Cable vs T1

[Eric5273]

Perhaps some of you IT guys or business owners can chime in....

I'm moving my company office to a new location, and they don't offer FIOS or DSL at this new location. My only choices are Cable or T1.

At the same time, I'm trying to combine my voice & internet services to a single provider. I have 5 phone lines that will obviously be working over VOIP, and 5 workstations connected to the line. Also, there will be someone working remotely who will constantly be connected by VPN and they will also have a remote phone using VOIP during normal business hours.

One more little piece of information is that we are a music company, and while we don't host our own website, we spend a considerable amount of time uploading music to it -- in fact I would say that overall we probably do more uploading (not in time, but in bandwidth) than downloading.

So the cost differential is about $100/month less for Cable. The T1 provider promises a "4-hour" repair service if the line ever goes down. They also offer to configure the IP addresses & DHCP for our network on the router that they provide for free. If we go with Cable, we would have to purchase a router and hire someone to set it up on our network. Cable also seems to offer no kind of time guarantee if the line goes down.

The Cable provider is Cablevision, and the DSL provider we are considering is Megapath Networks.

Any advise?

[mrkbbd]

T1 is now slightly slower than cable and if you get the business cable line the company should have a similar repair guarantee

[lakai]

Although the costs for a T1 is quite higher than any Business Class Cable, the customer service, uptime guarentees are where the cost is justified.

[Too Many Toys]

I'd be concerned with quality of service issues with cable myself. AFAIK even 'business class' cable is a shared service, and typically over-subscribed.

Although your best speeds may be higher with cable, you'll rarely get those speeds during normal hours when the most users are on the system's backbone. Cable is also usually crippled with slower upload speeds.

T1 is dedicated & you will have the same QOS & speed all the time, up & down stream.

Just my .02 cents.

[lakai]

It really depends how mission critical internet access is to your business. My business as well does not offer FIOS yet, but I have fios at home. I would love to get business fios but since I bought the building which was brand new was barely even wired with copper.

It took weeks to get a T1 or any kind of digital internet line into our group of commerical warehouses because everything had to go through verizon's lines and they wanted to charge the block of buildings over $150k to pull the lines in. I explained this to the land developer and he too was concerned and had no knowledge of this extortion Verizon was doing to many of our city's New commercial boom.

Good thing that lines had to go through areas of 2 of the unsold/still in escrow buildings and got the city to keep a leash on verizon from extortion. They caved in due to Verizon making a huge play for getting fiber installed to all the homes in the city.

Anyways just a rant I guess, here is the problem I have with a all-in-one digital packaged service for business. I think it is important to keep things separate (Phone/Internet) mainly because I think either one or both are critical for daily operation. Thus the reason for me having 2 T1's both from different providers setup for ip-failover and verizon using copper for our phone system still.

Either way, perhaps you should get one service for internet, one for voip. Megapath is a very reliable ISP. You should try Speakeasy.net and see what they have to offer you as well. If anything goto broadbandreports.com and do a little search about your area and see what comes up. Goodluck.

[Eric5273]

Thanks for the info guys. I ended up going with the T1 with Megapath. Cost is $424 per month, and that includes a "fractional" T1 with a speed of 768k both up and down, 5 phone lines using VOIP including all calling features (caller ID, etc.), unlimited local, regional & long distance calling, and service for our 800 toll free number. Also includes free install and free router.

If I decide that 768k is not enough, I can always double the speed to 1.5 Mbit for an extra $30/month, and there is no cost to make that change. So I figure we will see how the slower speed does, and then change if need be.

[lakai]

good choice, good deal too. what about the telephone equipment ? contract?

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by lakai

good choice, good deal too. what about the telephone equipment ? contract?

We have a good telephone system already, so we are just brining it with us to the new location. Contract is 3 years. I could have gotten a shorter contract, but the price would have been higher, and I don't really anticipate much changing for us over the next 3 years. Maybe then we will reevaluate and see if they offer FIOS or something else similar.