Pricing Slashed For Michigan 100 Mbps Business Internet

Businesses in Michigan, like businesses everywhere, are hurting for bandwidth. Between the increased use of video, business automation, and everything moving to the cloud, those aging T1 lines are starting to grind to a halt under the load. Bonded T1 will only take you so far. After that, it’s time to face an order of magnitude price jump to get into fiber optic services. Well, that’s how it was. Now there’s another option that offers fiber bandwidth at T1 prices. Is this for real?

Comcast Business Class 100 Mbps / 10 Mbps service is definitely for real and the answer to a profit squeezed company’s prayers. All of a sudden, that big constriction at the LAN/WAN interface is gone. Files move fast. Web pages pop before your eyes. Email? You could drown in all the email that can flood in at 100 Mbps.

So, how do you get OC-3 or Fast Ethernet bandwidth levels without the high cost of fiber? What you tap into is HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax. That’s the technical name for the finely tuned network that Comcast has deployed in their vast service area. There are two types of transport technologies that are welded together in HFC. Hence, the hybrid designation. The core of the network is a robust fiber optic backbone that is worthy of any major carrier. The access connections are coaxial copper cable. You know it as TV cable. What you may not realize is just how much bandwidth that coax connection supports.

Cable TV companies started using coaxial cable back when they were little more than enormous master antennas. The same coax that connects from your outdoor TV antenna to the back of your TV set can also bring in a much larger set of channels from your Cable company. Decades ago, it was all analog on Cable and over the air. Now it’s all digital. The RF spectrum on the cable is still channelized, with one digital TV station per slot. There are a lot of TV channels to choose from, but they don’t use all the possible channels that the cable can support. Some of those channels have been set aside for broadband or telephone services.

Besides the analog to digital transition, the other thing that’s changed with Cable operations is deployment of a fiber optic backbone to interconnect the multiple systems that the Cable operator owns and bring all the programming content into the neighborhood. This fiber network has far greater capacity than the old style large diameter coaxial distribution cable.

If fiber is so great, then why not run it directly to homes and businesses? Someday, that’s what will probably happen. Right now, the economics say no. Fiber termination equipment is expensive. Trenching a roll of plastic coated copper coax and connecting it to a wall outlet is cheap. With the ability to deliver television, broadband Internet access and telephone on that inexpensive little line, who wants to pony up for fiber?

You don’t or you’d already have installed SONET OC-3, OC-12, OC-48 or Ethernet over Fiber service for your business. Either the construction cost is a show stopper or the monthly lease fees are more than your budget can handle. Now you have another choice with Comcast’s 100 Mbps business broadband. It’s inexpensive and it can be installed quickly for any business that the Cable infrastructure passes.

What makes this service so affordable? For one thing, the cost of the network is spread over thousands of television and broadband customers. For another, this is not a true telecom service like SONET or Ethernet. Those services are symmetrical in that they have the same upload and download speeds. If you need 100 Mbps in both directions, Comcast’s offering won’t work for you. It’s specified at up to 100 Mbps download and up to 10 Mbps upload. That configuration is exactly what you need for general Internet access, where uploads are few and small but downloads are frequent and massive.

Also note that Cable is shared and not dedicated bandwidth. An OC-3 fiber connection gives you 155 Mbps all to yourself. Whatever you don’t use sits idle until you need it. You are sharing the Cable bandwidth availability with other users so that the network is always in use. This sharing also means that your bandwidth will vary throughout the day depending on what everyone is doing online. Does it matter? It may or may not, depending on how important it is to you to have that 100 Mbps at your disposal at all times.

Finally, there are no service level agreements like you have with T1 lines and the like. This is a “best effort” information service that is offered as-is. Even so, Comcast takes its network seriously and works to keep it as reliable as possible. If you’ve used home Cable broadband and been happy with the way it performed, then you’ll probably be happy with the bigger, faster Business Class service that gives all your employees a similar level of service while accessing the Internet on their desktop computers.

Are you a Michigan business owner or IT manager who’s anxious for high speed Internet access at a very affordable price? Check into prices and availability for 100 Mbps Internet options at your location. Note that Comcast and other fast Internet services are also available for locations other than Michigan.



Note: Photo of Detroit skyline courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Disruptive Metro Ethernet over Fiber Pricing Arrives

Ethernet over Fiber (EoF) has been gaining popularity with large organizations as a replacement for more expensive SONET fiber optic services. For smaller and medium size companies, the mere mention of the term “fiber” suggests pricing that is way over budget. Today that’s all changed. The era of affordable fiber optic bandwidth has arrived.

What’s responsible for prices per Mbps or Gbps that can be half of what you’d expect to pay or less? It’s a source you would never expect... Cable TV. Cable? Isn’t that for consumers?

Yes it is. But behind the scenes there’s another Cable network you probably didn’t know even existed. It’s a professional fiber optic core network that’s the equal of any carrier and with a service footprint larger than most.

When we think of Cable TV, we think of the coaxial wire that plugs into a set top box or cable modem. At one time, all cable networks were constructed almost completely of copper coax strung on poles around town and trenched through the back yard. That was the era of Analog Cable. What’s happened over the years is that this network architecture has evolved into a combination of fiber optic and copper called HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax that supports the newer digital services.

HFC uses fiber optics for the long runs that bring service into a business or residential neighborhood. It also runs between cities for large Cable MSOs (Multi-System Operators) like Comcast. Most of the traffic on that fiber is television video, but there is so much bandwidth available that it also easily transports data from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps.

Comcast has recognized that their nationwide network runs past businesses as well as consumers. Many smaller businesses take advantage of the excellent pricing on Cable broadband brought in on coaxial cable to a cable modem. It’s quite possible to get 50 Mbps or even 100 Mbps asymmetrical shared bandwidth for the same pice as a T1 line.

Asymmetrical means that the download speed is much higher than the upload speed. Typically that’s a 10x bandwidth difference. This is common for Internet access, but different from business telecom services that are generally symmetrical or the same speed for both upload and download.

Comcast’s Ethernet over Fiber bandwidth services are symmetrical and intended for Enterprise applications. There are 4 services you’ll be interested in. They are Ethernet Dedicated Internet (EDI), Ethernet Private Line (EPL), Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) and Ethernet Data Network / Meshed Network (EDN). All of these services are available in bandwidths from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps.

Ethernet Dedicated Internet gives you the Internet access you need to support large employee user bases and connectivity with customers worldwide. Dedicated means that the bandwidth you order is always available for your use. That differs from shared bandwidth that is common for consumer services and wireline cable modems.

Ethernet Private Line (EPL) is a point to point connection service. You may be using T1 lines for linking two business locations now and wishing you had more bandwidth. EPL using Ethernet over Fiber can give you the higher bandwidth you need immediately with nearly unlimited growth potential for the future.

Ethernet Virtual Private Line (EVPL) is another Ethernet private line service. It is similar to EPL, but allows multiple Ethernet services on the same physical line and UNI (User Network Interface). These come in on EVCs or Ethernet Virtual Connections. What the virtualization does is let you run Ethernet Private Lines out to each of several business locations without having to pay for multiple fiber or wireline terminations at headquarters.

Ethernet Data Network / Meshed Network (EDN) lets you establish a large Metro or Wide Area Network to interconnect LANs for your branch offices or other business locations. As a meshed network, you have any to any connectivity. This is similar to might set up with a Frame Relay or MPLS network.

Are you ready for fiber optic bandwidths but not fiber optic service prices? Depending on locations, you may be in position to benefit from the enormous cost advantage of HFC based Ethernet over Fiber bandwidth services. Get pricing and availability before you sign up for anything else.

PRI over Cable Cost Savings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

D3 vs DS3 Bandwidth Choices

Medium and larger size companies have long chosen DS3 services to obtain the bandwidth they need for broadband Internet access. Now there’s a new player in the marketplace that is looking to complement if not displace the venerable DS3 connection.

If you need business bandwidth higher than you can get by bonding T1 lines, you already know about DS3. But how much do you know about D3?

D3 is short for DOCSIS 3.0, a cable broadband standard that gives HFC (Hybrid Fiber Cable) systems a capability that rivals fiber to the premises. It is now possible to get 50 Mbps for business use from cable systems in many cities. Some have 100 Mbps available and more will have that service offering soon. DOCSIS 3.0 can provide 152 Mbps, with even higher speeds possible. Compare that with DS3 at 45 Mbps and you can see why there is a natural competition between the services.

The raw bandwidth specs don’t tell the whole story, however. D3 and DS3 are different technologies with different characteristics. You may find that one or both of these services make sense for your business.

DS3 stands for Digital Signal, level 3. It was developed as part of the T-Carrier specification by Bell Labs for use by the telephone companies to transport up to 672 simultaneous telephone calls between phone company switching centers. When provisioned over coaxial copper lines, it is called T3 line service. If you suspect that T3 is related to T1, you are right. A T3 line can transport the equivalent of 28 T1 lines on its higher bandwidth.

DOCSIS 3.0 has a Cable TV rather than a telephone company heritage. The DOCSIS standard was developed by CableLabs (Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.) with contributions from other companies serving the cable industry. If you have Cable broadband, you are using a DOCSIS modem. It’s only a question of which version you are using. The original was DOCSIS 1.0, which has been supplanted by DOCSIS 1.1, DOCSIS 2.0 and now DOCSIS 3.0.

DS3 is based on multiplexing 672 channels of 64 Kbps each to create total bandwidth of 43 Mbps. Add the necessary synchronization and control bits and you have a bandwidth of 44.736 Mbps. Why so many channels? Each of those 64K channels is just the right size to carry one telephone call. That’s the telco heritage of DS3. Combine all the channels into one large pipe and you have nearly 45 Mbps of digital bandwidth.

D3 is also based on channels. In this case, each channel is 6 MHz wide. That’s the width of one television channel. Everything on a cable system is treated as a TV channel, so broadband services have to fit into those channels to get through the amplifiers and wiring on the system without interfering with any other channels. A 6 MHz channel can transport a 38 Mbps broadband signal in one direction. Cable operators bond channels together to get higher bandwidths. With 4 bonded channels, DOCSIS 3.0 can deliver a download speed of 152 Mbps.

So, are D3 and DS3 the same beyond their different technology heritages? Not really. The telco heritage of DS3 means that it is a dedicated symmetrical bandwidth service. You get 45 Mbps in both the upload and download directions. That bandwidth never varies. It is called dedicated because it is completely dedicated to your needs. Anytime you don’t use the full 45 Mbps, it just sits there and idles while waiting for more data.

D3 is an asymmetrical shared bandwidth service. You get different speeds in the upload and download directions. Download is faster to reflect the fact that most users download more content from the Internet than they upload. Typical business bandwidth services are 50 Mbps download and 10 Mbps upload or 100 Mbps download with 10 Mbps upload. This bandwidth is shared among many users on the system. Thus, you may experience your access speed varying all over the place depending on what other users are doing. If a lot of them are downloading movies or big software updates, everyone’s speed will be slowed.

DS3 service is generally sold with an SLA or Service Level Agreement that describes the expected performance and availability of the service, plus remedies if the provider doesn’t deliver as promised. D3 is a “best effort” service with no specific performance guarantees. Even so, it is in the provider’s best interest to provide adequate resources and service availability to keep the customers happy.

The difference in services are most dramatic when you look at the pricing. You might pay several thousand dollars a month for DS3 service with an SLA. D3 will probably cost you a tenth of that, with no guarantees. Which will work for your needs depends on if the cable system passes your business and if you can live with the variations in performance and lack of guarantees. Some companies have DS3 or even T1 lines installed for their mission critical or performance sensitive applications and D3 for general Internet access and low cost backup to their telecom services.

Are DS3, D3 or both bandwidth services right for your company? Why not talk to an expert consultant that can provide you with prices and availability of DS3, D3, and other broadband options for your business needs? There is no charge for this helpful service and you may be able to realize a considerable cost savings while achieving the same or better network performance as you have now.

HFC Broadband For Business

Many small businesses don’t fall into the category of “residential” users but don’t need or can’t afford the cost of traditional business telecom services, such as T1 lines or Ethernet over Copper. One possible solution is HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax broadband services.

Hybrid what? You may have heard of this as Cable broadband for business. A lot of home based businesses successfully use Cable broadband to manage their websites, access information on the Web and send and receive email. But try to order residential service for a business location and you’ll get turned down flat. That’s because residential broadband is priced for single homes and apartments with few people accessing the service and probably no-one online most of the day. Knowing that, some business owners incorrectly assume that you can’t get Cable run into a business. But you can.

So, what’s available and why the funny name? HFC or Hybrid Fiber Coax refers to the technology used to deploy high speed Internet access, telephone service, and Cable television. You know that Cable TV and Cable broadband are called that because of the coaxial cable that provides the connection to the network. When Cable systems were first deployed, they were constructed from various size coaxial cables. What’s happened in recent years is that the long connection from the Cable office or the “head end” where the signals are picked up and run for miles to various neighborhoods has been replaced by fiber optic cable. The last few hundred feet or so are still copper coaxial cable, also called coax. The result is a system that is a hybrid of fiber optic cable and coax cable known as Hybrid Fiber Coax or HFC.

Why go with a hybrid arrangement rather than just make it fiber optics all the way? It’s mostly a matter of cost. While fiber has a far larger capacity, there is a lot of coax already in the ground. The interface connection at the premises, either a Cable modem or set top box, is much less expensive than the termination equipment needed for fiber. Don’t count that coax down and out yet, either. With digital signals, there is more than enough bandwidth for triple-play services to small and medium businesses as well as consumers.

With an already built-out infrastructure and a high number of users to cover costs, you might expect that HFC services are lower in cost than most telecom services available for the SMB. You’re right, they are. But you need to know the performance tradeoffs to make a smart buying decision.

One excellent use for HFC is broadband Internet access when employee use is primarily Web browsing and email. That includes information research, making purchases, doing simple banking, messaging customers, providing a WiFi hotspot and so on. If most of what you do is similar to the way you use a computer at home, HFC should work just fine. You select a bandwidth tier that offers enough speed to work efficiently and still saves you money over other options. Typical bandwidth for smaller businesses goes up to 15 Mbps download and 2 Mbps upload, although some Cable companies are offering speeds as high as 50 or even 100 Mbps.

You’ll likely be able to get a high speed Internet solution that meets your needs with a lot more bandwidth than a T1 line offers and for a lot less money. But beware. T1 lines are dedicated bandwidth that stays a rock solid 1.5 Mbps all the time. Cable bandwidth is shared among all the users on the Cable and can vary all over the place. That’s one way they hold the cost down. If you are running high traffic ecommerce servers or using business processes that expect constant bandwidth, you might find the speed variations not worth the cost savings. Otherwise, you might be quite happy with both the performance and reliability of HFC broadband.

Another service that Cable companies have gotten into is business telephone, essentially VoIP. One big difference between this service and simply running a third party VoIP service over your broadband connection is that the Cable version never transits the Internet. The voice packets travel over the cable network and are then terminated to the public telephone network by the Cable company or a telephone service provider. By doing it this way, the HFC operator has more control of things like latency, packet loss and network congestion to ensure decent voice quality.

Finally, HFC offers Cable TV channels. After all, that’s why the network was built in the first place. Businesses with waiting rooms, like automotive service centers and doctor’s offices, can put business Cable TV service to good use.

Have you been frustrated by your current choices in network services? Why not compare prices, availability and service features of HFC, T1 and Ethernet so you can make the best buying decision? You may be surprised by the range of options available.



Note: Diagram of coaxial cable construction courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.