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| Physical costs of T1 vs DSL This question has been bugging me for quite a while. I have been a technician for 35 years and in IT for 25, but the whole thing about internet pricing does not make any sense to me.
I understand that a T1 connection usually has a very stringent SLA, one that cable and DSL does not. What I am asking about is the actual cost of a smart jack card at the end point and the cost of the t1 equivalent of a DSLAM at the CO. With the number of T1 circuits in existence and the number of years that they have been available, (and the number of abandoned smart jacks at customer sites), I cannot believe that it is significantly more expensive to install a T1 than it is to install a DSL circuit.
I know that it is not the bandwidth costs, because I can get a business 15/3 ckt from a cable provider for about $150/mo and the same ckt at home is about $80. And... I guarantee that the ckt at home will use more bandwidth than the ckt at the office. (Typical case of a business getting boinked.)
Is the high cost of a T1 ckt a matter of state mandated tariffs? Is it a matter of the ISPs protecting their profits with an air of exclusivity?
The reason I ask is I am one of those bandwidth orphans, stuck out in BFE Virginia. I cannot use satellite without cutting down big trees, I cannot get cell phone coverage even if I was willing to live with the 5Gb limit, I have no WiFi and there is no DSL. All I have is dialup at 45K. It really sucks. We have been waiting for over three years for BPL (bandwidth over power lines) which apparently is still a work-in-progress. I was quoted $850 last year for a full T and some of the less competitive prices were above $1000.
Seems to me that the problem with bandwidth in the boonies is of our own making.
Am I right?
Randy | |
 RockyBBPremium
join:2005-01-31
Steamboat Springs, CO | DSL and cable are shared services. Bandwidth is shared in the neighborhoods, and is often oversold. Thus many customers are paying for a limited resource, and the low retail price is the result. Even the facility into your location is shared: cable shares the TV connection, and DSL rides on an analog voice grade line. T1 is a dedicated service. The circuit is engineered as a digital circuit, special repeaters might be required if you're far from the central office, and you don't share your bandwidth with other subscribers.
If you want to talk about businesses getting boinked, simply talk to any agent of ShopforT1.com or Megapath.com or Speakeasy.com who make a living rescuing frustrated DSL and cable customers with T1 service. Certainly not every DSL and cable customer is disappointed, but there are enough of them to support a thriving industry.
As for your personal situation, dialup too slow while T1 too expensive, have you checked for WISPs and/or with Verizon for ISDN BRI? | | |
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| Yes, but I am really speaking to the cost of the physical plant. Seems to me that if you consider DSL shared (best effort from the CO) you could set up a T1 based network with the same parameters. My situation is about 10 miles from the CO. I have looked and it seems that if you are that distance from the CO, you can get a point to point without additional repeating.
I also though about ISDN but unless there has been a change, it is still only 128K for both channels. | |
RockyBBPremium
join:2005-01-31
Steamboat Springs, CO | the cost of the physical plant is irrelevant. only the price to you is relevant. and the price to you for an internet T1 is almost always dependent only on the distance from your central office to a carrier POP -- and almost never dependent on the distance from your location to the local central office.
why not try ISDN BRI? even at 128K it's triple your current speed. and you'll notice the upgrade right away; it's more noticeable than going from 1M to 3M. | |
| Good point about the ISDN. I guess a bird in the hand is worth three in the bush.
However, my greater point, and the one that I have been trying to find an answer for several years, is that if the actual physical costs (barring any repeating for long distances) are basically the same as DSL, then if you relax the SLA, why can't T1 circuitry be used to deliver internet where DSL does not go?
We are bouncing signals off of satellites, trying to run IP over high power electric lines and bouncing wireless signals off of multiple towers, when the answer to rural internet coverage may be sitting on a little ckt board in the demarc room.
Thanks for your assistance! | |
RockyBBPremium
join:2005-01-31
Steamboat Springs, CO | said by Cant_drive_55 :
my greater point, and the one that I have been trying to find an answer for several years, is that if the actual physical costs (barring any repeating for long distances) are basically the same as DSL, then if you relax the SLA, why can't T1 circuitry be used to deliver internet where DSL does not go?
I covered that in my first post above. "DSL rides on an analog voice grade line. T1 is a dedicated service. The circuit is engineered as a digital circuit, special repeaters might be required if you're far from the central office." Irrespective of SLAs and oversold/dedicated upstream bandwidth, the wires for T1 and DSL are configured differently.
The long term answer to rural internet availability will be with the cellular providers. Have you checked for EVDO (cellular brosdband) availability for your place? | |
 sporkmedrop the crantini and move it, sisterPremium,MVM
join:2000-07-01
Morristown, NJ
 ·Optimum Online
| said by RockyBB:I covered that in my first post above. "DSL rides on an analog voice grade line. T1 is a dedicated service. The circuit is engineered as a digital circuit, special repeaters might be required if you're far from the central office." Irrespective of SLAs and oversold/dedicated upstream bandwidth, the wires for T1 and DSL are configured differently. I can't speak for the ILECs costs to themselves when they sell a T1, but any CLEC is going to pay $X for an unconditioned copper pair for DSL, and $Y for a conditioned loop (or loops, depending on how it's delivered). Around here I think the tariff comes to perhaps $15 for a dry loop for DSL and at least $50 for a T1. I am too lazy to go digging for tariffs...
On top of that, DSL gets terminated in a DSLAM which is, compared to traditional TDM "telco" equipment, way, way cheaper. Old school telco gear for terminating T1, T3 and OC circuits is an entirely different world with insane pricing, and one hopes, reliability. This stuff is built to meet certain standards and it's all for 5-9's reliability, which the DSL gear simply is not.
Then there's the install and maintenance, which as Rocky mentioned, involves possibly installing repeaters, picking the appropriate technology (traditional T1, DSL-based solutions - yes many T1s ride "DSL", but not the cheap stuff), circuit planning and possibly new construction, in some cases dropping a fiber mux in the building.
Ongoing you are paying for the reliability of the line and a totally different tier of people to service it.
This is just the circuit itself, I'm not even getting into the handoff to the ISP and any oversubscription issues. Even Frame/ATM services over T1 where you are agreeing to go on a "shared" medium is going to be more than cable or DSL due to the underlying T1 line connecting you to the provider. | |
| reply to Cant_drive_55
so far everyone's on par for cost justification, but one thing which is a HUGE factor in price is the fact that since it's a 'business-grade' line, their SLA's require their techs to respond to outages "within x hours" (usually 4 hrs).... meaning if you run a business and your t1 goes out at 11pm, an ILEC tech will be on-site (or at the cross connect box) by 3am  .... ILEC's build that cost into the monthly price... shared/best effort services say "within 24-48 hrs" to fix it, and you're on the same dispatch queue as the kid down the street who is complaining because his porn is downloading slow...
the cost of copper and the equipment to support the digital circuit is nothing compared to the cost of rolling a truck after-hours with a fat, over-weight line tech with a hairy ass crack to your location to fix the issue...
**AND** if it's a problem outside your demarc (which is usually the case), you don't pay for the fix - it's the ILEC's issue.... meaning *someone* did pay that guy to go out there, just not you....
--
Sean.Brown@clearlinknetworks.com
CLEAR LINK Networks, Inc.
319 Clematis Street
Third Floor - Suite #301
»www.clearlinknetworks.com
(561)253-6500 | |
| reply to Cant_drive_55
Thanks to all who answered.
Yes, I would love to have my Verizon EVDO card hook up to a cell tower, but I cannot even get a half a bar at my house.
My DSL ckt in town is 1.5 down and 768 up. Pretty crappy, but I can live with it OK. Just haven't gone out and contracted for cable.
Being that my existing DSL is less bandwidth than a T1, if Verizon could give me a T1 (physical) connection with a DSL SLA (so Harry Butcrack doesn't have to roll a truck at Oh-Dark 30), even give me asymmetrical coverage, I would jump for joy.
Like I said in my opening message, I don't know what the CO equipment costs for a T1, but the SmartJack eq cannot be worth much, because the LECs abandon so many of them when they pull a ckt.
I am fortunate, because I do not live at my cabin in the woods every day, but my heart goes out to those that do live outside of town and are relegated to third world internet status. Actually that is not giving the third world the credit they are due. Maybe fourth world...
I just hate to see a possible solution lying dormant because of man-made (i.e. laws and tariffs) barriers. In this case (IMHO) and many, many others, we would be better off if the free market could really be free. | |
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