Ethernet WAN is the New SONET

By: John Shepler

High speed communications lines progressed from copper analog to copper digital to fiber optic digital over most of the last century. The technology that drives fiber has also evolved from time sliced synchronous multiplexing to packet based protocols, mirroring the transition to networked computing for nearly every business. While older SONET telco lines still provide effective connections, there are real advantages to be gained by upgrading to Ethernet WAN, the newer technology for fiber optic service.

It Started With Really Fast Phone Lines
SONET, which stands for Synchronous Optical NETwork, is a phone company invention that was developed to bundle or multiplex thousands of individual phone calls onto an optical fiber for long distance transmission. To make operations easier, SONET was made backwards compatible with legacy T1 service that does exactly the same thing with 24 calls over two twisted copper pair… in other words, ordinary telephone line.

SONET allowed the phone companies to bundle T1 line into DS3 lines into OC3 fiber lines and demultiplex or unbundle them anywhere along the way. Everything was compatible down to the single telephone channel.

SONET to Link Computers
So, how did SONET come to support computer networking? The protocol had to be converted between SONET’s time division multiplexing and Ethernet’s packet switching. That was accomplished using protocol conversion on a plug-in module. To the user, It made no difference what was going on under the hood. Packets would go in one router and come out another miles or thousands of miles away.

SONET was developed for fiber and all of the early fiber optic links for computer networks were connected using one of the SONET levels. OC3 was the lowest speed at 155 Mbps. This was the first fiber service that most corporations ordered when they outgrew their T1 and T3 lines. Each increase in speed required swapping out an adaptor module for the particular SONET level.

In fact, the Internet was built on SONET. SONET rings, which offer redundant paths, formed the core of the Internet as it grew. Internet service providers would connect via SONET and then divvy up the bandwidth for multiple 64Kbps dial-up modems or, later, DSL or Cable broadband modems.

The Ethernet Revolution
Ethernet, developed by the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center in the mid to late 1970’s, grew to become the dominant networking protocol, thanks in no small part to the proliferation of the personal computer at the same time. Most small and large users adopted Ethernet, as adaptor cards, cabling, hubs and routers became more and more affordable. Every PC soon came with an RJ-45 Ethernet jack as standard equipment and peripherals, such as printers, did the same for compatibility.

Once Ethernet became the de-facto networking standard and computer data traffic greatly exceeded voice traffic, it started to make sense to just adopt Ethernet for Wide Area Networks as well as Local Area Networks. When business phones became digitized and used VoIP to connect on the same network as the computers, the need for a separate voice network faded away.

Another factor that has moved WAN services from SONET to Ethernet is the rise of competitive network service providers independent of the telephone companies. Since these companies had no legacy analog phone service to support, they could simply focus on offering Ethernet connections to their customers in competition to the telcos.

By this time the original Ethernet protocol has been expanded to provide technical specifications for Carrier Ethernet, which is the same as LAN Ethernet but extended to support the MAN (Metropolitan Area Network) and WAN (Wide Area Network).

What Ethernet WAN Has to Offer
You remember that SONET has distinct service levels, each with it’s own bandwidth and specific adaptor requirements. Ethernet doesn’t have this limitation. Instead, you have an Ethernet port with a maximum bandwidth, say 1 Gbps. It will support any bandwidth up to the max limit of 1 Gbps. You can order 100 Mbps service today and easily upgrade to 500 Mbps or 1 Gbps later. Only if you want a service level above 1 Gbps, will you need to have a higher capacity port installed. This process is so seamless that many providers will let you change service levels at will by logging into your online account.

Ethernet services tend to be less expensive than SONET. Usually, much less expensive. You pay for the service level you want, be it 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, 10 Gbps, and so on. Remember you can change this easily after you have service installed and your bill will be adjusted to the new level you select.

Since there are many, many competing Ethernet MAN and WAN service providers, pricing per Mbps has dropped rapidly over the years and continues to do so. Some of the service providers are the traditional telephone companies, but with much improved pricing. Others are independent carriers serving regional, national, or international areas. They can also provide excellent customer service, high reliability, and very good deals on bandwidth.

There are usually two types of service you’ll be interested in. One is a dedicated connection to the Internet at a bandwidth you select. The other is a point to point dedicated private line that is just like having a very long Ethernet cable connecting two LANs separated by many miles. These are useful for interconnecting main offices and branch offices, warehouse, manufacturing centers and so on with maximum performance and privacy. Another popular application is a direct connection between your offices and your cloud service provider. This avoids the vagaries of Internet performance and makes the cloud seem like it is right down the hall.

Perhaps you still have legacy SONET service that was installed years ago. It’s been working fine so no one has paid much attention. This would be a good time to see if competing Ethernet WAN services can give you more bandwidth for the same budget or offer a considerable cost savings if you are happy with the bandwidth level you have now. It doesn’t cost anything to look, so why not see what’s available?

How Fiber Optic Metro Ethernet Works

By: John Shepler

Are you paying a small fortune for all the lines you need to connect your multiple business locations? Would you like more flexibility in scaling bandwidth when needed along with guaranteed dedicated bandwidth that is low in latency, jitter and packet loss? You may be missing out by not using this important network connection service. Let’s have a look at a what fiber optic Metro Ethernet connections can do for your business:


Did you notice the big cost advantage in having one service provider in charge of the core network and the last mile connections to each location? Major Metro Ethernet providers have this capability and can offer you a cost savings by using their facilities rather than having to lease portions of the links from the local telephone company.

There are also network services available that aren’t offered by legacy SONET/SDH connections. Most useful is probably Ethernet LAN service. This standardized Carrier Ethernet service creates a fully meshed layer 2 bridge LAN that ties together the in-house networks at each location. Employees perceive that they are all on the same network regardless of where they are located.

This would be a good time to learn more about Ethernet bandwidth options for your business with free consultation, solutions tailored to your particular needs and rapid price quotes that you’ll find very attractive for your IT budget.

You Pay Too Much For Your Business Phone

While we’ve been busily gathering and servicing new customers, the telephone industry has been changing behind our backs. If you are still using the same phone and provider that you had a decade ago, it’s seriously time for a review. You not only could be, but probably are, paying way more than you would have to and be missing out on some newer productivity features.

What’s so different now? After all, a phone is a phone, right?

Ah, not so anymore. All phones used to be pretty much the same. That’s because they all came from the same supplier, the local telephone company. The phone was a big dumb peripheral to the large scale switching system at the central office. Most single line phones were built from passive components and got their power through the phone line. Multi line business phones were also built from passive components but supplied from a power supply and line card rack in the back room. That was necessary to create such features as flashing a line button when it was on hold.

Some of business phones you can buy today are not much more sophisticated that the one’s that Ma Bell supplied. One difference is that they may have a plug-in power supply or batteries to power the electronics inside. The one to four line key telephone systems that you can buy from office supply stores have replaced the old electromagnetic switching with smaller electronic boxes. Still, they all work on the same old telephone lines called POTS.

POTS stands for Plain Old Telephone Service. It consists of independent analog business lines that run from your office to the phone company over twisted pairs of copper wires. Power and switching signals are provided by the telco switching system. The in-house key system lets you have more than one line on a phone with LEDs to show what’s in use or on hold.

Did you know that you can get POTS service from companies other than your local phone company? The telephone industry has been deregulated so that other providers can lease the bare copper wires that run to your office and supply you with local and long distance service. There can be a cost savings in doing nothing more than switching providers. Your phone system will work exactly the same as it does now only you’ll get a lower monthly phone bill.

If your system has grown to more than a half dozen lines, especially if you have upgraded to an in-house PBX switching system, you could benefit from bringing in a digital trunk line instead of all those separate analog lines. A digital trunk called T1 CAS or ISDN PRI bundles up to 23 or 24 separate lines into a single line that still keeps the phone conversations independent. Why do this? You could realize a big cost savings from consolidating your lines. Chances are that your PBX system already has a T1 or PRI connection or you can upgrade with a adaptor card.

You may be wondering if VoIP telephony is for you. The consumer grade services that run on the Internet may not give you the call quality consistency that you need for good customer support or other business communications. What can work very well and save you considerable money is something called a SIP Trunk. This is a digital line that transports both telephone calls and broadband Internet access but keeps them completely separate so they don’t interfere. It’s a way to take advantage of VoIP technology without losing call quality or reliability.

The latest innovation is cloud based communications, also called Hosted VoIP or Hosted PBX. This is sort of like going back to just having phones in-house connected to the phone company’s switching center. The difference is that you aren’t stuck with the local phone company as your only choice. Using SIP Trunks, you can connect to many different providers, all competing for your business. Not only can you save money on your monthly bill, but you’ll avoid investing in expensive PBX or Key telephone systems and get advanced features like being able to include your smartphones in the system.

Does this whet your appetite to investigate what is available for your business telephone needs? Get prices and features for a variety of business phone service options so you can be fully informed before making any new commitments.

Can Hosted Voice Cut Your Phone Costs In Half?

A generation ago, a big cost savings opportunity was switching to a competing long distance telephone service provider. Both businesses and consumers went on a stampede once deregulation opened the door for competitors to the incumbent local phone companies and their lock on long distance prices. The real enabler was making the process all but invisible to the customer. Sure, there was some arcane procedural work involved in having your 1+ calls go to supplier B rather than supplier A. You didn’t have to deal with that. You simply called your new provider, fill out some paperwork or signed up online. The magic happened in a week or two and, suddenly, your long distance bills were lower.

There’s another stampede building right now. It’s the opportunity to move from the in-house phone system with trunk lines to the local telco to cloud hosted telephone services. In a way, what’s happening to local business telephone service is what happened to long distance decades ago. It’s moving to a lower cost model via disruptive technology. What will turn it into a full blown stampede is providers who make the move painless for their customers. Think about it. If you can cut your total phone costs in half without having to go through a gauntlet of technical gymnastics yourself, how can you not make the move?

Megapath, a full-service competitive telecom provider, is doing its best to become your next telephone company as well as your network services vendor. They’re doing this with a comprehensive hosted voice platform that makes it easy to get the phone services you need without YOU having to make the investment, develop the expertise or provide the staffing.

Just what is hosted voice and how can it offer such dramatic cost savings? It’s a matter of economy of scale. Every business can go out and buy a PBX switching system and a truck full of phones, wire all this up and bring in local dial tone with a bunch of POTS lines or an ISDN PRI trunk. Isn’t this pretty much what everyone has done? The alternative is to have a specialized service provider build a much larger switching system and the staff to run it and have companies who are not in the telephone business get their services remotely.

Hosted voice is a lot like website hosting in that instead of you maintaining your own servers, you pay by the month for someone else to provide the servers and the bandwidth that connects them to the internet. With hosted voice, you pay by the month for MegaPath or another hosted voice provider to switch all your in-house, local and long distance phone conversations and provide the telephone trunks that connect to the public phone system.

WIth hosted voice, there is no need to buy or maintain a local PBX phone system. You don’t need to lease any telephone lines. Whatever PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) connections you need will be provided. All you need are IP phones connected to your network and a voice gateway that that manages bandwidth to your service provider to ensure that voice quality has priority over other traffic. Capital investments are a thing of the past. You buy phones as you need them and you might even get the phones included free with your service plan.

It might not be immediately obvious that hosted voice with pay-as-you-go pricing has a flexibility that in-house systems lack. There is no need to buy more capacity than you can use right now. If you need 25 phones, then 25 phones and the service to run them is all you order. If you land a new contract and have to start hiring like crazy, then you go ahead and add “seats” to your system as needed. You pay incrementally more each month to match the increase in your business. You don’t go out and buy a big switching system to handle anticipated needs. The hosted voice provider has a system that can accommodate any possible number of phones you’ll ever order. That reserve capacity is something that works to your benefit but you don’t have to pay for.

The days of every company being in the telephone business are about over. The rise of hosted voice systems connected by SIP trunks, basically high bandwidth dedicated lines, enables a new model of telephony where you simply pay for what you need when you need it. Could this approach offer advantages for your company? Get competitive quotes for Hosted Voice Enterprise VoIP Telephony and compare them to your current costs, including what you have to invest in equipment and maintenance. It may be time for you to make the move to a hosted phone system.

XO Nails Down SIP Trunking Savings

How would you like to save over $88,000 a year for your business just by switching to SIP trunking service?

Not so fast, you with the pushcart. To save this kind of money, you have to have the size of operation that spends that kind of money. I’m getting the number from the new Enterprise SIP Savings Estimator offered by XO Communications, a major competitive voice and data carrier.



What kind of business saves the big bucks? In this case, one with 1,000 employees located in 10 locations and making half their phone calls within the company. This is not at all unusual for Fortune 500 corporations. In fact, I’ll bet there are many companies in your city that meet this criteria. Perhaps you even work at one. If you are in charge of information technology or telecommunications, this is something that can make you a corporate hero. With nearly all businesses turning over every rock to find cost reductions, SIP services are well worth investigating.

What’s special about SIP and how does it work the savings magic? SIP or Session Initiation Protocol is the switching protocol behind most VoIP implementations. In fact, when you hear the term SIP, you can bet the discussion involves VoIP telephony to some degree. The selling point of enterprise-level VoIP phone systems is that they are big money savers. But the question remains, “how?”

One big source of savings comes from the fact that we are in the digital age and companies large enough to have multiple business locations have those locations tied together with a WAN or Wide Area Network. Some do this with T1 lines and their own proprietary network topology. Others use a private cloud network, once Frame Relay and now MPLS, to create a mesh network that ties all locations together.

But what about telephone? The local PBX telephone system dominates with analog or ISDN PRI trunk lines for outgoing calls. Here’s where the savings come in. Right now you may need to use the public telephone network to make a call from a branch office to the main office or another branch. You pay for each of those calls. But, if you can press you data network to do double duty and transport voice as well as data, you can keep those internal phone calls on your own network and pay no toll charges at all. It’s almost free, since the data network has to be in place anyway.

SIP trunking is a technique that carries both voice and data on the same network. You don’t even need to connect your phone system to the public network. You can install a SIP trunk to a service provider that handles that at lower cost that you may be paying. The SIP trunking provider can also give you broadband Internet service over the same trunk without computer traffic interfering with voice traffic.

Oh, but you need to be a major corporation to save using SIP services, right? No, not at all. Most medium size companies and many small companies can also save money with SIP trunking in place of the separate phone lines and broadband services they buy now. How can you know if it makes sense for your operation? Easy. Get a competitive quote for SIP Trunking services and see just what the cost savings are. You may be surprised at what you’ve been missing out on.

Telecom Cost Savings Strategies

Every company is scouring the books for potential cost savings these days. How about your telecom expenses. Do you think there is any potential for savings there? I’ll bet there is.

First thing you need to do is collect those monthly bills and take a close look. For starters, just pick last month’s bill. What are all those line items that you are paying for? You need to know what each item is and why you have it.

In a larger organization, you can easily drown in the detail of every long distance phone call. I’d suggest just a quick scan to see if what sticks out like a sore thumb. Are a few users running up bills that are ten times everybody else’s? Do they have jobs where you’d expect that?

Especially be on the outlook for services that were ordered a long time ago but aren’t being used anymore. Do you have a special FAX line with no FAX machine attached? Are there a dozen phone lines coming into a building that has only a hand full of employees? How about dedicated point to point lines that link to locations you don’t even own or lease anymore? Cell phones that are sitting in drawers unused but still activated? All of these things are candidates to cancel immediately.

Highlight the rest of your telecom line services and how much you are paying for them. Generally data lines have a fixed cost per month. Telephone lines have both a fixed cost and a per minute cost. You want to know the bandwidth and cost of each data line and the per minute rate and number of minutes for each voice line. Why? So you can comparison shop, of course.

Oh, but isn’t that a painful and horribly time consuming process? Not anymore. Not since there’s a telecom brokerage service available that offers an array of competitive voice and data line and networking services. There may be several options available for each of your needs.

Best of all, there’s a free consulting service that can help you narrow the options and compare costs directly with what you have now on a line for line basis. That information you gathered to get a handle on your current telecom expenses is all you need to get started. Call the toll free number or submit an online inquiry to get the process started. You may be shocked by how much you are spending now that can be cost reduced in short order.

Strategies For The Hunkered Down Economy

The calendar has turned, but the economy has not. We’re still looking at double digit unemployment, public companies making their numbers by cutting expenses rather than increasing sales, and a lot of angst over what it will take to get things moving again. In the meantime, consumers are hunkering down to spend less and save more. That means businesses large and small are left with little to do except hunker down themselves. It’s hard to get excited about taking the big leaps when you don’t know how wide the abyss is.

Does this mean that your company is permanently stuck in the mud or that your ship is sinking with nothing more to throw overboard? For most, that’s way too dire a scenario. But you are faced with an opportunity that requires a choice, at least in your telecommunications expenses. Do you want to maintain the same level of service and pay less for it, or do you want to maintain your budget at current levels and get more service?

Many managers consider this an enviable position. There’s really no way you can lose. The only one who isn’t going to make out in this arrangement is the overpriced service provider who either isn’t sensitive to your needs or has failed to optimize their own business to offer you a better deal.

Perhaps the first thing to do is to honestly assess your needs for the coming year. Do you need everything you have now, more, less, or just different? For instance, if the phones aren’t ringing off the hook, then perhaps you can get by with fewer outside lines and no one will be the wiser. If your staffing levels have dwindled, you may have more broadband capacity than you are really taking advantage of at the moment. You can almost certainly save by matching the level of telecom services to your current reality. In some cases, you may be able to dramatically save by combining your telephone and broadband in an integrated T1 line or SIP trunk.

You may be concerned that downsizing your bandwidth puts you at risk if business suddenly bounces back. That can be mitigated by ordering scalable bandwidth services. Metro Ethernet is a good example. The connection that’s installed may be capable of 50 Mbps, but you only pay for 10 Mbps. If business doubles, you call your provider and tell them to take it up to 20 Mbps. They can do that quickly and easily, since no hardware changes need to be made.

For some businesses, opportunities are available to increase activity. What’s holding them back is the unavailability of bank loans or a reluctance to make long term commitments to expenses that might not be covered if the ramp up in business activity doesn’t happen as planned. What you don’t realize is that you may be able to get more and better service without spending more money. This is commonly the case with companies that leased line services years ago and have been paying month to month since their contract ran out. Telecom service rates have been dropping, sometimes dramatically, over the last few years. But you’re still paying the old rate to the old provider who makes no effort to offer you a better deal. How can you be sure you are getting the most for your precious expense dollars? Get competitive telecom service quotes quickly and easily online.

The services we promote are offered through a telecom broker who’s job it is to research the best rates available for your business location. When you request a competitive quote, a Telarus consultant will be working on your behalf to understand your current and future needs and then find the best deal available from dozens of service providers. That consultant will check back with you from time to time to make sure that what you are leasing is still the best cost solution as your situation changes. Best of all, this is a free service. It’s truly one of the best deals you can get in any economy.

Quick Way to Cut the Corporate Phone Bill

With escalating commodity prices and surging fuel bills, many companies are in the big squeeze between rising costs and limited ability to raise prices. Things are moving so fast that it's hard to re-engineer or even rethink business strategy. The most viable solution to maintain profits is simply to cut costs.

At this point all the green eyeshades turn toward the phone bill. Are all those calls really necessary? Really?

Auditing the telecommunications bills is a smart move even when business is humming along smoothly. You can spot charges for unused or unneeded services that can be discontinued at a savings. Even a quick glance will reveal unusual activities such as a few employees who seem to hang on the phone all day making personal calls. But once you've picked the low hanging fruit, the job gets much harder and burns up a lot of time. Is there anything quicker?

Sure, just pay less.

That's right. The fastest way to cut your voice and data services bill is to simply pay less for exactly what you have now. If your telephone and Internet usage have grown along with your business, you might not have thought to challenge the increasing costs. After all, you are using more. But what's also changed over the years is the competitive landscape for digital voice and data. What was the best deal a few years ago may well be far more than you need to pay today.

But isn't finding vendors and going out for quotes even more time consuming than digging into the phone records?

It doesn't have to be. As a user, you're not really in a position to know where to look or how to evaluate the myriad of competitive options. But there is a professional service that will do this without charging you. It's a network of experienced telecom consultants connected through a sophisticated database system that lets them compare a dozen or more options for any given need. All you do is make a simple online or telephone inquiry and you'll get immediate attention.

Why is this likely to work for your business? Take telephone service, for instance. Your PBX telephone system likely uses or could use T1 PRI digital telephone trunking. This is the standard way to bring in multiple telephone lines to a centralized office phone system. T1 PRI pricing, including combinations of local, long distance, 800 numbers, DID (direct inward dialing) and Caller ID, is highly competitive. You may well be able to get the very same services you have now with the very same usage levels for a lower monthly bill.

The same is true for data services, such as dedicated Internet. In addition, the the standard T1 and DS3 Internet services, Ethernet connections have become available only recently. T1 and DS3 can be had for lower lease rates. If you can get Ethernet over copper or fiber connection, you'll save even more at higher bit rates.

Before you get too embroiled in cutting heads or making panic changes to your business processes, take a quick look at cutting your voice and data telecom expenses by simply paying less. You can do the hard stuff later.

Contact Center Telecom Service Savings

Contact Centers consolidate communication services for companies and other organizations. That includes the telephone call center, FAX messaging, email and mail room.

Today's contact centers are heavy users of electronic communications and are likely to be the major telecom cost center for the company. A typical contact center may have a combination of technologies that include individual analog telephone or FAX lines, T1 or DS3 based digital telephone trunks, SIP trunking for VoIP based communications, broadband dedicated Internet service, and perhaps point to point private lines for PBX tie lines or electronic data transfer.

What contact center managers really need are voice and data services that save them money while maintaining or improving center performance and reliability. Thanks to competitive carriers and new technology introductions, it is indeed possible to get more for your telecom dollar on your next service contract.

The most basic service is the standard telephone line for local and/or long distance calling. Many companies have a need for both incoming and outgoing calls plus multiple toll free lines. In the call center, screen pops generated by CTI or Computer Telephone Integration increase staff productivity. For this you need Caller ID information as well as a voice channel.

T1 PRI or ISDN PRI is the proven telephone trunking technology that gives you multiple phone lines that can be configured as required, Caller ID data, and fast call setup & teardown to improve efficiency. A single T1 PRI offers up to 23 lines plus a signaling and data channel. A larger PBX telephone system can be configured to accept multiple T1 PRI lines. If your contact center is large enough to require hundreds of phone lines, DS3 telephone service can easily provide this cost effectively.

Alternatively, small contact centers may enjoy the cost savings of combined telephone and Internet service on a single Integrated T1 line. Integrated T1 service works well for operations that need from 6 to 12 outside lines plus broadband Internet access for a small team.

A competing technology to the traditional T1 PRI digital trunk is called SIP Trunking. SIP is Session Initiation Protocol, a popular signaling format for VoIP based telephone systems. SIP Trunking offers a single private line network connection between the contact center and service provider for converged voice and data. The service provider handles call termination with the public switched phone network, usually at very attractive rates.

Regardless of whether your contact center employs only a few people or a large staff, it is well worth a few minutes of your time to see how much you can save on your telecommunication services. Get a quick online quote now and also a free consultation by our telecom experts who can match your requirements with the most cost effective service options.

Cut Your Telecommunications Costs 50%?

What business doesn't want to cut costs? With the economy softening, cost savings that were always important might now be vital to the health of your organization. How would you like an easy and painless way to save hundreds, even thousands of dollars every month without having to sacrifice value? There might just be that much potential sitting there unrealized in your monthly telecommunications bills.

So how can you expect to make such a dramatic cost savings on services that you expect to be buying at market rate? Simple. The market rate has changed, mostly because the market has changed.

I'm going to make the assumption that your enterprise is large enough to be using at least a T1 line for telephone and/or Internet service. That's usually true for all but the smallest business locations and home office users. Many companies now use a T1 or T1 PRI line for their PBX telephone systems and at least a single T1 line for dedicated Internet access. Larger companies will have high capacity lines, such as DS3 or SONET OCx fiber optic service.

I'm also going to assume that you've been under contract awhile with the same vendor, probably for years. Often, your telecom service supplier is the local telephone company. Traditionally, the incumbent telco has been the go-to service provider for everything from analog landlines to high speed data lines. But, are you getting the best value for the money spent?

This is where the market has changed. Dramatically. There is now more competition than ever before, especially from newer regional and national network carriers. There is also a new tool, called GeoQuote (tm), that makes it easy to get quotes from over a dozen carriers with one online request. The more carriers that vie for your business, the lower the price gets.

Another dramatic shift in the marketplace is the introduction of new technical options such as MPLS networking and Carrier Ethernet. Both of these services are the result of an industry move from traditional TDM core networks to IP networking. Competitive carriers really shine in this area. That's because they don't have the legacy investment in TDM networks that saddles the telephone companies.

So, what savings are realistic? T1 line service prices have plummeted over the last few years and may be as little as half what you signed up for on your last contract. This is especially true in metropolitan markets where the competition is intense. Even more dramatic is the cost savings per Mbps of bandwidth for Ethernet versus DS3 or OCx service. If your building or a nearby one is already lit for fiber optic service, switching to Ethernet can easily result in bandwidth cost reductions of 50% or more.

This potent combination of new competition, better search tools, and new technology offerings really does offer the opportunity for dramatic cost savings without having to sacrifice performance or reliability. A few minutes of work, literally, may well result in thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars in savings for your company every year. Take that few minutes now to get an instant online service quote to compare with what you are now paying.

Please note that our team of consultants has access to the latest special offers and services not yet integrated into the GeoQuote tool. Be sure to request that they call you with this additional information.