T1 providers will be your partner for a long time research before you choose who to go with. The worst part of being with a bad provider is the fact that it will affect your business. Dropped calls or an internet connection that goes down can be disastrous to a business. We found that the larger companies will release companies from long term contracts it if is shown that the voice or data T1 service was faulty on a regular basis, however the release from such a contract will not help recoup the damages of the lost calls and e-mails from the poor service. Like most telecommunications services DS3 prices have been falling for the last few years.

The number of companies offering service has exploded. With more competition in the marketplace service providers have to reduce their prices to attract customer and keep them from going to competitors. Service providers are desperate to keep margins but even more desperate to keep adding customers. A Telecom Broker will walk you through your options and show you the providers and services available. A broker or independent agent can help reduce the time it takes you to shop around for a T1 provider by asking you the questions once and searching through multiple providers to get the service that is right for you.

Residential customers who are most sensitive to price should not consider a T1 circuit unless then have a business reason to pay for such a circuit and cannot access DSL service. If SDSL is not available at your location, you can consider a fractional T1 at slower upload and download bandwidth but also lower cost. Most people do not realize that a DSL connection can be just as fast as a T1 at 1.5Mbps.

The main drawback of DSL is that it is oversubscribed. This means there is a finite amount of bandwidth available and a customers speed can drop if other customers in the neighborhood decide to use their service. SDSL is a business class DSL and is ranked as a higher priority than residential DSL or ADSL. This means it is not oversubscribed to the extent than ADSL and is subject to fewer bandwidth restrictions. In short, if price is your critical factor go with DSL. If reliability is the critical factor, purchase a dedicated T1.

Reliability becomes critical when customers or employees depend on your connection for immediate responses. If your customers use your connection to access, your databases or your server or the internet then reliability of your connection is critical. If your employees depend on your connections because you host the e-mail server in house or host web servers, your connections is critical. A critical connection can be viewed much like a lifeline, without which your business would be negatively impacted. Your monthly savings of having a sub-par connections will not make up for the loss in productivity of your employees or loss of customers when your DSL connections gets bogged down or cut off.