Who Uses a T1 Connection?

The performance of a T1 connection easily outperforms a dial-up modem and while the transfer speeds themselves may come behind the higher-cost home broadband options, the aims are slightly different. A router at home is intended for several users to connect at once browsing the internet. Should all of these users download at once, it will degrade performance. T1 connections are made up of 24 digitalized phone line voice and/or data channels transferring both upstream and downstream and are capable of supporting dozens of users at once without degradation with stability rates claimed to be as high as 99.99%. Due to this promise and the actual performance of the connection, as well as it bypassing phone lines and simply connecting straight to the Internet, the costs shoot into hundreds of dollars per month. This is the main reason home owners don't use the T1 connection.

Built from either copper or fiber optic, the T1 line can transfer data at a much faster velocity than the traditional phone lines. It was created for North America and Japan by Bell Labs and is now offered in several different options to suit businesses.

Integrated T1: The basic option, this provides the entire T1 to be used as the business pleases and the option to choose a combination of voice or data from the 24 channels.

Fractional T1: This uses a fraction of the bandwidth, as the name implies, to form a percentage of the full rate.

Burstable T1: Pay as you go, this gives a set amount of bandwidth, but allows for greater amounts during traffic spikes.

Bonded T1: This is essentially many T1 lines in one single connection, allow for much higher performance and user capacity.

The bonded T1 option can far exceed simply a couple of T1 lines as it can extend as 10 T1 lines, offering connections of up to 15 Mb per second, which is excellent where hundreds of users are concerned. The only way this kind of connection could degrade would be if every single user downloaded something at the same time, which is unlikely under any circumstances.

The ability to keep employees connected to customers and prevent downtime is a serious amount of potential savings, or prevention of losses however you want to look at it, and the T1 line provides a means of doing so. The plans allow for businesses to support however many users they have and still provide good performance, justifying the costs several times over in some cases.