Why should I buy a T1 line?

[Lucky.]

Question for all of you:

My company (50+ users) has a single wireless connection that seems to get 4.5mbps down / 0.5 mbps up on this site. This is similar to the cable internet I have at home (if not slower). Everybody's internet access is fine.

It seems like every business I know has a T1 going into their place. I priced one of these out the other day - it was like $450 a month or so. But if a T1 is 1.5mbps split between up and down, why on earth would anybody buy it vs. $50 a month for wireless or cable? Err - pay 8x as much for 1/3rd the speed?

I asked the phone company this question, and their only response was "Well we offer swift response time if something goes down," and "your cable company only offers up to 5mbps...you won't actually get it). But the truth is that my wireless or cable hardly ever goes down, and I consistently get 5 mbps. So that argument seems pointless.

Now I could sort of understand having a T1 for an e-mail server or VPN server. But why would anybody buy a T1 for standard business communication? Or is there something I'm missing there?

[heimo]

I'm not going to "try to sell" you T1 or anything else either - and I only have experience how this business/consumer internet connection thing works in Finland. Reasons to get more expensive internet connection include service level agreements, higher upload speeds, additional services (like QOS, firewall, VPN) which may not be available for "consumer" internet connections, dedicated connections (for security/dedicated bandwidth), IP-network from ISP (instead of dynamic addresses or limited number of public addresses) and so on. Not everyone needs these, but those that do, pay sometimes a lot of extra (thousands).

[iponeverything]

A T1 is expensive for one simple reason, you have a dedicated pair of copper wires running between you and the CO and the remote CO and far endpoint if you have a point-to-point to a branch office. The SLA is totally useless if you don't enforce it though constant monitoring, providers won't do squat pro-actively to reduce your bill - and the SLA only guarantees to providers border router or the remote point-to-point. It is more reliable and you can talk to a tech or engineer 24/7 -- but good luck getting on-site response at odd hours unless your account is a few k$/mo - paging the extra 2 engineers at 2 AM to traipse around with test gear, costs them more than you are paying.

A T1 is good if your have mission critical requirements and need to cover your butt in the case of an outage. (blah, blah, blah, downtime cost us millions of dollars a second, blah, blah, blah)

IMO -- unless you have good money to throw around, stick with what you have.

[Lucky.]

Thanks a bunch to the two of you. I had a hunch we were good, but it was nice to hear it from some others.

[cascade9]

I asked the phone company this question, and their only response was "Well we offer swift response time if something goes down," and "your cable company only offers up to 5mbps...you won't actually get it). But the truth is that my wireless or cable hardly ever goes down, and I consistently get 5 mbps. So that argument seems pointless.

5Mbit/sec from cable? o.O

I thought that the 12MBit/sec down 0.25MBit/sec up (stupid australian telcos) I was getting before I moved and changed to ADSL2+ was bad.

BTW, getting aprox 19MBit/sec down, and 0.8MBit/sec up with my ADSL2+. I'm so glad I live near the exchange Cable is probably more reliable than ADSL though.

[jemwelsom]

For businesses, a T1 line is the ideal internet connection option. T1 can provide both data and voice channels – it can accommodate hundreds of users at one time at speeds of up to 1.54mbps, and can provide up to 23 telephone lines.
When compared to Cable and DSL connections, Internet T1 lines are pricey but due to the popularity of T-line services, prices for T1 connections have fallen as low as $250/month in select areas.

In short, T1 lines are the answer for any business with a heavy volume of Internet traffic and multiple users as they provide fast, reliable service with a comprehensive range of features and options.
Moreover, T1 connections offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that guarantee up to 99.99% uptime, quick response times.

[howefield]

Thread closed.