FREE Customized Price QuotesT1 connections
T1 connections are the primary choice of businesses that rely on their Internet connection for bandwidth-intensive applications like VoIP, web conferencing, and hosting their own web sites. They're also extremely reliable, with some providers boasting 99.99% uptime — the elusive "4 nines" reliability. That's less than an hour of down time per year!
Unlike DSL, T1 connections are dedicated to your business: your connection goes straight to the service provider, so there are no worries about what other customers on the network "loop" are doing that might impact your bandwidth.
Standard T1 service — sometimes called DS1 service — reaches speeds of 1.5 megabits per second, or Mbps. That's enough to support most small businesses: a single T1 line can handle up to 50 employees with few problems, and up to 100 employees with some slowdowns.
Smaller businesses may choose a fractional T1 line, which offers a portion of the bandwidth of a full T1 connection at a reduced price. When you compare prices, though, you may find that the difference in price between full and fractional lines is fairly small.
For larger businesses, the massive capacity of a T3 line may be more appropriate. Don't let the name fool you — T3 lines have 30 times the bandwidth of T1 lines, or 45 Mbps. These connections can support hundreds of employees, or heavy usage of video and file serving.
Plan for usage spikes with burstable connections
With standard T1 service plans, you can use up to the full capacity of the connection every month — and if you exceed the capacity, you'll suffer slowdowns or failures. If your Internet usage occasionally spikes, you might want a burstable T1 connection.
Burstable plans give you a set amount of monthly bandwidth, but can accommodate much more. If you stay under your monthly cap, you pay a set rate; if you take advantage of the overhead, you pay for the actual use.
Regularly relying on burstable capacity isn't a cost-effective tactic — think of it as an insurance policy, not something for routine use.