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.

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 Now Faster and Cheaper Than T1

For years, even a couple of decades, T1 lines have been the go-to professional bandwidth service for small and medium businesses. They are the most popular digital connection for good reasons. T1 lines are available, reliable, secure, dedicated, flexible and relatively inexpensive. What’s not to like?

Agreed. There’s a lot to like about T1 services. But how would you like to get even more for your money? If so, then you need to take a close look at Ethernet, especially Ethernet over Copper.

Not everyone is familiar with the newer Carrier Ethernet services. They’ve only been available for a few years and the big rush has been just recently. Ethernet over Copper, EoC, is primarily a service you find in large metropolitan areas and not in smaller towns or out in the country. It has a distance limitation. You need to be within a few miles of the service provider’s office to qualify for service. Even so, there are millions of business locations that could be served by Ethernet instead of T1. So why aren’t they?

Good question. I suspect that it is more a matter of awareness than anything else. Companies that use T1 line services know the pricing and availability. They also know that prices have been coming down so they can get great renewal pricing, especially on 3 year contracts. What they don’t know is that they can get even more bandwidth for the same pricing with Ethernet over Copper.

It’s incredible, but true. Both T1 and Ethernet cost less than $300 a month in many areas. The difference is that T1 bandwidth is fixed at 1.5 Mbps. Ethernet will give you 2 Mbps, known as 2x2 Ethernet, or 3 Mbps, known as 3x3 Ethernet, depending on the service provider for your particular location.

Yes, you can also get T1 service at 3 Mbps to match the 3x3 Ethernet bandwidth. One T1 line will get you 1.5 Mbps only, so the way this is done is to combine or “bind” two T1 lines to get 3 Mbps. The only problem is that you now have to pay twice as much because each T1 line has a cost and there is no economy of scale.

Ethernet is not only lower cost than T1, but it offers more bandwidth that is also more scalable. You can order Ethernet over Copper starting at 1 Mbps. Common speed increments include 2 Mbps, 3 Mbps, 5 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 15 Mbps and 20 Mbps. It’s possible to get other intermediate speeds, too. Binding T1 lines tops out at around 12 Mbps because of both the technology involved and the sheer cost of all those individual lines.

Ethernet keeps on going. You can easily get 10 or 20 Mbps Ethernet service, with 40 Mbps and even 100 Mbps available in some metro areas. Those connections are made over the same type of twisted pair copper wiring that is used to deliver T1. The higher speeds even rival entry level fiber optic services that may be expensive to install.

Are you considering a bandwidth increase or simply want to know if you can get a better bandwidth deal? Get pricing and availability of both Ethernet and T1 line service and see what makes the most sense for your business.

Fixed Wireless Broadband Services For Business

We’ve come to think of business grade telecom services and copper wireline and fiber optic services. That’s why IT managers may cringe when someone says they’ve got to have new high bandwidth Internet access, point to point transmission or VoIP telephone service right this minute. We all know that there is no such thing in WAN networking as right this minute. Or is there?

An option that’s becoming increasingly available is fixed wireless service. Think of getting the same bandwidth services you have now delivered without the wires. This is quite different from cell phone service designed for mobile use or wireless access points that have a range of only a few hundred feet. It’s also not satellite broadband, which has such long latencies and limited bandwidth that you can’t really use it for any but the most limited applications.

This fixed wireless service uses outside antennas that communicate over a range of some miles. Airband, a leader in this field, has installed base stations in 14 major cities. Each base station can communicate with customers up to 5 miles away, forming a service footprint of 78 square miles. Each customer has a subscriber unit (SU) that provides a two-way radio connection with the base station and a simple Ethernet connection to the LAN.

What services can Airband offer? Broadband Internet is a popular choice. You can get speeds from 2 Mbps to Gigabit Ethernet. Yes, you can get replacement service for T1 lines and DS3 connections. But there is also the standard Ethernet speeds of 10 Mbps, 100 Mbps and 1000 Mbps. Plus you can choose any bandwidth in-between to scale your service to exactly what you need. Don’t worry about picking the wrong bandwidth level and needing an upgrade quickly. Upgrades are made by network software changes and can be accomplished in hours. Installation itself can be completed in just days. What’s that quote you got to bring in fiber? Six months? Outrageous!

Being wireless, can’t anyone just stick up an antenna and intercept your datastream? They won’t have much luck. Airband uses 128 bit AES encryption to keep your data safe. They also offer a 100% uptime guarantee, with service level guarantees on jitter, latency and packet loss.

With such tight control on network parameters, this fixed wireless solution can be used with confidence for VoIP as well as point to point data, business Internet and private IP VPN. There are several options available. You can simply replace your existing ISDN PRI trunk lines (or add new ones) using a SIP trunk with PRI interface. The newer IP PBX systems can often connect directly to a SIP trunk. Or let Airband own and manage the hosted PBX system and just have telephone sets at your location. This is all done on a private IP network so that the quality of your voice communication is assured.

Does this sound like the quality of service you need with the speed of installation and avoidance of copper and fiber line construction costs you require? If so, you may be delighted with how little you have to pay to enjoy fixed wireless services from Airband and other providers. Get details on fixed wireless costs and availability now.