Fiber Lit Towers Improving Rural Broadband

Anyone situated beyond the city limits knows the frustration of living in a bandwidth-free zone. Consumers and small businesses may be near enough to a cell tower to get 3G wireless and certainly two-way satellite is an option, but with severe download restrictions on both. Business sites and farmsteads can probably get T1 lines at 1.5 Mbps and maybe bonded T1 lines to improve a bit on that. How about high bandwidth wireless? Forget it. Fiber optic Ethernet connections? Are you nuts?

Rural America is truly at a disadvantage compared to the telecommunications resources found in cities and suburbs. The best options are found in the core of large metropolitan business districts. Move downtown in a big city and you’ll find such niceties as Gigabit Ethernet and even 10 Gig E connections. You may even be able to get Ethernet over Copper at 100 to 400 Mbps. Fixed wireless services easily deliver 50 to 100 Mbps bandwidth. If a shared bandwidth solution is OK for what you are doing, it’s hard to beat the Cable MSO prices.

Why the big discrepancy between metropolitan and rural service options? It’s all about infrastructure - the infrastructure that was never installed. Well, that’s in the process of changing right now. Level 3 Communications, one of the premier international telecom carriers, has established a program called EON or Extended On-Net sites. What they are doing is building out 500 additional access points to their fiber optic network. They are mostly in small and rural markets where there are few service options available. This is a wholesale, rather than retail, service intended to give local service providers access to high bandwidth carrier services.

Even with fiber optic gateways in the boonies, you still need a way to get the signals to the businesses and consumers without having to spend a fortune creating the remainder of the needed infrastructure. One technology that makes excellent sense for thinly populated areas is fixed wireless. WiMAX is an example of wide area coverage with significant service speeds. What you need, then, is access to the carrier-class fiber bandwidth plus a tower to transmit that bandwidth wirelessly to users scattered far and wide.

This sounds like a perfect opportunity for a combined effort and such a deal has been made. 52Eighty, a provider of tower infrastructure, has entered into an agreement with Level 3 to create 200 new wireless tower access sites situated near Level 3’s EON gateways. 52Eighty will take care of tower construction. Level 3 will provide transport and services that include private line, Ethernet and wavelength services. EON also offers backhauls that include Internet, VPN and voice services.

If this sounds a lot like what has been called the rural broadband initiative, it’s because that’s exactly what is going on. Level 3 is a key “middle mile” provider in bringing high speed network access to rural areas where local service providers can connect. They were awarded $13.7 million this summer through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and matched it with $4.2 million of their own funds to create dozens of middle mile connections in rural California, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Tennessee and Texas.

Does this mean that relief is coming to disconnected consumers and businesses in Rural America? It’s certainly on the way. In fact, many carriers are expanding their wireline, broadband and fiber bandwidth services to garner new customers. If your ISP or business has been unable to get connectivity in the past, now is a good time to check availability and prices online for fiber optic lines to 1 Gbps, plus T1, ISDN PRI and other bandwidth services. You may be surprised by what has become available recently.

Ethernet Over Fiber Needed By Business

We’ve all heard that fiber optic bandwidth is the future, but are you sure it isn’t the right service for the present?

Most business telecom services have traditionally been copper based. It starts with the binder cable that gets installed during building construction. All those twisted copper pair provide the multi-line telephone service that is as standardized in business as the metal file cabinet. Copper pair are also used to bring in ISDN digital trunking for PBX phone systems and T1 lines for broadband Internet and linking business locations point to point.

For many small and medium businesses, this is the telecom infrastructure. It’s been that way for decades. Why should it change?

To get an idea about where network speeds are going, take a look at the broadband services offered to consumers. Both DSL and Cable left the 1-2 Mbps download speed is the dust years ago. Consumers now expect at least 3 to 6 Mbps, and many clamor for 10, 20, 30 or 50 Mbps. Cable is getting to these levels with new DOCSIS 3.0 modems. Verizon is offering double digit broadband as a matter of course over it’s FiOS fiber to the home service.

If consumers are getting used to high bandwidth Internet services, some using fiber optic service, it should be no surprise the pressure on business users to expand their network bandwidth is increasing. It’s not just the businesses generating bandwidth-demanding content for the consumer market. Business applications are getting more sophisticated to improve worker productivity, including audio, video and interactivity. They’re also headed to the cloud. Processes that always put demands on company local networks now put those demands on the outside connections.

Once you get beyond 10 Mbps or so, in becomes increasingly necessary to bring in fiber optic service. Ethernet over Copper can work up to 50 Mbps in special situations, close to carrier points of presence. That’s the limit, and it only works for a minority of business locations. What you want and need is fiber optic service that is almost bandwidth unlimited.

But what about the cost? This is where the newer Ethernet over Fiber services have become the high bandwidth solutions of choice. Ethernet is generally less costly than traditional telecom bandwidth on a per Mbps basis, sometimes dramatically less expensive. Scalable bandwidth options are readily available, once you have the fiber connection. That means you can start off with 10 Mbps Ethernet and easily upgrade to 20, 30, 40 or 50 Mbps as long as terminal equipment will support those port speeds. The fiber itself will take you to Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps and on up to Gigabit Ethernet or GigE, perhaps even to 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 10 GigE. Don’t roll your eyes. The days of needing those bandwidth levels are not that far off.

Are you frustrated with your WAN network connection speed? if so, it’s time to be looking into fiber optic solutions. It may be much less expensive than you think. The way to find out is to check Ethernet over Fiber prices and availability for your business location.