SIP Trunking and Internet On a T1

Lots of smaller companies have T1 lines for dedicated Internet access. They installed these lines after frustration with consumer-grade broadband options didn’t perform well enough or were unavailable due to location. T1 gives them highly reliable, rock solid bandwidth at prices that have declined steadily over the years. They love their T1 lines. What they may be unaware of, however, is that they could be getting both broadband and telephone service over that same T1 line.

Traditional T1 line service comes in a number of flavors. The original implementation for the telephone industry consists of 24 channels of digitized telephone service on two pair of twisted copper phone wires. A device called a channel bank converts the multiplexed digital signal to and from 24 individual analog business phone lines.

A more popular version of the T1 telephone line is called ISDN PRI. It’s very popular with companies that have their own in-house PBX telephone system. With ISDN PRI, you get 23 outside lines plus a switching and data channel that speeds up connections and provides Caller ID for the phones.

Yet another implementation of T1 is the T1 data line. This version supplies point to point data connections between business locations or dedicated Internet access. The bandwidth is 1.5 Mbps for a single T1 line, but multiple lines can be bonded together to increase bandwidth to as high as 10 or 12 Mbps.

Most companies have a T1 line for data or Internet access plus separate telephone service, or one T1 for broadband Internet and a separate ISDN PRI to run the phone system. Smaller companies don’t get involved with multiple T1 lines because they only have a few office phones and don’t need 23 outside lines. They simply pay one phone bill for the number of business lines they have and a separate bill for their T1 service.

An option that may work just as well and save small businesses money is to have both the telephone service and Internet broadband on the very same T1 line. A conventional T1 line isn't intended to do this. It is set up to work as a telephone trunk line or a high speed data line. The configurations aren’t interchangeable. However, there is another flavor of T1 service that does provide the dual function of voice with data.

The traditional name for this service is Integrated T1. The latest offerings are called SIP trunking or SIP trunking with Internet.

What’s the difference? Actually, they are more alike than different. The way it works is that the service provider installs a device called an IAD or Integrated Access Device at each end of the T1 line. This device combines voice and data by converting them to a common protocol, which happens to be IP packets. Once in packet format, the IAD can manage line bandwidth to ensure that voice packets have priority over data packets so that telephone call quality is maintained no matter what sort of Internet activity is taking place.

Line bandwidth is shared. If there are no calls in progress, all 1.5 Mbps is used for broadband Internet. When a phone is picked up, bandwidth for that call, typically 90 Kbps or less, is reserved for that call. The rest is still used for the Internet. Note that the phone calls don’t actually go over the Internet. They simply share the T1 line connection to the service provider. The more calls that are simultaneous in progress, the more bandwidth is reserved for voice packets and the bandwidth for Internet access is proportionally reduced.

This process is sometimes called dynamic T1 or dynamic line service to reflect that the proportioning between voice and data is handled automatically. So, where does SIP trunking come in?

SIP is the switching protocol for VoIP phones. SIP trunking is a process of providing public phone system lines to a VoIP telephone system using the native Session Initiation Protocol. A SIP trunk will connect directly to your IP PBX for IP phones. It can also be configured to offer an analog handoff so you can use the analog business phones you have now.

What’s exciting about SIP Trunking and Internet on a T1 line is that it can often be less expensive than buying a T1 line and phone service separately. One company that specializes in this product is Vocal IP Networx. They can save you money by providing a single telecom bill each month at a cost that may well be less than what you pay now for the same quality of service.

Do you suspect that you might save money by consolidating your telephone and Internet service with one provider? If so, get competitive pricing for SIP Trunking and Internet on a T1 line and similar services and see if this option makes sense for you.

Business Broadband and Phone Comparison

Small and medium size businesses have a need for both broadband Internet access and business telephone service. Years ago, the answer was easy. Order a broadband service from an Internet Service Provider and then go visit the telephone company and order your business phone lines. These are still viable options, but today you have much more to choose from.

Most smaller businesses have limited bandwidth requirements, a fairly small collection of phones and very limited budgets. What often makes the most sense is a bundled service that includes both telephone and broadband service from the same provider. There are two primary bundled services that both offer a cost savings compared to buying your phone and Internet service separately.

The first is the integrated product known as Integrated T1 service or SIP Trunking. They both use the same technique of line sharing but differ in the connection method. Depending on your location, you may get a T1 line or an Ethernet line service.

Integrated services are based on the principle that one incoming line is cheaper than two. Unlike consumer broadband phone services that combine voice and data packets willy-nilly, Integrated T1 and SIP trunks use integrated access devices at each end to keep the voice and data separate. Both give priority to voice packets. When someone picks up a phone or answers a ringing line, the bandwidth to support that phone call is reserved for the duration of the call. When the phone hangs up, that bandwidth is released to the pool.

What’s is the bandwidth pool? That’s what’s used for your broadband Internet service. Let’s say you have an integrated T1 lines and no phones are in use. The full line bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps is used for broadband access. If nobody is using the Internet, say in the middle of the night, that line just runs idle.

The flip side of the coin is when you have a dozen phones in use. Those consume half the bandwidth of the T1 line. Your broadband speed sags to 750 Kbps, which can be no trouble at all for smaller companies using the Internet for credit card verification, email, Web browsing and online ordering.

SIP trunking works like Integrated T1 in that both manage the line bandwidth and prioritize telephone calls over Internet access. That way your phone quality is maintained and the variations in broadband bandwidth may not even be noticeable. If they are, you are simply trying to do to much with too small a service. T1 lines can be bonded and Ethernet based SIP Trunks offer a wide range of bandwidths to speed things up.

You might think that SIP trunking implies a VoIP phone system. Actually, you can configure the handoff to your internal phones to be analog, SIP based VoIP or ISDN PRI for a PBX telephone system. Similar handoff options are available for Integrated T1 lines.

A competitor to the integrated services of Integrated T1 and SIP trunking is Cable broadband. The Cable systems is organized differently, with everything assigned to channels. That’s because TV stations have always had assigned channels. Now there are channels on the Cable system that carry stations that have no over the air presence. Other channels can be assigned to carry broadband Internet or telephone calls.

The channelization of cable maintains the separation of voice, data and video so that they don’t interfere. You can order telephone and business broadband from your Cable provider. You can also include TV if you have the type of business with a public waiting room, like a auto service center or doctor’s office.

Which option is best for your company? Compare business broadband and phone options for pricing, features and availability to make the best decision for your particular needs.

PRI over Cable Cost Savings

Many businesses use ISDN PRI trunking to provide phone service for their organizations. The original motivation to move from analog business lines to PRI was the cost savings that T1 technology offered. Now there is a newer and even better cost option called PRI over Cable.

Regardless of the delivery technology, ISDN PRI is a well-established standard for bundling up to 23 business telephone lines on a single digital cable. Why 23? It’s because T1 lines were designed to have 24 channels, each capable of transporting one high quality digitized telephone conversation. One channel is reserved for signaling and Caller ID, leaving 23 channels available for phone calls. Each channel is equivalent to one analog phone line. By bundling them, you can almost always save money over ordering 23 individual phone line.

What’s more, nearly all modern PBX telephone systems and many key telephone systems support the ISDN PRI standard. There is a PRI jack on the back of the system or a plug-in accessory card. Many larger business phone systems accommodate multiple PRI lines so you can have 46, 69, 92 or more outside phone lines if your company is large enough to need this many.

ISDN was designed around T1 lines, but there is no reason that more modern packet switched networks can’t also provide phone lines to meet the ISDN specification. It’s all a matter of hardware and firmware on circuit cards to get the signals formated properly.

Comcast, the largest cable operator in the US, is now offering PRI telephone trunking over their Hybrid Fiber Cable (HFC) system. If you are only familiar with Comcast as a provider of Cable TV service or broadband, you may be surprised to learn that Comcast is the third largest telephone company in the country. The other possible surprise is that Comcast is a business as well as residential service provider.

Coaxial cable has bandwidth capabilities far beyond those of twisted pair copper telephone wiring. This is especially true when most of the network is built on fiber optic cabling and only the last mile or less uses coax. Coax is cheap, reliable and well-proven technology. There is plenty of room on that coax to delivery television, broadband and telephone services, including ISDN PRI.

But isn’t broadband telephone fraught with performance issues? The Internet often isn’t up to traditional telephone standards when it comes to voice distortion and latency, the annoying time delay that makes you pause during two-way conversations. That’s why Comcast keeps their broadband and telephone signals separate. They’re both riding the same cable, but in different channels so they don’t interfere. TV signals are also on the same cable in their own assigned channels.

What makes PRI over Cable a great option for a small to medium size business? Consider that you can get a 6 channel telephone trunk capable of serving up to 24 employees plus 22/5 Mbps broadband Internet service for less than the cost of many T1 lines. Most companies need both telephone and Internet service, and Comcast’s business class Business Class Trunks and Internet with broadband speed up to 22 Mbps download easily fits the need.

Do you need a larger phone system capacity or are concerned that you will in the future? No problem. Comcast lets you add to your PRI service in single channel increments. Many ISDN PRI services now come with a full 23 lines even if you don’t need that many. Having a system that is scalable for both phone lines and Internet bandwidth gives you the ability to buy just what you need now and be able to easily upgrade in the future.

Could you benefit from the flexibility of business telephone service that will grow with your business or just want to see if you can save on ISDN PRI over Cable with or without bundled broadband service? If so, get pricing and installation times for ISDN PRI and bundled services for Comcast Business Class. There are also attractive voice and data plans from competitive carriers where cable services are not available.

4G Wireless Expands Across The Nation

If you’ve been frustrated by the lack of low cost broadband at your home or business, help is on the way. In fact it may have already arrived.

CLEAR, the innovator of 4G Wireless broadband using the WiMAX standard, is now available in more cities. These include:

Washington DC Metro
Grand Rapids, Michigan
St. Louis, Missouri
Rochester, New York
Syracuse, New York
Eugene, Oregon
Merced, Oregon
Salt Lake City, Utah
Richmond, Virginia
Tri-Cities, Washington
Visalia, Washington
Yakima, Washington

What’s all the excitement about 4G? It’s not only the next step up from 3G wireless, but a service that actually takes the place of wireline broadband in many cases. You get high bandwidths of 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps download with occasional bursts up to 10 Mbps. Unlike WiFi, WiMAX 4G has the power to cover an entire city and even provide desktop computing bandwidth. You get what looks like a DSL or Cable modem, except there is no broadband wire to connect. The signal comes through the air.

Also unlike DSL or Cable, you can have an extra modem that plugs into your laptop computer for broadband on the go. Forget trying to find hotspots when you need them. Just wake up your computer and you’ve got broadband Internet wherever you are. That’s the beauty of wireless. Best of all, you can have both fixed and mobile service on the same account if you want to.

This has got to cost, right? Would you be surprised to know that prices start at $30 a month for unlimited broadband? Perhaps even surprised and delighted?

I thought so. Well, don’t wait a minute longer. Check and see if you can get 4G wireless at your home or business location, or both. If you can, you’ve got an unbeatable combination of fixed and mobile service for a lot less than your other options... if you can even find them at all.

WiMAX 2 Will Challenge Fiber For Speed

There is a notion going around that copper and wireless have about had their day in the great bandwidth race. Copper has gained a new lease on life as a last mile technology for Metro Ethernet service. Wireless has a unique position in that no wireline or fiber service can match it for mobility. But there’s a wireless technology in the works that may blow away fiber optic services even on the basis of speed.

Wireless bandwidth higher than fiber? Ha!

Well, not so fast. Not all fiber optic service are pumping out 10 GigE to users. In fact, a lot of fiber optic bandwidth is delivering 50 and 100 Mbps ports to customers. That’s especially true of FTTH or Fiber To The Home that is only now starting to approach 100 Mbps. What would you say to being able to pluck 100 to 300 Mbps out of the air anywhere in the city? Wouldn’t that make your netbook scream? Might you consider going wireless to the desktop with that kind of speed?

High bandwidths and low latency are the promise of a new standard in the works called 802.16m. If that number sounds familiar, it’s because you know 802.16e as the basis of WiMAX service. WiMAX is a mature standard based on SOFDMA (Scalable Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) radio technologies. It’s the platform used by Clearwire and Sprint for their CLEAR 4G broadband service, now expanding nationwide. This first generation WiMAX offers 3 to 6 Mbps downloads with citywide coverage. The upgrade will increase that more than an order of magnitude.

The 802.16m standard is now being dubbed WiMAX 2 to indicate it is a upgrade to the current international WiMAX standard. It’s a backward compatible upgrade, which is certain to ease deployment.

What will WiMAX 2 be used for? It will certainly be in high demand by mobile business and consumer users, perhaps even for advanced smartphones. The first WiMAX phone is expected to be out this summer. By the time WiMAX 2 has a nationwide footprint, the technology may well be giving traditional cellular services a run for their money. The higher bandwidth capability of WiMAX 2 make it a natural for high definition video and perhaps the long awaited Internet enabled vehicle.

But WiMAX also has the potential to serve millions of users not wired for DSL or Cable broadband and loath to accept the high latencies and limited bandwidth of satellite Internet services. That makes it a natural to be the service of choice in rural areas, perhaps with deployment accelerated by the current stimulus funding available for rural broadband. WiMAX 2 speeds will get the attention of both consumers and business users dissatisfied with their current broadband services and looking for something competitive that doesn’t require construction costs. WiMAX to the desktop is reality now, even in areas heavily dominated by DSL and Cable broadband services.

Less conspicuous will be wireless backhaul applications for WiFI hotspots, 3G cellular and even other 4G technologies. To get beyond today’s bandwidth limited cell sites means either fiber optic or high speed wireless backhaul. WiMAX was always intended for this application, although consumer and business Internet services are what’s being talked up in the media.

The Fiber Gold Rush Is On

We’ve known for some time that ultimately we’d need to move from copper wires to fiber optic strands to get the bandwidth we’ll need as technology advances. Internet service providers, Cable TV companies, medical centers, telephone switching offices and major corporations have gradually embraced this move over the last couple of decades. New services, such as Metro Ethernet, have made fiber optic connections affordable for even mid-size companies. Small businesses and consumers are now getting their turn.

Indeed, there has been one company that saw the light, so to speak, on fiber to the home and made the commitment to build out the infrastructure. That’s Verizon. Their FiOS passive optical fiber service has been moving into one community after another as a replacement for DSL, Satellite, and Cable. You can get bundles of phone, Internet and TV. Or, you can just get really fast Internet service at up to 50 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload.

Did I say really fast internet service? Most people are getting somewhere between 3 and 10 Mbps broadband via DSL, Cable or wireless. But DOCSIS 3.0 is being rolled out on Comcast and other cable systems with 50 Mbps service offerings to rival fiber. The next tier will be 100 Mbps for those who can and will pay for it. DSL over copper telephone wire is going to struggle as the bandwidth wars speed past 100 Mbps. But there’s a new service on the horizon that will blow right past all of these broadband choices. It’s a 1 Gbps fiber optic service about to be launched as a pilot program by none other than Google.

Yes, some lucky consumers in the test markets are going to get their hands on the kind of bandwidth that makes IT managers green with envy. A Gigabit per second. That’s 1000 Mbps. There’s nothing over coaxial or twisted pair copper and certainly nothing wireless that can even come close to delivering that kind of consumer bandwidth. Even Verizon may have to change out a lot of terminal equipment to pump a Gbps into home networks.

Google swears that they are not planning to become a nationwide ISP. Their intention is to create an environment that can showcase the next developments in technology. What sort of cloud computing, virtual reality, telepresence, or HD 3D video applications need that kind of bandwidth? They’re yet to appear. But this does get past the chicken and egg conundrum, where application development stagnates because of bandwidth limitations and only cutting edge aficionados pony up for the top tiers in broadband service. Google plans to make their service cheap and plentiful so that even the common user can have a crack at this massive bandwidth connectivity.

ISP or not, it’s almost a sure bet that Google will prime the pump with some of their own cutting edge experimental apps. There’s probably all sorts of cool things brewing in the lab that just aren’t practical to launch on today’s broadband networks. Once the bottle’s open and the genies start flying out, you can bet that the development communities will fall all over themselves to get their own offerings out for evaluation.

This pitiful era of a bandwidth starved United States is about to end. That’s exceptionally good news for anyone living out in the boonies who’s stuck with dial-up, or paying a goodly price for satellite broadband and swearing at the latency. Google is, perhaps, the last straw in forcing universal fiber optic connections to the premises. Right now, smart telephone and cable companies are grabbing federal stimulus financing to trench fiber everywhere it isn’t already. It’s more than just serving the populations in low density areas who need and deserve better broadband. Another driving factor is the burgeoning wireless bandwidth demand to support smartphones, such as the iPhone and Droid. The cellular sites are bandwidth limited by the copper lines they have for backhaul. They are going to need fiber to support LTE and speed-ups in WiMAX.

How will wireless fare in the long run? It’s hard to tell how fast will be fast enough for wireless broadband. We’re not there yet. Right now, the relatively small size of cellphone screens takes some pressure off the need for massive bandwidth, even for HD video. But what about that iPad? It’s surely just the first in a whole class of tablet size products with bigger screens and more processing power. That’s going to lead to higher bandwidth demands to support content to feed the tablets. The FCC is already eyeing underutilized TV channels and other portions of the spectrum to press into service for wireless broadband. There will likely be some technology advances needed in the wireless arena to satisfy the ultimate need. After all, you can put more fiber bandwidth in the ground that there are Gbps in the entire regulated electromagnetic spectrum.

Triple Play Helps Wireline Fight Satellite

The consumer television service market is all but saturated. It used to be that TV service meant calling the guy with the suitcase full of vacuum tubes. Now service means programming delivery. Your choices are over-the-air, cable, satellite, telco (AT&T) and fiber optic (Verizon).

The recent shutdown of analog transmission was met with a yawn by all but a small group of consumers who made no effort to buy a converter or a new digital TV. Now they're scrambling to the electronics department to get a converter box, or on the phone with the cable company or one of the satellite companies, DirecTV or Dish Network, to get their TV working again.

Once this blows over, where will things stand? Right where they were before the conversion. There's so much programming that's not transmitted on the airwaves that most people opt for an alternate TV service. Satellite has the advantage of being available where cable doesn't run and over-the-air signals are weak. Cable has the advantage of giving you a solid signal in storms that knock out satellite signals. But cable has another trick up its sleeve. That's something called Triple Play.

What's triple play? It's a bundle of television, broadband and telephone service from a single provider. This is something unique to "wireline" services. Those are, as you might suspect, services that run a wire to your home or business. That wire might be a traditional twisted pair copper telephone wire that also carries broadband and TV, as AT&T's U-Verse service does. It may be a coaxial cable, the universal connectivity mechanism for cable TV companies. Or it might now be a fiber optic connection as provided by Verizon's FiOS.

What can wireline do that satellite can't? Both DirecTV and Dish Network have designed their systems to be one way transmissions from constellations of satellites hovering in geosynchronous orbits to small rooftop dishes. For broadcast television, even hundreds of channels, that's all you need. For pay-per-view movies, you need a phone line or Internet connection to connect back to the satellite company.

You can get broadband service by satellite, but not on the same dish you are using for TV. It's a different band of frequencies and requires a transmitter at the dish to make it two-way. You need to get satellite broadband from a different company.

Satellite is no good at all for telephone. The problem is a time delay, called latency, that's the result of the satellites being tens of thousands of miles above the Earth. The speed of light and delays through the equipment introduce a half-second or so delay between the time you say something and when the other party hears it. You have to treat satellite voice communications like using a walkie-talkie and wait before you speak.

Both the cable companies and the telephone companies realize that their circuits have the ability to give you the triple play option of TV, broadband and telephone. So they offer attractive bundles to get a competitive advantage over the satellite TV companies. How good are the deals? A quick way to find out is to check the Triple-Play offers available for your location. Then compare with what you spend for a combination of TV service, broadband Internet and local and long distance landline telephone service from separate providers to see if the offers will save you money.

VoIP is For Smaller Companies Too

Enterprise VoIP solutions are generally seen as too sophisticated and way too expensive for small business. For the most part, that's true. In exceptional cases you may find that the feature rich IP PBX systems available today are a productivity booster for your sophisticated, if small, operation. For everyone else who just wants good voice quality telephone calls at a modest cost, SMB (Small and Medium Business) VoIP solutions may well fit the bill.

VoIP ranges from using your computer as a telephone all the way up to systems that are indistinguishable from standard network switched technologies. The home business user may be very happy with a VoIP telephone service that piggy-backs on the Cable or DSL broadband they already have for Internet access. These services don't require you to buy a special telephone. Instead, they provide an adaptor, sometimes called an ATA or Analog Telephone Adaptor, that works with the phone you have now. You simply plug your phone into the adaptor, connect the adaptor to your router or broadband modem, and you're set.

When you pick up the phone you get dial tone just like you have now. The phone rings just like it always has. The difference is that the bundled price of local and long distance service is often much less than you pay for traditional analog telephone service. Are you interested in VoIP as a replacement telephone service or for a second phone line? If so, you can use the service finder at Affordable VoIP to compare service offers and pick the one that's right for you.

Businesses that are large enough to have multiple employees and their own business address usually need a multi-line system so that more than one person can be on the phone at a time. Typical of these small businesses are real estate offices, insurance sales, warehouses, restaurants, retail stores and so on. What's also typical these days is that most businesses have a need for both telephone and Internet service. There are two good solutions that will give you both phone and Internet service with the voice quality and reliability you need.

The first solution is called Integrated T1. The integration comes from a combination of telephone and Internet on the same standard T1 line. Usually T1 is set up for either voice or data. But an integrated solution gives you both. A dynamic T1 line goes even further and automatically assigns any bandwidth not being used for telephone calls to broadband Internet. Even a heavily loaded Integrated T1 line with a dozen calls in progress will still give you Internet access similar to may DSL services. Being a combined service, you get a price break by ordering a single T1 line instead of two separate ones for telephone and Internet.

The second solution is call SIP Trunking. This is a fairly new service and works very much like a dynamic T1 line. Both voice and data packets travel on the same SIP Trunk from your business to your service provider, where they are separated into phone calls destined for the public telephone system and Internet access routed to the Internet backbones. The term SIP refers to Session Initiation Protocol, the term used for signaling in a VoIP telephone system.

Would an Integrated T1 or SIP Trunking solution be best for your company? The way to find out is to get pricing for each approach and compare cost and benefits. A simple online query will get the ball rolling and a friendly consultant will help you pick the right service for your business needs.

T-Mobile 3G Aircard For PC and Mac

Would you like to be able to connect your laptop computer to the T-Mobile 3G mobile data network? How about free access to T-Mobile HotSpots? Ah, what you need is the T-Mobile webConnect USB Laptop Stick.

This "stick" is a wireless modem aircard with a swiveling USB connector. It plugs into a USB port on your PC or Macintosh computer. For PCs you'll need to be running Windows XP or Vista. For Macs, it's OS X 10.3.9 or higher.

An advantage of this aircard is that it gives you access to the Internet just about anywhere you can get a T-Mobile cellular signal. That's much of the U.S., although you should check the coverage maps to make sure you'll get a strong signal where you expect to be. In strong 3G signal areas, you'll be connected at speeds comparable to DSL or Cable Modems using the HSDPA protocol. In weaker areas, you'll still get EDGE 2G connectivity for broadband or near-broadband speeds.

You'll also be connected to T-Mobile WiFi HotSpots with unlimited free access. Normally you have to pay a fee to connect to these in Starbucks coffee shops, Borders Books, FedEX Kinko's Office and Print Centers and various airports and major airline clubs. But buy this aircard and data service plan and you'll get the HotSpots thrown in free.

Note that the built-in T-Mobile Connection Manager finds you the best connection for where you are, be it 2G, 3G or WiFi, and makes the connection. That greatly expands your ability to operate at broadband speeds just about everywhere.

But there's even more. The webConnect USB Laptop Stick features a built-in microSD slot that supports up to 8 GB memory cards. Use this instead of another portable flash memory drive when you are on the go.

What are the hottest cell phone deals available right now, including free cell phones? Use the Cell Phone Plan Finder to check out the top phones and associated wireless service plans.

What Real Estate Developers Need to Know About Ethernet

Broadband Internet access is becoming a utility, just like power, water, and telephone service. Access to the public Internet and corporate networks is now absolutely essential to doing business, and pretty much expected by home office users. Smart developers of office buildings, industrial parks and new subdivisions will include broadband Internet in their planning rather than let buyers and renters fend for themselves. It's not just another bullet point on the feature list. Broadband can be a big money maker and Ethernet is the technology to pursue.

Why Ethernet? It's for more than infrastructure wiring these days. Metro and Carrier Ethernet connections now offer the best value for the money in terms of dollars per Mbps bandwidth. In many cases these savings come from dealing directly with a competitive network service provider who provides the fiber optic connection.

How far you want to go with this depends on how heavily you want to be involved with the voice and data infrastructure and services. When building or rehabing an office building in a metropolitan area, a good option is a Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet service and the structured wiring, switches and outlets to distribute the service to individual offices. This also makes sense when developing a new office or industrial park. If fiber optic cables are pulled to each location, along with power and telephone lines, the cost is fairly incremental.

What service level should be provided? That's determined by how many clients you have and their bandwidth requirements. Most every business will want at least T1 level Internet service (1.5 Mbps). More sophisticated clients who need to transmit medical images, engineering drawings, or video can really benefit by Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps. Some might actually be persuaded to choose your facilities over others if they can have easy and affordable access to Gigabit Ethernet service at 1,000 Mbps.

Another decision is whether to contract with the carrier yourself and become the service provider to your clients, or simply provide the physical infrastructure so that carriers can easily hook-up clients directly. To get a carrier interested, you might at least have to get commitments for a certain level of bandwidth from your tenants. If you buy bandwidth from an Ethernet carrier and then route it to interested clients, you can determine the monthly service pricing and perhaps turn a handsome profit as well as having satisfied customers.

Of course, all of this can be done with traditional T1 lines and DS3 service. But bringing in an Ethernet Wide Area Network connection can slash your costs by half or more if you can use 10, 100, or 1,000 Mbps of bandwidth for your facility. If you are planning or currently providing such services, then find out what carriers are nearby and what the service levels cost in your area.