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T1 is a 1.5 Mbps symmetric business service with superior reliability, availability and speed. Dual T1 is a 3 Mbps symmetric service using two T1 lines terminated on the same router (this also provides redundancy in case one of the T1 lines fails).
| Option | T1 port | Telco loop | Router | Term | Price/month |
| 3 year | X | X | 3 year | $479 | |
| 2 year | X | X | 2 year | $499 | |
| 1 year | X | X | 1 year | $549 | |
| 3 year w/router | X | X | X | 3 year | $529 |
| 2 year w/router | X | X | X | 2 year | $549 |
| 1 year w/router | X | X | X | 1 year | $599 |
| 3 year DUAL T1 | X | X | X | 3 year | $899 |
Note - telco taxes, fees and surcharges on the local loop are already included in our pricing
| 3 year | X | X | 3 year | $399 | |
| 3 year w/router | X | X | X | 3 year | $449 |
| 3 year DUAL T1 | X | X | X | 3 year | $699 |
T1 managed service with router includes: telco local loop, Cisco router with T1 CSU/DSU, full 1.536 Mbps T1 bandwidth, block of up to 32 public IP addresses, 24x7 monitoring, DNS servers, newsgroup server, outgoing mailserver
Available in Chicago metro area (LATA358). Customer is reponsible for cost of inside wiring to extend the T1 demarc in "closed buildings" which require all wiring to be done by a designated contractor.
T1 is still the gold standard for businesses needing a reliable connection to the Internet.
Contrast with ADSL, which provides a lot of download speed for the price, but was designed primarily for residential use. ADSL is a "best effort service" and is not recommended for critical business applications. ADSL is "asymmetric", meaning the upload speed is only a fraction of the download speed. Available ADSL speed depends on distance from the CO, and is somewhat deceptively quoted as "up to" a certain speed. Depending on line length, the actual speed could be as little as half what is quoted, and still considered acceptable for that speed/price tier. Actual ADSL throughput is further reduced about 10% due to ATM overhead.
SDSL is a symmetric service more suited to business use, but more expensive than ADSL, and speed still depends on distance from the CO. SDSL is typically not available in areas served from a "remote terminal".
T1 Internet service is delivered over a special leased line from the phone company. Most of the path will be fiber optic links. The last few miles to your location will typically use copper lines with repeaters so that the full guaranteed speed of 1.544 Mbps in each direction can be delivered independent of distance. T1 leased lines are a relatively expensive tariffed service, but they are extremely reliable, and any outages can typically be repaired within hours even at night and on weekends. T1 is typically available at any commercially-zoned location.
Advantages of T1 include:
Multiple T1 lines can be terminated on the same router for higher speeds like 3, 4.5 or 6 Mbps. For higher speeds, please contact us for a custom quote on DS3 or optical fiber based service.
We provide T1 service over a dedicated T1 connection all the way to our Chicago data center where we connect to the Internet backbone. We use DS3 CO muxes in the suburbs, but you get your own dedicated 1.5 Mbps pipe within that 45 Mbps DS3. There is no sharing or oversubscription of bandwidth, so you are guaranteed the full 1.5 Mbps in both directions whenever you need it, independent of how heavily our other customers are using their connections.
As you shop for T1 Internet service, you will be presented with terms like Fractional T1, Frame Relay, ATM, MPLS and Integrated Access. The bottom line is that all these alternatives give you less than a full T1, or oversubscribe the bandwidth so that you are not guaranteed a full T1 of bandwidth at peak times.
Integrated Access is a form of fractional T1 that dedicates some of the T1 bandwidth to voice phone service, and some to Internet data. For example, you might have 12 phonelines and 768K of data. Your Internet speed is limited to 768K, even if no one is on the phone. If you want to use a single T1 line for phone and Internet service, talk to us about our VoIP hosted PBX service. VoIP dynamically allocates whatever bandwidth is needed for voice, and makes the rest available for data.
The fact is that today, many businesses find 1.5 Mbps to be the minimum Internet speed that meets their needs. Phone companies selling Integrated access or VoIP may throw in virtually free Internet using the left-over T1 bandwidth, but this assumes that a fraction of 1.5 Mbps is sufficient. This may not be true, especially over the life of a 2 or 3 year contract for phone service. Many businesses actually want more than 1.5 Mbps Internet speed, which is why we offer the Dual T1 option.
Typically you will need these items:
Most customers select our complete managed T1 package which includes all 7 items.
You can opt to provide and manage your own router and CSU/DSU. This doesn't really save any money when you consider the purchase and maintenance cost, but it may make sense if you already own the equipment, or if your IT department wants to own and manage the router.
Our T1 access service includes the following features:
In addition, the complete managed T1 package includes: