Wireless Internet Access For Farms

There are many advantages to living and working on a farm, but one of the disadvantages is that broadband Internet access is harder to come by. No, DSL and Cable broadband probably aren’t in your future. But there are options available at reasonable prices right now.

It’s true that DSL and Cable are popular with independent professionals, small businesses and home-based occupations. You get a decent amount of bandwidth at a reasonable cost. The one hitch is that these services are distance limited. DSL signals decrease rapidly as you get a mile to two from the telephone company central office. Cable is a wired service that goes only where the Cable company has decided that there is enough population density to justify stringing the coaxial cable. Unfortunately, those factors keep Cable and DSL within or close to the city limits.

What you really want are either line services that don’t have distance restrictions or wireless services that don’t require stringing or burying cable of any type. There are several options that meet this description.

First is T1. This is a telco digital line service first used between telephone company switching centers. The beauty of T1 is that it is designed to be provisioned on two pair of ordinary telephone wires, available just about everywhere. The second advantage is that it was designed to work with regenerator boxes that clean up and boost the signal so that it can go another mile. You can generally get T1 line service miles from the nearest town, although it gets more expensive as you get farther out in the country.

Second is satellite. Satellite broadband service comes from above and needs no wires. All it requires is AC power that can even come from a gas generator or solar panels and an inverter. Disadvantages include the need to get a professionally installed two-way satellite dish installed on your roof and a half-second or so of latency due to the long path up to the stationary satellite. For many email and Web uses, this slight delay from issuing a command to getting data back is no big deal.

A third option is wireless terrestrial Internet service. Many communities have WISPs or Wireless Internet Service Providers. These tend to be locally owned and have a very limited service area. More often than not, WISPs target rural subdivisions and small towns to get enough customers to justify the cost of the equipment and bandwidth.

One of the most exciting new services is fixed wireless or cellular broadband. This service uses the data channels that every cell phone carrier has available for mobile phones and laptop computers. Accel Networks is a leader in this field and has contracts with the major carriers (AT&T, Verizon and Sprint) to connect with their broadband data channels. By combining the coverage areas of multiple carriers, Accel can pretty much blanket the nation except for mountainous and remote areas of the West where there is no cell phone coverage. If you can get a decent cell phone signal, you can probably get fixed wireless service.

The way this works is that Accel Networks customizes their standard interface box and antenna to optimize the signal strength for your particular location. That gives you a really good chance of getting a solid signal that will deliver decent bandwidth. How much bandwidth? This service is competitive with T1 lines with a minimum rate of 750 Kbps download and 250 Kbps upload, bursting up to 1 Mbps on downloads. This is more than adequate for most farm uses, such as getting agriculture reports, using email, general Web surfing and even watching video clips. It’s not intended for high intensity usage like downloading HD movies or running a server.

What makes fixed wireless broadband service so popular in rural areas is that it is readily available and costs half the price of a T1 line or less. Is this the right service for your farm, ranch or rural business? Get pricing, availability and complete details on fixed wireless broadband now. Installation is fast, often within a matter of days.

Triple Play For Business

One of the hottest trends in consumer telecom services is called the “residential triple play.” This is a bundling that combines three electronic services that nearly every home subscribes to. They are television, telephone and broadband.

The bundling is made possible because one provider can deliver all three at a combined price that is lower than buying the same services from three separate providers. Cable companies are in the best position to deliver the triple play, but the package is also offered by telephone companies and wireless service providers. The advantage for cable is due to the very high bandwidth capability of their HFC (Hybrid Fiber Cable) facilities.

That’s great for consumers, but what about business? Is there such a thing as triple play for business? You bet. It’s available for businesses with their own business locations.

Not surprisingly, a huge provider of triple play is Comcast. You may know that Comcast is the largest Cable TV provider in the US. Comcast broadband is hugely popular with both consumers and small businesses. But did you also know that Comcast is the 3rd largest phone company in America?

The idea that the coaxial cable from a Cable company is pretty much the same as the one that connects the TV antenna on the roof is way out of date. Today’s cable is a sophisticated collection of multiplexed channels that carry voice, video and data equally well.

Multiplexing is the technique that divides the 1,000 MHz bandwidth capacity of the coaxial combined fiber and copper transmission facility into neatly spaced 6 MHz channels. Those channels are exactly the same size as over the air TV channels so it’s easy to fit one TV station per channel. However, those channels can be used for other purposes as well.

The two most popular non-TV services on Cable are broadband and telephone. You have your choice of one or more standard business phone lines or an ISDN PRI trunk line that is bundles up to 23 lines for connection to an in-house PBX telephone system.

You probably are using DSL, satellite or T1 lines now for your business broadband service. It’s likely that you’re getting something like 1 to 2 Mbps download bandwidth. DSL can go higher, but your bandwidth decreases the further you get from the telephone company central office. Cable has such high bandwidth capacity, that it delivers business broadband at 50 to 100 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload. Comcast’s smallest service starts at 12 Mbps/2Mbps.

You’re probably wondering if you can afford a triple play package? It’s likely you can’t afford not to go this way if you have the type of business where your customers wait on-site, like a doctor’s office or auto service center. That's where the TV service of triple play has its value. There are also packages for businesses like bars and restaurants that serve a walk-in clientele. How much are we talking? About the price of that T1 line will get you faster broadband plus telephone service with basic TV channels included.

What if you don’t need television in your business? Is there such a thing as double play?

Of course. Many, many professional offices, retail stores and quick service restaurants need a combination of reliable phone service and high speed broadband to meet their needs. Get these two services cheaper than buying separately from a telephone company and an Internet service provider.

Can you cut costs while getting the same or better voice, data and video services for your company? It’s well worth your time to find out. Check availability and pricing for bundled business broadband, telephone and TV services now.

4G Wireless Broadband Options

Wireless broadband is on an upward path to take over many of the applications that have long been the domain of wireline technologies. Wireless has the convenience of portability and mobility. What’s held back deployment and more powerful applications is the limited availability and speed of wireless connections. The move to 4G wireless looks to be a potential solution.

4G or fourth generation wireless doesn’t have a strict definition, but it is roughly stated as the bandwidth typical of Cable broadband or Ethernet over Copper business connections. With this level of transmission speed and a city-wide reach, 4G wireless can take over service for desktop as well as mobile devices.

One might throw WiFi into the 4G category. The bandwidth for a, b, g, and n WiFi technologies fall into the right bandwidth category. However, WiFi is a short distance system. It works well within and nearby particular locations, such as homes, offices, restaurants, hotels, airports and even park benches. But you can’t get in your car and drive away with a WiFi connection. It will disappear as soon as you leave the parking lot. In a way, WiFi is more of a PAN or Personal Area Network like Bluetooth.

The higher power wireless technologies, including 2G & 3G are associated with cellular phone service. These are based on using networks of fixed transmitters and receivers arranged as cells with signals that fill-in the coverage between towers. The trick of turning this system into a metropolitan or wide area network is to coordinate the handoff of an existing wireless connection as the user moves from cell to cell.

The most popular wireless technology right now is 3G. It offers bandwidths similar to T1 lines and basic DSL of around 1.5 Mbps on average in metropolitan areas. You may get two or more times this speed if you happen to be near a tower with few users. This is more than adequate for many mobile uses, such as Web browsing, email and viewing video clips on smartphone screens.

Beyond limited speed, 3G also suffers from limited bandwidth availability. It shares channels with cellular telephone on the same towers. Those channels were originally sized to support expected voice traffic. They’ve been overwhelmed by the higher bandwidth requirements of Internet data traffic. That’s why carriers are so insistent on bandwidth caps.

There are a couple of different approaches to 4G wireless. The one taken by the cell phone companies is to view 4G as an upgrade to their 3G systems. There are two differing cellular system that co-exist. One is a US-centric system called CDMA that is used by Verizon, Sprint and others. The other is a more global standard called GSM that is used by AT&T and T-Mobile.

Right now, AT&T and T-Mobile have upgraded their 3G networks to a faster version of the same thing called HSPA+ that delivers up to 6 to 8 Mbps. Verizon has moved to a 4G technology called LTE that offers downloads of 5 to 12 Mbps. Sprint has gone with another 4G technology called WiMAX that delivers downloads in the 3 to 6 Mbps speed range.

As wireless continues to evolve, 4G is expected to move into two camps. LTE is the technology most discussed as a truly universal standard. WiMAX deployment actually predated LTE and has installations worldwide. Both LTE and WiMAX have technical upgrade paths that can boost download speeds to over 100 Mbps and even 1000 Mbps. This is competitive with many fiber services and ensures that 4G wireless will be with us for a long time.

One thing we’re also seeing with 4G wireless is the use of lower frequency bands that can more easily penetrate buildings. These bands came from the re-deployment of those channels from UHF TV as part of a federal auction. Clear offers 4G fixed and mobile wireless service with a telephone option over WiMAX in over 80 cities nationwide. Right now, this service offers unlimited broadband service.

Business Internet Access Companies

Consumers have variety of ways to gain access to the Internet. Businesses have equivalents to these, plus a some others not available to residential users. Let’s take a look at what’s available for companies with their own business addresses.

The most popular consumer broadband services are DSL and Cable for fixed locations and 3G for mobile use. 4G wireless is starting to become available, with CLEAR promoting it for both fixed and mobile use. Out in the boonies, Satellite broadband brings in a signal that you can’t get with wires. The fastest service, fiber optic, is deployed in selected areas by Verizon’s FiOS. It should also be noted that there are still consumers embracing dial-up access either because of cost or a very limited need for the Internet.

Businesses also have DSL, Cable, 3G and 4G mobile services, and Satellite Internet available to them. Like the consumer versions, you get a price break by sharing a bandwidth pool with other users. That means that the speed you’ll experience at any given time depends on how many other users are on the service and what they are doing.

There are a couple of features that interest business users much more than consumers. One is symmetrical bandwidth. Shared resource Internet access solutions typically offer much higher download speeds than upload speeds. That’s because most people are primarily reading web pages or downloading material such as books, music or movies. A limited upload speed is all you need to send commands to the servers providing this content. Businesses, however, often own the servers as well as use them. If you are sending material up to a server or another user as much as you are receiving such material, then a symmetrical bandwidth evens things out. Symmetrical DSL (SDSL) is typically available to business users but not consumers.

Businesses may also want static IP addresses. These are needed if you are running a server, so that other users on the Internet can easily find it through the DNS system. Normal consumer connections use dynamic IP addresses that are assigned from a pool owned by the Internet Service Provider and change from time to time. Most users have no ideal what IP address they are using and couldn’t care less as long as it works. IT managers, however, may well want static IP addresses for the servers, VoIP and VPN systems on their networks.

Many businesses may find that shared bandwidth causes way too much performance variation for their needs. The solution is dedicated bandwidth services that are generally available for business addresses but not residential users or home offices. These services include T1 lines, Ethernet over Copper, DS3, Ethernet over Fiber, SONET and Fixed Wireless. As business services, these dedicated Internet access solutions also have symmetrical bandwidth with equal upload and download speeds.

The other thing that should be noted about dedicated business bandwidth services is that they often come with SLAs or Service Level Agreements. Unlike the “best effort” offers for consumer grade broadband, a service level agreement spells out performance parameters and remedies if those are not met. Often, the commitment is for availability plus performance characteristics such as jitter, latency and packet loss.

Does your company need new or expanded Internet connectivity, or are you simply interested in seeing if better pricing is available at the bandwidth level you already have? If so, get pricing and availability of bandwidth solutions from a variety of business Internet access companies.

Broadband Business Internet Service Options

Nearly every business today is connected to the Internet or soon will be. Even those mom and pop operations that still use the mechanical credit card machines will soon use electronic card verification, email and at least a brochure website. Businesses that are already seasoned users of the Web are looking to upgrade their bandwidth to support a move to cloud services. Let’s compare and contrast the various options you have for a broadband Internet connection.

Business Internet broadband services generally fall into two categories. They are shared and dedicated connections. Shared connections are similar in design to residential broadband services. The fact that the bandwidth is divvied up among many users lowers the cost for all. Dedicated services allocate a certain bandwidth to your connection and it does not vary regardless of what other users are doing. These services also tend to come with SLAs or Service Level Agreements that spell out technical parameters and availability commitments.

Shared bandwidth services include Cable Broadband, DSL, 3G and 4G Wireless, and two-way Satellite Internet. What they all have in common is that the actual bandwidth you’ll see varies with the number of other users and what they are doing. These services are sold as speeds “up to” a certain number of Mbps. That means what it says. You may get the full speed the connection is capable of or you may get a tenth of that at any given time.

These variations may or may not bother you. If you are running enterprise VoIP or bandwidth sensitive business processes, your variable connection may not support the performance you have in mind. On the other hand, if you use the Internet at work the same way you use it at home for email, Web browsing, or accessing pre-recorded audio and video, you may be quite satisfied with the service and delighted with the cost savings. Some services, like 3G wireless and Satellite are often used to support electronic credit card machines in lieu of using a phone line.

Dedicated Internet access connections, such as T1 lines and Ethernet over Copper, have rock solid bandwidth and generally excellent latency, jitter and packet loss characteristics. These are the same lines that you would use to interconnect business connections on a private line service. As Internet connections, they have one termination at your location and the other at your Internet service providers location.

Dedicated Internet access supports Web and email servers. The also support multiple users accessing the Internet and VPNs (Virtual Private Networks). If you are going to stream content to Internet users, you’ll want a DIA (Dedicated Internet Access) connection from the server to the Internet.

Ethernet over Copper (EoC) has become very popular as both a private line and DIA connection. You can often get twice the bandwidth you could with a T1 line costing the same price. Like T1, EoC is provisioned over twisted pair copper telco wiring to keep construction costs down.

Larger companies and those with demanding applications such as video transport move up to fiber optic services, such as OC3 to OC768 SONET and Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet, 1 Gbps GigE and 10 Gbps 10GigE bandwidth services. All of these are dedicated services with service level agreements.

How do you decide which broadband service is right for your business? Perhaps the best way is to compare prices, availability and features for the range of Broadband Business Internet Service options available for your location. Most business grade broadband services are available only for business locations and not residences, despite similarities with consumer Internet services.

Redundant Business Internet Connection Using Cable Broadband

Larger businesses have shunned what they consider to be “consumer” grade broadband services out of concern about availability and performance issues. While it is smart to deploy your mission critical business processes over dedicated circuits with service level agreements, you may be missing out on a very cost effective solution to backup your telecom services and improve access speed for Internet usage.

Cable broadband has experienced a rapid deployment and continued technical development largely due to its popularity as a consumer Internet service. Other options, such as satellite, wireless, dial-up, and fiber optic are either bandwidth limited, costly to install or often unavailable. DSL is a worthy competitor, but sometimes not located nearby.

What DSL and Cable have in common is that they give you a lot of bandwidth for a small price by telecom service standards. The 75 ohm coaxial cable has far more high end capacity than the unshielded twisted pair copper telephone wires used for DSL. Both offer great deals for 10 or 20 Mbps, but Cable is pulling away with DOCSIS 3.0 modems providing 50 or 100 Mbps now and capable of even higher speeds.

Today’s reality is that you can get 100 Mbps Cable broadband for about the same money as 1.5 Mbps T1 line service or 3.0 Mbps Ethernet over Copper. If you suspect there’s a catch, you’re right. The low price of Cable services are a result of sharing the network and the bandwidth with a large number of other users, mostly consumers. That advertised 50 or 100 Mbps goes up and down all day, depending on what your fellow users on the Cable are doing. If they are all casually browsing the Web, you likely have more speed at your disposal than you know what to do with. But when they start downloading movies and large software packages, there’s not so much excess bandwidth left to divvy up.

You don’t see these performance variations with dedicated line services. The term “dedicated” means you get exclusive use of all the bandwidth that line can carry. It’s less speed, but it doesn’t vary. When you aren’t running the line to capacity, the excess goes unused.

The other difference between Cable broadband and Ethernet or T-Carrier services is the service level agreement, also known as an SLA. These documents spell out commitments by the service providers in regard to service availability, performance characteristics such as latency and jitter, and remedies in case something goes wrong. If the line goes down, it is rare for it not to be repaired in a matter of hours.

Cable and DSL are considered “best effort” information services, which is another way of saying there are no guarantees or even promises. Even so, these providers have gotten pretty sophisticated as network operators and make every effort to keep their systems up and running.

The reality is that Cable broadband services can be great in the role of broadband backup. Consider that adding a second T1 line will cost you just as much and may not provide much additional reliability. T1 lines all come in through the same wire bundle and probably go to the same telephone company central office. Yes, if one pair breaks or is cut, you have the other line. But if someone with a backhoe chops through the entire bundle, both T1 lines go out. Cable has no relationship to either telephone wiring or the telephone company offices. True, there’s the possibility that some truck could run into the one pole that carries both the telephone and cable wires and knock out both. But for most of the run, your T1 line and your cable line go their separate ways.

The other thing to consider is that Cable’s high bandwidth may more than offset the variations you experience. You might not be getting 100 Mbps every minute, but you’ll likely not be dipping below 15 Mbps and even that’s 10x the speed of your T1 line. Users browsing the Web, sending email or download PDF files may be unaware of line variations. Data backups to hosted storage services will also benefit more from the higher average line speed than be affected by bandwidth variations, although upload speeds are significantly lower than download speeds on these asymmetrical services.

Are you concerned that you can afford only a single line service that could go down and leave you out of business for who knows how long? Why not protect your interests with Business Cable Broadband Service at a very affordable price?

A Myriad of Business Broadband Options

Business class broadband comes in more flavors that ever before. Your options include DSL, 3G & 4G Wireless, Cable broadband, Satellite, T1 lines, and Ethernet over Copper. Those are just for small business locations. Fiber optic services expand the menu for medium and large scale business users. What is it that distinguishes these broadband options and how do you choose?

You should know that there are two different types of Internet broadband access regardless of the medium used. The medium might be wireless, twisted pair copper, coaxial cable, or fiber optic strand. That’s just the physical layer. What makes even more difference is whether you are on a dedicated or shared broadband connection.

Your lowest cost options fall into the shared bandwidth category. These include DSL, Cable, 3G & 4G Wireless and Satellite. What these all have in common is that the bandwidth is shared among multiple users. A tip-off to shared bandwidth is a statement that your service speed is “up to” so many Mbps. The upper limit, be it 2 or 20 Mbps, is the maximum you’ll experience. How much you get in practice depends on how many other people are trying to use the connection at the same time.

Shared bandwidth services don’t have to be asymmetrical, but they often are. What that means is that the upload and download speed differ, often by a large amount. You might get 5 Mbps in the download direction, but only 1 Mbps in the upload direction. Why is it done this way? It’s because these services are most often used for email and Web access. When using a Web browser, you typically type in an address and then download a page of text and graphics. The upload to request the page is a very few packets. The download of everything from the page is a much larger collection of packets.

The same is true of accessing audio and video content or downloading software. It’s primarily a one-way transmission with the speed of the download much more important than the speed of the uploaded requests.

Another characteristic of shared bandwidth services is that they are promoted as “information” rather than “telecom” services. By using the information category, these services avoid regulatory constraints. What you get for your money in the way of bandwidth levels, availability, time to repair, latency, jitter, packet loss is completely up to the service provider.

Dedicated Internet Access or DIA services allocate the full bandwidth of the connection for your usage. A T1 line, for instance, has a speed of 1.5 Mbps at all times. If you aren’t using it, the line simply idles until needed. You can elect to access the Internet via your T1 line as needed, or you can keep the line busy uploading and downloading data files 100% of the time. There’s no such thing as user limits. You’ve got a pipe with a capacity of 1.5 Mbps and you can transport as many packets through it as it will carry.

T1 lines are symmetrical, also called full duplex. The bandwidth is the same in both the upload and download directions. In this case, it’s 1.5 Mbps. Ethernet over Copper, a newer competing service to T1 lines, is similar but offers more bandwidth options. You can often get 2, 3, 5, 10 and even 20 Mbps EoC service. It’s often stated in the form 10 x 10 Mbps Ethernet to show that you get 10 Mbps in the upload and 10 Mbps in the download direction.

T1 and Ethernet services are not information services. They are network telecom services, often with SLAs or Service Level Agreements. These agreements spell out what you can expect in the way of availability, time to repair, bandwidth, jitter and latency. Because these services are more costly to engineer and provide, they have higher pricing than shared bandwidth information services.

So does that mean that you always need a T1 line or Ethernet connection? Not necessarily. If your primary reason to have an Internet connection is to access information on the Web or maintain a Website and email on a remote hosting service, you may find that DSL, Cable, Satellite or Wireless service works just fine and costs half as much. Satellite and Wireless are especially useful for remote locations that aren’t within the service areas of DSL or Cable. You can use 3G and 4G cellular wireless for point of sale terminals, even at temporary locations.

On the other hand, if you want to run your own servers in-house or connect multiple business locations with a converged voice and data network, you’ll probably find that you absolutely need the more robust bandwidth services. The same is true if you are providing rather than consuming content or can’t stand having employee productivity impacted by bandwidth that varies up and down throughout the day. Would a multi-day outage put you out of business? It probably makes sense to either have a backup bandwidth service or pay up for a Service Level Agreement.

What Internet access options make the most sense for your particular business situation? Why not have a bandwidth expert call you with prices and availability for a wide range of bandwidth solutions? Then you can weigh the costs and benefits and make an better informed decision.

Where Are T1 Lines Available?

You’ve had your fill of DSL and Cable broadband solutions for your business. The price is right, but the bandwidth is inconsistent and service may or may not be available when you need it most. How about moving up to a T1 line? Sound’s good, but just how available is T-1 and is the cost affordable?

The first thing you should know is that T1 is in a completely different class of service than either DSL or Cable broadband. T1 is a regulated, tariffed telecommunications service. The other two are unregulated information services offered primarily for residential users. In return for a lower cost, consumers are willing to put up with irregularities in the service. These include bandwidth that can slow to a crawl when usage is particularly heavy, a difference in upload and download speeds, and no guarantees on service availability.

For residential and home office users, one of the consumer grade services makes sense. It’s also probably all you are going to get. Most carriers will only install a regulated telecom service to a bona-fide business address, not a residential listing. There is also a credit check and a 1 to 3 year contract for services like T1.

Having said that, you should also know that T1 lines are available to just about any business location. It’s almost like a utility. If you can get electricity, water and telephone service, you can probably get T1 service. That’s above and beyond what you can expect from those consumer services. They are very localized to cities and suburbs. It’s not at all unusual for a business to be out of the area for DSL or Cable, yet have no trouble getting T1 service installed.

Why is this? It’s because T1 technology was developed by the telephone companies for their own use initially. It’s since become available for businesses. As a telco technology, T1 was designed to be provisioned on the same twisted pair copper wiring that is used for analog telephone service. Nearly every business has a multi-pair bundle installed when the building is constructed in order to get telephone service. The wires that aren’t being used for telephone lines are available for T1. It takes two pair to support T1 service. One pair is used for transmit, also known as upload. The other pair is for receive, also called download.

As you might suspect, having separate transmit and receive wires means that bandwidth on T1 lines is symmetrical. You get 1.5 Mbps download and 1.5 Mbps upload simultaneously. That arrangement is also known as full duplex. Check other bandwidth options and you’ll probably see that the download speed is much larger than the upload speed. It’s designed that way to save money and works just fine for casual Web browsing. However, if you regularly transfer files between locations or upload content to a remote Web server, having the same upload and download speeds can be a big advantage.

T1 service is available everywhere, even out in the boonies, because the system was designed for signal regeneration. Every mile or so there is a regenerator that takes the signal that normally degrades with distance and re-generates or reshapes back to an ideal waveform. This can be done multiple times so that you’ll get T1 service even 10 or 20 miles away from the nearest telephone company office.

Finally, you should know that T1 line prices have plunged in recent years due to deregulation, competition and heavy demand for the service. Could T1 give your business the bandwidth and reliability you need? Find out with a quick online search for T1 availability and prices now.

Why Ethernet Broadband For Business?

When we think of broadband, what generally comes to mind is DSL, Cable Internet or cellular wireless services. But these are light duty or consumer-grade bandwidth services. Why might you become frustrated with such broadband services in business and is there an attractive alternative?

First, let’s take cellular wireless. It goes by the name 3G and, increasingly, 4G. The problem with both 3G and 4G coming from cell towers is that there is a very limited amount of bandwidth available and it has to be fairly apportioned to all the users who want it.

Smartphones gobble up bandwidth at an eye-popping rate. Get enough smartphones or netbook aircards in a particular area and the whole network can be brought to its knees. That’s why most carriers now have monthly bandwidth limits with steep overage penalties. Satellite and some 4G carriers take a different approach. Instead of charging for overage, they throttle down bandwidth for heavy users. If you use too much in a given period, they slow down your access to give others a chance.

While out and about, cellular broadband may be your best bet simply because service is so readily available compared to everything else. If the cells are too congested, you can find a WiFi hotspot and likely get better throughput there.

If you want or need wireless broadband service for an office with multiple users, consider a fixed wireless option designed for business. They’re mostly available in large metropolitan areas. If you can get this service, you’ll be hooked up quickly and have generous amounts of bandwidth at your disposal. An outdoor antenna is installed on your building to a strong signal for reliable service.

DSL and Cable broadband were designed for consumers. The carriers bend over backwards to keep the price low so that most consumers can afford the service. But they achieve that by having everyone share the available bandwidth. Your service might offer “up to 10 Mbps” of download bandwidth. Whether or not you get anywhere near that depends on what your neighbors are doing online. When everybody starts heavily accessing the Internet, the line speed for each user slows and sometimes slows to a crawl.

Businesses that need reliable, dependable and fast Internet service often find themselves frustrated at keeping up productivity on services that cater to people downloading music and videos at home. The classic solution is the T1 line. T1 lines are dedicated, in the sense that you have full use of the available 1.5 Mbps bandwidth. T1 is highly reliable, gets fast repair service if anything ever does go wrong and is “unlimited” in that you can run it full speed 24/7 all month. If you need more bandwidth, you can “bond” more T1 lines up to about 10 Mbps both upload and download.

The one thing that makes businesses sometimes hesitate at installing one or more T1 lines is that the cost is several times what you pay for those consumer services. Even though the cost is well worth it when you consider the lost business or productivity that results from flaky Internet service, there is now an even better option for business use. That service is Ethernet broadband.

Ethernet broadband is a high speed dedicated wireline service that can be provided to your business location on either copper wiring or fiber optic cable, depending on bandwidth. Popular speed options are 3 and 10 Mbps for smaller businesses, 100 to 1000 Mbps for medium size operations, and 1 Gbps and up for large corporations. Your line speed is scalable, so you can generally have it increased up to the full capacity of the installed port with only a phone call to your provider.

Best of all, Ethernet is often the best value for your broadband dollar. A 3 Mbps Ethernet connection is often about the same price as a 1.5 Mbps T1 line. A 10 Mbps Ethernet service is easily affordable by most businesses.

Would you be interested in switching to highly reliable, high speed Ethernet services if the price were attractive? Why not check out Ethernet broadband service prices right now? See how much bandwidth you can get for your budget.

What To Do If You Hate Your Internet Service

I regularly get inquiries with comments that go something like “I can’t get any broadband” or “I hate my slow Internet access.” Unfortunately, most of these come in as requests for quotes on high bandwidth services that are totally inappropriate. So, is there any real hope for the frustrated individual or small business Internet user? You bet there is.

Broadband access is a hot potato right now. So much so that the government is spending billions to help service providers extend their coverage into small towns and rural areas where broadband is largely non-existant. This will help... eventually. But no way is there enough money available to create the kind of universal access we have with telephone service and electricity. In the real boonies, your best bet is wireless.

Before I get deeper into this, are you sure you don’t have broadband options? New build-outs are always underway and there might be something that serves your address that you don’t realize has arrived. Before you do anything else, check for broadband availability using a broadband finder service like the appropriately named “Can I Get DSL?” This free availability check will give you a list of DSL, Cable, Satellite and 3G mobile broadband services for your location.

Notice the inclusion of 3G cellular wireless. Cell towers have become so prolific that you can almost always get a signal, even out in the country where no one is stringing broadband wires. Nearly all cell towers are now transmitting both voice and data on different channels. If you have a smartphone, that’s how you get your Internet access. But you can also get a wireless modem aircard and a data-only plan so that you can put broadband on your laptop computer. Yes, it is also possible to plug one of these into a desktop computer, but beware. There is such a shortage of wireless channels that service providers impose a relatively small download cap. It’s generally either 2 GB or 5 GB depending on the service you order. Most people find this more than adequate for mobile use in checking email and browsing websites. But if you go downloading big software files or movies, you can hit that limit pretty quickly. Go over and you’ll pay overage charges that can be eye-popping.

A faster and less restrictive wireless service is 4G WiMAX, now in some 40 cities. Someday WiMAX may be the answer to rural broadband needs. But for right now, it is rather tightly deployed around major population centers. If you can get it, you’ll enjoy 3 to 6 Mbps downloads with unlimited usage. In fact, this service is advertised as being suitable for both desktop and mobile usage. The strong signals penetrate most structures, so you don’t need an outside antenna. WiMAX 4G isn’t available everywhere, but it’s worth your while to check 4G wireless availability and see if it has come to your town yet.

Another wireless option is the WISP or Wireless Internet Service Provider. These are strictly local operations set up by entrepreneurs to cover smaller towns or subdivisions located too far from the city to get wired services. You’ll have to check your phone book or newspaper ads to see if one is nearby. If so, you can get DSL or Cable speeds delivered wirelessly line-of-sight to an antenna that mounts on your roof. Some of these look like a small satellite dish tipped downward.

Speaking of satellite, two-way satellite broadband is an established technology that will work just about anywhere you can get power and a clear view of the southern sky. Satellite has gotten a bad rap because of relatively high prices, low bandwidth caps and horrible latency. The latency is due to the radio signal having to travel some 22,500 miles up to the bird and back down. It introduces a half-second or so delay into everything. For email or Web browsing, that’s probably no big deal. Just forget about real-time gaming, VoIP telephone or video conferencing. You’ll drive yourself nuts waiting for responses. Even so, for many users, satellite is a decent option. Service prices have come down recently and are similar to many DSL and Cable prices.

A lucky few also have the option to get their broadband delivered by fiber optic cable. The Verizon FiOS service offers large bandwidth and the possibility of bundling telephone and television over the same passive optical fiber.

If none of these will do the trick, you may be tempted to look into business bandwidth solutions. Don’t do it unless you can pay $300 and up per month for T1 lines running 1.5 Mbps and even more for DS3 and Ethernet. Most providers won’t even install service unless your property is zoned for business. If you do have a business location and are willing to pay what rock solid reliable business bandwidth services demand, then by all means request a business broadband service quote and see what options are available to you.

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.

3G 4G Mobile Bandwidth

The Internet long escaped the desktop and moved onto the mobile phone. The problem is that it has been following a similar learning curve that took us from 300 baud telephone modems to DSL & Cable broadband and now to high speed wireless and fiber optic service. Mobile bandwidth is undergoing a steady evolution, with the demand for higher and higher speeds pushing the technology. Let’s have a look at what’s available and what’s coming soon.

The benchmark today is 3G wireless. This service offers somewhere between 500 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps and is owned and operated by the cellular carriers. The same company that sells you your cell phone minutes also sells you 3G wireless Internet access. The signals come from the same towers, so if you are in a dead spot for phone reception you won’t be surfing the Web or watching videos either.

The 3G build-out has been proceeding at something of a panic level, especially since the introduction of the Apple iPhone. The first iPhone used the AT&T EDGE network, which is actually called a 2.5G network. That means it has considerably less bandwidth than the newer HSPA or High Speed Packet Access 3G network, perhaps as little as a tenth as much. HSPA is offered by GSM carriers AT&T and T-Mobile and is also known as HSUPA.

A competing 3G service is offered by CDMA carriers Verizon and Sprint using a different technology. Theirs is known as EV-DO and EV-DO Rev A. Download bandwidths are in the range of 1 to 2 Mbps, depending on signal conditions.

Note that 2.5G and 3G cellular broadband not only gives cell phones the ability to download videos and surf the Web but also gives you the option of adding 3G to your laptop computer. The functionality is added using a plug-in wireless modem aircard. These are sold with data-only service plans, since they don’t work as telephones. The aircard and wireless service has been a boon to field sales people who don’t always have the ability to set up shop within a WiFi hotspot.

The newest service on the market is called 4G mobile bandwidth. Right now the run away leader is the WiMAX service offered by Clearwire and Sprint under the CLEAR trademark. WiMAX is yet another wireless standard, albeit a global one not associated with the cellular phone system. WiMAX offers a powerful signal that covers an entire city. It’s strong enough to penetrate buildings so that you can have the same WiMAX broadband on your desktop and laptop computers. Download bandwidth typically ranges between 3 and 6 Mbps, considerably faster than 3G networks.

The cellular companies aren’t sitting still, though. Both AT&T and Verizon plan to deploy another standard called LTE to compete with WiMAX. It will likely be a year or two before these two 4G technologies are competing head to head in most populated areas. For now, WiMAX gives you the most mobile bandwidth at the lowest cost in the cities and states where it is available.

Houston, We’ve Got A 4G Solution

How’s your broadband experience? Lovin’ it or... You know. The speed really drags. It’s dead half the time. Even when it works, it seems to cost a lot more than it should. Worst of all, there are lots of places, even in town, where you can’t even get connected.

Well, you won’t have to put up with that treatment anymore if you happen to be living in Houston, Texas and nearby locations such as The Woodlands, Pasadena, Baytown, Mission Bend, Missouri City, Lake Jackson, Alvin, Conroe, or League City. CLEAR, the new 4G wireless broadband service being deployed by Sprint and Clearwire, has installed their WiMAX Internet service and it’s up and running right now. Can you get it? Enter your zip code and see if you’ve got coverage.



So, is it only the lucky residents of Houston that can get 4G wireless broadband service? No, not by a long shot. There are 10 states and 30 cities that are already on the air with WiMAX service. Others are in the works right now. That’s millions and millions of users who have the opportunity to cut the cord and get away from DSL and Cable if they aren’t satisfied.

One of the unique features of this service is that you can get both fixed and mobile service on the same account. Remember -- this is wireless broadband. That gives you the opportunity to be working on a project at your desk and then take it on the road using the same broadband service. You don’t need to pay twice to get desktop and mobile WiMAX service from different providers. CLEAR will give you both at an attractive price.

What kind of bandwidth is available? The service runs at 3 Mbps to 6 Mbps for downloads and up to 1 Mbps for uploads. That compares favorably with the better DSL and Cable services and completely blows away 3G cellular broadband.

Do you live in the Houston area? If not, are you curious to see if 4G wireless broadband is available for your location? If so, simply Enter your zip code and see if you’ve got coverage.

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.

4G WiMAX Wireless Broadband Available Now

Have you been frustrated by your choices in home and mobile broadband service? How would you like to find a wireless broadband Internet service that you can use at your desk and take with you on your laptop? Would you like it even more if this service was cheaper than DSL, Cable and 3G wireless? Would you go for it right now if this service was screaming fast? You should really check and see if you can get 4G WiMAX broadband.



What’s WiMAX and why is it better than other broadband service options? WiMAX is a new worldwide standard for high speed wireless data service. If you think the name sounds a lot like WiFi, you are right. In fact, you can think of WiMAX as the coming replacement for public WiFi hotspots. The MAX in WiMAX hints at why. This service gives you a hotspot that covers an entire city. It can extend for 20 or 30 miles. Compare that with WiFi that disappears in a couple of hundred feet.

If you want to go mobile and not have to constantly look for WiFi hotspots to connect, you are probably considering or have a 3G modem aircard. This is a USB device that looks like a flash memory dongle. But the modem aircard has a two-way digital radio inside that connects to a cellular broadband signal. That gives you broadband at speeds similar to entry level DSL but without the wires. The upgrade is 4G or fourth generation wireless broadband. WiMAX is the implementation of 4G that is deployed and working right now.

What does 4G WiMAX have to offer? How about typical download speeds in the range of 3 to 6 Mbps with occasional bursts to 10 Mbps? How about a service that needs no telephone or cable TV wiring even at a desktop location? How about a service that you can run at your desktop and then take with you on your laptop? That pretty much rules out the wireline services doesn’t it? Combine that with a service plan price that starts at $30 a month, and even 3G wireless is left in the dust. You can order home service, mobile service, a combination plan and a plan that even includes 4G VoIP phone service in the bundle.

Now the question is can you get 4G WiMAX broadband at your location? CLEAR offers this service in parts of Texas, Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Idaho, Nevada, Hawaii, North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania. More locations are under construction right now. The only way to know for sure is to check for CLEAR 4G WiMAX broadband service availability. Give it a try and see if you’ve been missing out on faster, cheaper wireless broadband service.