Point to Point Dedicated T1

A classic telecom service that is still going strong is point to point dedicated T1 service. Let’s have a look at how it works and what you can use it for.

T1 lines were originally developed by the telephone companies for their own use. The idea was to consolidate 24 separate analog phone lines into a single digital trunk. The key features were serial digital transmission over no more than two twisted pair, regeneration to extend transmission distance indefinitely, nailed-up private line connections between two locations, a multiplexing scheme to keep the 24 simultaneous conversations separate and distinct, and a line speed of 1.5 Mbps.

This legacy service is still widely available and is called T1 telephone or T1 CAS for Channel Associated Signaling. It is used to connect business PBX telephone systems to telephone service providers for outside lines. Most businesses can get easily get by with 24 outside lines, so only a single T1 line is needed. There is a newer version of this service called ISDN PRI or T1 PRI for Primary Rate Interface. The underlying T1 line works the same. What’s different is that one channel is reserved for switching, dialing and data such as ANI or Caller ID. That leaves 23 outside telephone lines on one T1 PRI, still right for most small and medium businesses. Larger companies and telephone intensive businesses such as call centers can order multiple T1 PRI lines to gain more outside phone lines.

The designated T1 line speed of 1.5 Mbps, chosen to support existing telephone infrastructure, made it very attractive as a way to connect businesses to the Internet and for connecting company networks across long distances. Companies became more and more computerized with terminals and later PCs on every desktop. Internal networks eventually standardized on Ethernet as a network protocol and speeds increased to 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1,000 Mbps. In the early days, even larger companies used dial-up modems for file transfers. Dedicated lines ran at 64 Kbps and 128 Kbps. That was fine when data files were small, few and far between. It wouldn’t work anymore when data moved from paper to disk files.

The trick to using a telephone-inteneded technology as a digital private line is to treat the entire line bandwidth as a single entity and ignore the 8 bit increments that define individual telephone channels. This is a clear channel pipe arrangement. You’ll need a router to connect to your network and a T1 interface card for the router. Plug this into the T1 “smart jack” installed by the service provider at each end of the line and you’ve got a 1.5 Mbps data connection.

A valuable characteristic of point to point T1 data lines is that they are permanently connected or “nailed up.” The actual wires, one or two twisted pair of telco wiring, are assigned to your T1 line and nothing else. No one else can gain access like they might on the Internet. This is what makes the dedicated line both dedicated to your use and private. The line goes from point A to point B and nowhere else.

What if you want to connect to another location? You can either cancel the T1 line you have now and get a new one going to that other location, or add another T1 line so you can connect to both the current and new location. You can add as many T1 lines as you like, but they all only go between two locations. What some companies do is create their own private network by running point to point dedicated T1 lines from each branch office back to headquarters. Then they set up a star network with HQ managing all traffic between the branches and headquarters and from one branch to another.

What if you like the idea of dedicated point to point service but really need more than 1.5 Mbps? That can be achieved by bonding T1 lines to double, triple or gain up to 12 Mbps of line speed. You can also use T3 lines (DS3 bandwidth) instead of T1 for 45 Mbps of bandwidth or SONET fiber optic lines starting at 155 Mbps. An alternative is Carrier Ethernet E-Line which gives you point to point Ethernet connections from 2 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps.

Can your business make good use of point to point dedicated T1 lines or higher bandwidth services? If so, get prices and availability on the line services right for your company.




Note: Picture of twisted pair cable courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Increasing T1 Speed

T1 lines have been the mainstay of business network connections to the outside world for decades. In the beginning they offered more bandwidth than most companies could use. Now, like computer memory and processing speed, what used to be plenty is no longer nearly enough. So, what do you do? Do you have to bite the bullet and pay up for fiber? Not by a long shot.

The traditional upgrade path works for many companies. That’s a move up from T1 speed to T3 speed. T1 lines run at 1.5 Mbps. T3 runs at 45 Mbps. It’s a substantial move up and carries a substantial premium, although T3 doesn’t cost nearly what it used to.

If you want more speed than 1.5 Mbps but don’t need to go as high as 45 Mbps, there are now options to get incremental bandwidths delivered over twisted pair copper. The two competing technologies are T1 line bonding and Ethernet over Copper (EoC). T1 line bonding simply combines the bandwidth of two or more T1 lines into a single faster line. Ethernet over Copper uses a different modulation technology to deliver higher speed services.

Let’s take a look at bonded T1. If you decide to bond two T1 lines, you double the bandwidth from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. To do this, you need to order bonded T1 service from a single provider. Having two different providers won’t work. Each T1 line will come in on 1 or 2 copper pairs in your telecom cable bundle. This cable runs from your building back to the incumbent telephone company’s central office. The ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier), as it is called, owns the copper in the ground. Once it gets to the CO, it can be connected to any number of competitive service providers.

Your selected bonded T1 service provider will have two T1 lines installed and run to their managed router, known as CPE or Customer Premises Equipment. It is here that the line bandwidth is combined. You have a single connection to the CPE that runs at 2x a single T1 line speed. How about the cost? It will be twice the cost of a single T1 line. There’s no real economy of scale with this approach. However, how much you pay for your T1 lines will depend on where you get them. This is where a bandwidth broker with access to a dozen or more carriers can get you the best pricing.

One nice feature of T1 lines is that they are almost universally available. You can get T1 and usually bonded T1 in the city, the suburbs or out in the countryside. Bonding T1 lines can be a lifesaver when there is no fiber for miles around. How much line speed can you get with line bonding? Double bonding for 3 Mbps is common. So is triple bonding for 4.5 Mbps and quad bonding for 6 Mbps. The practical limit to this process is somewhere around 10 or 12 Mbps, although in rare cases higher bandwidth have been achieved.

The other technology, Ethernet over Copper, offers a wider speed range and lower costs. The catch is that it is fairly new and not as widely available and trades distance for speed. Close to the CO, you can pretty much name your bandwidth between 2 and 45 Mbps. Miles away, you’ll have more limited choices.

EoC works somewhat similar to bonded T1 in that multiple twisted pair copper wires are used to transport the signals between the CO and your location. In fact, it uses the same telco wiring bundle that would otherwise be provisioned for T1 lines. Up to 8 copper pair can be bonded to create speeds of 10, 20, 30, or even 45 Mbps. Like T1, there is an upper limit to Ethernet over Copper, but EoC just starts picking up steam where bonded T1 tops out. In rare cases, EoC service at 100 and even 200 Mbps has been installed, but you almost need to be touching the central office for this to work.

How does EoC pricing compare with T1 and other traditional telecom services? You can generally get 2 or 3 Mbps EoC for the same price as 1.5 Mbps T1. If you want to go faster, 10 Mbps EoC can be had for about 3 times the price. Higher bandwidths can be had at a discount to what you pay for T3 lines on a per Mbps basis.

What if you need even more speed to run your business? This is the point where Ethernet over Fiber is the way to go if you can get it. EoF, as it is called, is a bargain compared to SONET fiber optic services. The available speeds range from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps, with many increments in-between. Two particularly popular speeds are 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and 1 Gbps Gigabit Ethernet or GigE. You’ll note that these speeds mirror the standard LAN speeds of 100 and 1000 Mbps.

Are you poking along at 1.5 Mbps but wishing you had more line speed? If so, check out Bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper bandwidth services and prices for your business location.

Differences Between Fiber and EoC

Many companies, constrained by their dedicated Internet and private line bandwidth, are doing the trade studies necessary to justify a move to fiber optic services. Now they have another option to throw in mix. It’s Ethernet over Copper or EoC.

Just what is it about EoC that presumes to place it in the same category as fiber optics? Perhaps surprisingly, it’s both bandwidth and cost.

Traditional fiber optic services are based on the SONET or Synchronous Optical NETwork standard developed by the telephone industry. SONET services start with OC-3 at 155 Mbps. This is 3x the speed of DS3 or T3 service. More importantly, SONET was designed to be compatible with T-Carrier standards so that T1 lines and DS3 services can be readily transported on SONET. It is common practice for these copper-based services to hitch a ride on fiber optic carriers for long haul connections.

The beauty of fiber is that it has nearly unlimited bandwidth potential. When fiber optic cable is brought in, it’s not just a small diameter cable with a couple of fiber strands. There are almost always dozens if not a hundred or more fiber strands in that cable. Why? Because the big cost is in the construction. Trenching underground, installing conduit and pulling the fiber cable is way more expensive than the difference between a very small fiber cable and a larger one.

How about the fiber bandwidth? Each strand can easily transport 10 Gbps or more. If you add coarse or dense wavelength division multiplexing to send multiple beams on each fiber strand, you can ramp that bandwidth capacity up by 10 to 100x. Future technology advancements may increase capacity even further. It’s clearly going to be a very long time before businesses start to “fill up” their fiber optic cable capacity... once they have it.

Therein lies the rub. The reason that almost 2/3 of business locations still don’t have fiber optic service is that the construction costs are overwhelming. You need to be reasonably near a carrier’s service and then pony up to have a drop run to your building and the termination equipment installed. More and more buildings are being “lit” for fiber optic service every day. Some day every business location will be pre-wired for fiber just like they are for telephone and electricity. That day may be well off in the future, however.

So, where does this option of EoC come in? One main selling point for Ethernet over Copper is that you may be able to avoid construction costs completely. The copper involved is nothing more than twisted pair telco wire that runs between your building and the telephone company’s nearest central office (CO). Residential lines typically contain 2 pair. Business cables can easily have 25 or more copper pair installed as a matter of course. Some of these are used for business telephone lines. Others can be used for T1 lines. Still others can be employed for Ethernet over Copper. What’s important is that your CO has EoC termination equipment installed.

Let’s say that you can get Ethernet over Copper service at your location. What’s available and what does it cost?

EoC carriers use up to 8 unused copper pair to provision your service. More pairs mean higher bandwidth. How much depends on the CO equipment and how long the copper run is. Within a few miles of the CO, you can generally get 10 Mbps, 20 Mbps, even as much as 45 Mbps over 8 pair. In some situations that can be pushed to over 100 Mbps if you are mere blocks away from the CO, which is not that unusual in metropolitan areas. The 45 Mbps level is popular because it is a direct replacement for DS3 bandwidth that is most often transported over fiber.

How about the cost? EoC is typically half the cost of T-Carrier or SONET bandwidth or you can get twice the bandwidth for the same money. For instance, many smaller companies are upgrading to 3 Mbps for the same price as their older 1.5 Mbps T1 line. In addition to lower monthly lease prices, construction costs are minimal to zero compared to new fiber construction.

EoC can effectively compete with lower level fiber optic services because many companies have been forced to make the jump from T1 to DS3 to OC3 because of limited options. Really all they needed was 10 or 20 Mbps, but those are not standard telecom line speeds. Ethernet services are far more scalable, with increments of 1 or 5 Mbps rather than large jumps. You can often increase your service bandwidth by simply making a phone call to your provider. No equipment changes are necessary as long as you are below the maximum port bandwidth.

Should you be considering EoC in place of fiber optic services? Get current pricing for Ethernet over Copper and Fiber as well as SONET optical services to see what works best for your business location.

Ethernet Bandwidth For Rural Areas

It is commonly assumed that there is no such thing as Ethernet WAN service beyond the city limits. That’s not really true, as you do have Ethernet connectivity options even in rural areas. Let’s see how that’s done.

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) is becoming the bandwidth service of choice for small and medium businesses. It offers the ease of Ethernet interfacing, ability to transport Ethernet services like E-Line, E-LAN and VPLS, relatively high bandwidths of 3 to 50 Mbps and even 100+ Mbps in select areas, all with provisioning over multiple twisted pair telco wiring that is already installed. Best of all, pricing is more than competitive. Where available, you’ll pay a lot less for EoC vs traditional telecom services like T1 or DS3 on an Mbps basis.

"Where available" is the catch. Ethernet over Copper technology has strict distance limitations. The modulation scheme that is used can transport high bandwidth levels, but signal levels fade rapidly as you get farther and farther away from the telco Central Office (CO). Within a mile or so you can get all sorts of bandwidth options using 2 to 8 twisted pair. As you start moving out to 2 or 3 miles away, signal levels degrade to the point where they are unusable even at low bandwidths.

That pretty much rules out EoC for most rural locations. Beyond the city limits, population densities are low and wire runs are long for telecom services. Fiber may be running right next to the gravel road you are standing on. The hitch is that there is no drop-off. The fiber just keeps on going to the next metropolitan area.

Now, there are exceptions. If you have a rural business location that luckily happens to be within a few thousand feet of the incumbent telephone company’s office, you may qualify for Ethernet over Copper services. What’s needed is for the telco or a competitive service provider to have EoC terminal equipment installed in that CO. You are less likely to find EoC equipment in smaller offices because of the limited number of businesses connected to that facility.

Don’t despair. As I said earlier, you may still have options. There is another way to transport Ethernet over copper lines with virtually unlimited reach. This is called Ethernet over DS1 or EoDS1. If DS1 sounds familiar, it’s because DS1 is the Digital Signal protocol used for T1 lines. DS1 is part of the half-century old T-Carrier specifications that define the technology for T1 and T3 lines. DS1 was originally developed to transport telephone conversations in groups of 24 channels or time slots within a time division multiplexed bit stream. Later, a concept called clear channel T1 was implemented to combine all those channels into one larger channel. That boosted bandwidth per channel from 64 Kbps up to 1.5 Mbps and made it practical to transport data using DS1.

DS1 defines the signal. T1 is the particular physical line consisting of 2 twisted pair copper telco wires with particular voltage and signal shape characteristics. Normally, DS1 and T1 go together. However, It is possible technically to transport Ethernet using DS1. What that means is that Ethernet can be sent over T1 lines. Since T1 was designed to use signal regenerators to boost sagging signal levels every mile or so, T1 service can go out into the boonies for miles, sometimes even 20 miles or more.

Ethernet over DS1 gives you the option to get Ethernet service where only T1 is available. You aren’t limited to the T1 line bandwidth of 1.5 Mbps. T1 lines can be bonded to increase bandwidth, which works for EoDS1 too. Add more lines and you get more bandwidth. It’s the number of lines bonded times 1.5 Mbps.

What about cost? EoDS1 doesn’t offer the same cost advantages as EoC because the price of T1 lines doesn’t go down if you bond more of them together. You have to pay for each line. EoDS1 also isn’t available from all carriers or in all locations.

What’s the best bandwidth solution for your company? It depends a lot on where you are located and what services you require. There’s an easy way to compare options. Simply get competitive quotes for Ethernet and other telecom services from multiple service providers, each tailored to your particular requirements.

T1 and EoC When There Is No Fiber

Fiber optic bandwidth is the future of business. Does anyone doubt this anymore? If so, they’ve completely missed the rise of video content and that rumbling sound that is the stampede to the cloud. The day will come when copper is seen as quaint, perhaps the topic of museum exhibits. That day is not today. Tomorrow doesn’t look too promising, either. So, what’s a business to do?

The best approach may well be to embrace the copper as long as you need to. But doesn’t that mean being stuck in low gear as far as bandwidth is concerned? Not at all. When T1 lines were first introduced to business, 1.5 Mbps was considered big time bandwidth. This was in an era where 64 Kbps modems ruled the day for data transfers. Nowadays, of course, that 1.5 Mbps is a service level that still works beautifully for many smaller businesses, but doesn’t begin to address the needs of larger operations. What’s important to note is that 1.5 Mbps is the low end of copper bandwidth services, not the top end.

The trick to getting higher bandwidth levels over copper twisted pair connections is to use more pairs. T1 lines were originally set up to use two pair of ordinary telephone cable that stretches between your facility and the nearest telco central office. That’s the same bundle of wires that brings in business telephone service. One pair is used for transmit, a separate pair is used for receive. Newer modulation schemes have allowed T1 to be provisioned on a single copper pair in many cases.

If you check out that cable bundle in the back room, you’ll find that it contains lots more unused copper wires. These are called dry pairs. They have no connection at either end. They’re just available for some future use. For many businesses, now is the time to press more of those unused pairs into service.

You can order up a second T1 line, but who wants to deal with two separate 1.5 Mbps line services? What you want is called bonded T1. This is an industry standard technique that connects the two T1 lines so that they act as one larger line with twice the bandwidth. For this to work, you’ll need to get all your T1 lines from the same service provider. That provider will install a piece of CPE (Customer Premises Equipment) that connects to 1, 2, 3 or more T1 lines and bonds them together as if they were one. You’ll have a single connection to your network at the higher speed.

What line speeds are practical? The next logical step up is two bonded T1 lines for 3 Mbps. Beyond that, you can bond in 3 lines for 4.5 Mbps, 4 lines for 6 Mbps, 5 lines for 7.5 Mbps, 6 lines for 9 Mbps, 7 lines for 10.5 Mbps, or 8 lines for 12 Mbps. On occasion, you can get even more T1 lines if you have the dry pairs available and your provider has the equipment available to support this at the CO.

The one fly in the ointment for bonded T1 is cost. Two lines are twice the price of 1 line, and so on. There is no economy of scale for T1 lines. Take the cost of a single T1 and multiply it by the number of lines you need to get the bandwidth you want and that is your monthly cost.

Ethernet over Copper offers a more cost effective approach to giving you the same higher bandwidth levels without the construction expense of bringing in fiber. That’s assuming there is fiber anywhere in the area to be had. There’s always copper available and it is already installed. What Ethernet over Copper does is take the same dry pairs that you would otherwise use for T1 and use them to transport a signal that is in the Ethernet protocol. Like T1, the more pairs you press into service, the higher the bandwidth you can achieve.

Here’s how the two services differ. T1 has a fixed bandwidth per line but almost unlimited range. Ethernet over Copper (EoC) is capable of much higher bandwidth per pair, but is very distance limited. You need to be within a few miles of the CO for this to even work. The closer the better. If you can get EoC services, you’ll find that you can have at least twice the bandwidth for the same cost.

Entry level EoC is 2 or 3 Mbps. Many companies are now opting for 10 Mbps Ethernet over Copper, which is very affordable. Need more bandwidth? 20, 30 and even 50 Mbps is not unreasonable over 8 copper pairs. In rare cases, this bandwidth can be pushed to 100 or even 200 Mbps. Those are fiber optic speeds, but running over ordinary copper telco wiring.

Are you crunched for bandwidth but lamenting the high cost or unavailability of fiber optic services for your location? Before you despair, get prices and availability for bonded T1 and Ethernet over Copper bandwidth services. You may be surprised by what is now available in your area.

Ethernet over Copper Data Service

Traditional data service connections include T1 lines, DS3 bandwidth, OC-3 and higher level SONET fiber optic technologies. Frame Relay and MPLS networks provide nation-wide and international connectivity. So, why use Ethernet over Copper?

EoC or Ethernet over Copper is a fairly recent last mile connection technology. You don’t find coast to coast EoC being offered. If you do, it is probably implemented as a short hop to the central office, IP-based MPLS networking or Carrier Ethernet over fiber for the long haul, and then another short EoC link at the destination.

What Ethernet over Copper offers is a low cost, high performance solution to connect your business location to a larger private network or public network, such as the Internet. EoC offers the advantage of being able to repurpose existing twisted pair copper infrastructure to avoid the high cost of new fiber optic construction or line of sight limitations with high bandwidth fixed wireless solutions.

What kind of bandwidth can you expect? Low speed Ethernet lines at 2x2 Mbps or 3x3 Mbps are good replacements for T1 lines. These services are typically priced the same as a T1 line but offer higher bandwidth for the money. There are higher bandwidths available, from 5 Mbps on up to 200 Mbps.

The 2x2 designation indicates that this is a symmetrical line service. The bandwidth is 2 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. Similarly, 3x3 Mbps means 3 Mbps upload and 3 Mbps download. This differentiates Ethernet over Copper from services like DSL and Cable, which are asymmetrical. In other words, those services offer much higher download speed than upload speeds. For simple email or Web browsing activities, this isn’t critical. But if you are uploading large files or images, accessing cloud services, or managing a remote server, upload speed becomes much more important.

What is Ethernet over Copper? It differs from traditional telco-based services in that the native protocol is Ethernet rather than TDM or SONET. Ethernet has become the standard LAN protocol and the most common interface to nearly all computers and network equipment. With EoC, you connect to the network using a standard RJ-45 Ethernet connector. That’s it. There are no special interface or conversion circuit cards required.

Ethernet over Copper uses dry or unpowered local loop connections from your location to the nearest telco central office. This is standard telephone wire that isn’t being used for any other purpose. Nearly all businesses have multi-line cables with multiple twisted pairs already installed. Most of the time there are numerous spare wires in that bundle. EoC equipment uses two or more of those spare pairs to transport digital data as Ethernet packets.

The one limitation of Ethernet over Copper technology is that the bandwidth it can carry depends on distance between the EoC equipment at the central office and similar equipment at your location. Within a mile or so, you can generally get all the speed you want at a fraction of what you’ll pay for other telecom services. At you get farther away, the maximum rate decreases due to signal attenuation in the line. More than a few miles and the signal becomes unusable. That may sound like quite a limitation, but in reality most business locations are well within the range of Ethernet over Copper. The exceptions are rural businesses, and offices where the Ethernet termination equipment isn’t installed yet.

Can EoC give you the bandwidth you need at a cost savings over other solutions? Get pricing and availability for Ethernet over Copper data service connections at your business location or locations now.

Can You Believe 200 Mbps EoC?

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) technology is wildly popular as a way to get mid-band Ethernet connections without the time delay and expense of having to bring in fiber optic service. Sometimes seen as a stopgap approach, EoC now challenges fiber services on a permanent basis.

One of Ethernet over Copper’s target markets is businesses using T1 lines or new ventures looking at T1 services. T1 is a standardized, reliable and affordable telecom service that delivers 1.5 Mbps over one or two pair of twisted copper pair telco wiring. T1 is a telephone trunking technology that has been pressed into service to also carry data packets.

EoC takes on T1 by providing more bandwidth for the same money using the same twisted pair copper wires. These are leased line telco connections that are already installed in nearly all businesses and being used for telephone and perhaps Internet service.

EoC is a newer technology than T1 and more aligned with the computer networking industry than the public telephone system. More efficient modulation techniques and fierce competition from competitive service providers are what make Ethernet over Copper a real bargain for dedicated Internet service, MPLS network access and point to point private lines.

What bandwidths are available from EoC? Entry level is typically 2 to 3 Mbps, priced at similar levels to 1.5 Mbps T1 lines. It’s fairly easy to upgrade that service level to 5, 10, 15 or 20 Mbps. T1 line bonding provides a bandwidth growth path for T1 users, but gets expensive and unworkable above 10 or 12 Mbps. Companies that need higher line speeds move to DS3 and SONET services, such as OC-3 fiber optic. Once you have fiber optic service installed, upgrading bandwidth is fairly cut and dry. It’s just a matter of being able to afford the much higher lease prices.

Where things get dicey is when fiber optic service isn’t available anywhere in the area or is a mile or two away and it’s up to you to pay the construction costs to bring in the fiber. That can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars and maybe higher. Faced with this dilemma, many companies choke on the quote and either decide to do without or move to a building that is already lit for fiber.

Ethernet over Copper is now providing an upgrade path without the need for fiber construction. Just a year or so ago, the upper end of EoC was considered to be 50 Mbps. Above that, you go to fiber. Intellifiber, a subsidiary of the competitive service provider PAETEC, recently launched 100 Mbps Ethernet over Copper service and is reported by Carrier Ethernet News to have installed 200 Mbps EoC service for one customer.

A bandwidth of 200 Mbps exceeds the OC-3 SONET fiber optic bandwidth of 156 Mbps and is plenty for many medium size and even larger businesses. Companies moving to the cloud, streaming video, transmitting high resolution medical image records, engaged in computer aided design work and the like need such high bandwidths. Some will need to press on to Gigabit Ethernet and 10 GigE to meet their needs. That’s definitely fiber territory... for now.

EoC works its magic by bonding as many as 8 to 16 copper pair to get the higher bandwidths. Unlike T1, the Achilles heel of higher line bandwidth is distance limitations. You need to be within a mile or so of the central office to realize 100 Mbps or higher EoC. Lower speeds can be engineered farther away. Even so, many potential users are close enough for EoC and have the copper bundles running into their buildings. It’s fiber that still isn’t installed.

Are you frustrated by the lack of fiber connectivity at your current business location? Why not take a look at prices and availability of Ethernet over Copper service as a bridge to higher bandwidths or a permanent replacement for fiber optic lines.

Ethernet over Copper Is The New Telephone Line

Twisted pair copper has been the standard way to connect telephone service for over 100 years. Guess what the latest in telephone line technology is? Why, it’s twisted pair copper!

You might see this as an example of “everything old is new again,” but this technology is a twist on the old twisted pair. While analog signals defined telephony in its first century, digital will rule the next century. What remains the same is the actual physical copper wireline.

Why does this make sense in an age of fiber optic communications? It’s a matter of economics. If we were made out of money, the thing to do would be to rip up all that copper in the ground and replace it with unlimited bandwidth glass fibers. But we’re not made of money and it turns out that voice-grade copper line has far more capability that we ever thought possible.

When we think of the copper phone wires that come into our homes and businesses, we think of telephone handsets for talking and 56 Kbps modems for our computers. That was last century’s technology. By switching from analog to digital transmission, you can have business grade telephone service and broadband up to 20 Mbps on those same copper phone lines.

How is this different from DSL? DSL is actually a hybrid of analog telephony with digital data sharing the same line at frequencies beyond the range of human hearing. It’s a way for residential and small business users to add broadband Internet service to their existing phone line. As a "best effort" information service, DSL was designed to optimize cost and has some well known performance and availability issues.

This is something different. It is based on Ethernet over Copper technology that bonds multiple dry copper pair to deliver a highly reliable and solid bandwidth all-digital signal to business locations only. It’s not a residential service. It’s intended for businesses that require a robust voice and data service similar to what they may be getting from an Integrated T1 line.

TelePacific, a major competitive carrier serving California and Nevada, calls their service SmartVoice. It’s an enterprise VoIP telephone service using SIP signaling. This voice service is combined with either dedicated broadband Internet access or MPLS network service. You would choose broadband to have both telephone and Internet brought in on the same line. You’d choose MPLS to link multiple business locations for both telephone and data exchange.

TelePacific maintains high voice quality by dynamically integrating the voice and data traffic on the line. Lower grade VoIP services simply use a broadband line for both telephone and computers. When data traffic gets high, voice quality suffers and calls can even be dropped. Dynamic line service actively manages packet priority so that telephone calls have priority and get the bandwidth they need for best operation. The remaining line bandwidth is assigned to data transmission. You are far less likely to notice or be annoyed by small variation in data rates than garbled and broken conversations. Once a phone call is finished, the bandwidth it had been using is reassigned automatically to the bandwidth pool for data. That’s the dynamic aspect to the technology.

What advantages does Ethernet over Copper have over the older Integrated T1 line service? Lower cost is one big advantage. EoC is lower in cost and offers more bandwidth options. You can typically get 1 to 20 Mbps bandwidth with EoC. T1 lines are fixed at 1.5 Mbps, although they can be bonded to deliver higher speeds.

Is Ethernet over Copper voice or data service the best cost/performance option for your company? You may be missing out on a major cost savings, so check Ethernet over Copper prices and availability now.



Photo of Thomas Edison courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Case For Telecom Copper

There is a move afoot by some of the largest telephone companies to decommission or get rid of their copper wire assets. Some of this is an attempt to foil competition. Some is simply a technology upgrade as fiber optic cables move in to replace century-old twisted pair copper bundles. Should the FCC embrace the retirement of the copper assets already in the ground and strung on poles, or is this copper a national treasure that needs to be preserved?

It may seem odd to think of copper as a national treasure. We tend to think of gold and silver when it comes to treasure. But this copper has very high value. You might say it is worth its weight in gold. That value, above the intrinsic value of the metal, is the from the time, effort and cost of stringing the copper wire from user to provider. The telephone companies, protected by a mandated monopoly for nearly a century, are the ones that made this investment and reaped the rewards. But that government monopoly was, in a sense, an investment by all of us to get that copper installed.

Now, in the 21st century, there are copper wire telecom cables running into nearly every home and business. They range from a couple of twisted pair for residences to dozens of pairs in large binder cables running into the back rooms of businesses. The fact that all this copper is in place and all conforms to a set of standards offers the opportunity to press it into service for more than just plain old analog telephony.

Indeed, the telephone companies themselves were first to use two copper pair to deliver T1 line and ISDN PRI services. T1 is most often used to provided dedicated broadband Internet access or point to point connections between two business locations. ISDN PRI carries 23 separate telephone conversations plus Caller ID and is popular for PBX telephone systems.

In recent years, competitive service providers have entered the telecom marketplace to compete with the incumbent local phone companies. The incumbents have an advantage in that they are the legal owners of the copper that runs from their offices to the residence or building being serviced. That’s called the local loop or last mile connection. Competitors have to lease the local loop from the incumbent telco. Of course, they could choose to bring in their own copper cables, but that would be cost prohibitive.

Savvy competitors have also figured out how to just lease the copper wires themselves, with no signals at all from the phone company. They then use newer terminal equipment to send non-traditonal format digital signals down the line. The most popular of these is Ethernet over Copper service. EoC offers higher bandwidths at lower costs than traditional telco services such as T1 or DS3.

Perhaps this is what’s stuck in the incumbent telephone company’s craw. Some meet the competition head to head and offer their own Ethernet over Copper services. Others figure the way to get rid of the competition is to get rid of the copper.

That’s just plain wrong. Until the government has enough stimulus money to fund universal fiber optic service the way that universal telephone service was mandated, taking copper options off the market only hurts the business community. It’s an especially bad move during a time of economic recession when most companies need the highest bandwidth they can get at the lowest cost. In another hundred years, hopefully a fraction of that, the entire interconnection infrastructure will have been upgraded to fiber optics or perhaps something even more advanced. But until that time there is no justification for retiring perfectly good copper wiring that has already been bought and paid for. Better to list it in a register of historic technologies and make sure that it is protected from degradation until no longer needed.

Could your company benefit from lower cost copper or fiber bandwidth options? Check prices and availability for your location. You may be surprised by how much you can save.

Aktino Sends 90 Mbps Down Copper Line

New technology is making a mockery of the notion that you need fiber optic cable to transport DS3 or Carrier Ethernet beyond the local area network. The latest amazement comes from Aktino, the Irvine, California company that builds carrier equipment designed to get higher performance from conventional unshielded twisted pair copper loops. They are now able to deliver DS3 bandwidth (45 Mbps) or over 90 Mbps of Carrier Ethernet bandwidth over a CSA (Carrier Serving Area) of 12,000 feet. This covers many business and cell tower locations that would otherwise be out of luck for high bandwidth connections.

Bandwidth is becoming a hot commodity for business and consumer applications as diverse as medical imaging, IPTV & video transport, engineering data transmission and telepresence. The cellular carriers are currently in a hotly contested race to see who can build out 3G networks and then be first with 4G capabilities. All of these advances are threatened by limitations on the metro and wide area network infrastructure that is geared to voice and modest speed data transmission. While there are many buildings in large metropolitan locations that area already "lit" for fiber optic service, that includes few cell tower sites and only a minority of businesses who want more bandwidth.

Fiber optic transmission offers nearly unlimited amounts of bandwidth, but it is no panacea. The cost per Mbps of bandwidth is extremely attractive from competitive carriers in lit locations. But if you aren't already served with fiber bandwidth, the cost of the construction to get those high bandwidths at low monthly lease cost can make the project unacceptably expensive. That can be the case in both densely built-up areas and in smaller towns or rural locations.

What broadband over copper does is extend the range of fiber optic networks to provide connections thousands of feet, perhaps several miles away. Nearly every location in the country is served by copper telephone wiring. You'll find a couple pair to every home, and larger binders with multiple pairs to business locations. Most are within a radius of 18,000 or less from the nearest telco central office. The majority are much closer than that. What's needed is a means to connect the fiber carriers to locations by using the conventional twisted pair copper already in place.

That's what Aktino specializes in. They connect to those cables with equipment that employs both DMT and MIMO technology to transmit far high bandwidths that you could get with the standard digital over copper transmission method of T1 lines. T1 is limited to 1.5 Mbps, but lines can be bonded to create larger bandwidths up to 9 Mbps or so. To get to Ethernet and DS3 bandwidths, you need technology that squeezes even more capacity out of those copper lines.

DMT or Discrete Multi Tone modulation makes use of many simultaneous carrier frequencies to carry more bits at one time. An advantage of DMT is that it is resistant to interference from other signals that might be present in binder groups, which are 23 to 100 bundles of copper pairs commonly used to consolidate telephone wiring on the way to the central office. If one channel is blocked by interference, the data can be shifted to others that are clear.

MIMO or Multiple Input Multiple Output technology is familiar as a wireless antenna system used for routers and planned for WiMAX to increase transmission bandwidth in environments where there is interference. By using 8 copper pair, with MIMO keeping their signals from causing cross-talk interference, the carrying capacity of ordinary copper phone line can be greatly increased.

It's the combination of DMT and MIMO using multiple pairs of UTP copper, typically 8 pair, that gives Aktino systems the ability to provide 90+ Mbps of asymmetrical bandwidth or 50 Mbps of symmetrical bandwidth over longer distances than you'd expect with FTTC (Fiber to the Curb) technology. This is good news for carriers needing 3G and 4G cellular backhaul and businesses who are running out of network capacity and need affordable DS3 and Carrier Ethernet bandwidth.