voice is a touchy application because it is real-time and easily corrupted. Any network congestion that holds up packets, drops them or brings them in at a variable rate will be reflected in the call quality. Many network anomalies show up as audio distortion that garbles conversations. Other problems are delays that chop off the beginning of sentences and intermittent outages that drop calls.

This is why major business providers with reputations to protect cringe at the thought of their clients bringing their own bandwidth when it is a shared bandwidth DSL or Cable Internet connection. Those low end services work just fine for e-mail and general website access. Add a third party broadband phone services and you are really taking your chances. Why? Your network may not be set up to give voice packets priority, the bandwidth on your broadband Internet service may vary all over the place, and even when those things are working well, the Internet itself has all sorts of vagaries.

Even the Cable companies themselves are aware of this situation and don't run their bundled telephone services over the Internet. What they sell you is a VoIP phone service that uses their Cable network to connect to their own VoIP switching center. Your telephone calls never touch the Internet itself. Call quality is just too dicey and hard to predict when you are dealing with a public network where no packet has an advantage, by design.

What major VoIP service providers really prefer is that you get a dedicated SIP trunk from them to provide your voice and Internet service. This way they can control the WAN connection and keep the voice and data packets from tripping all over each other. With the right bandwidth, latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics, you can have excellent voice quality and all the advantages of hosted PBX telephone services.

The same discussion applies to high bandwidth cloud connections. What some companies are finding is that the WAN connection to their new cloud provider isn’t nearly as capable as the LAN connection they had to their in-house data center. The big issues are bandwidth and latency. You need sufficient bandwidth so that users don’t have to queue up when they access the cloud. Latency introduces a delay that makes the cloud applications seem sluggish. In some instances this has become such a problem that Amazon has make arrangements with Level 3 Communications and AboveNet for special AWS Direct Connect service at 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps for its high performance cloud computing services.

Is bring your own bandwidth a good idea or a bad idea? It depends on how robust your current metro and long haul network connections are and what services you intend to add. A good approach is to discuss connectivity at the same time you are evaluating new IT services to make sure you have what you need to get optimum performance. You can get expert consultation and a wide variety of telephone, cloud and bandwidth services through our telecom broker, Telarus, Inc. A simple online inquiry will get the process started immediately.