Is your T1 line lease about to come up for renewal or has it already expired and you’re just paying month to month? Don’t be too quick to re-sign that agreement until you see if you can get 10 Mbps Ethernet for the same money.

What? How can that be? Business telecom services are priced on both bandwidth and distance from the carrier. How can you possibly expect to get 10 Mbps for the same price as 1.5 Mbps at the same location?

It is indeed possible for many business locations to upgrade from the T1 service they’ve had for years to much higher bandwidths. It’s all because of a revolution that has taken place in the telecommunications market recently. You’re aware that traditional landline telephone services are being quickly replaced by wireless and VoIP telephony. Well, the same thing has been happening with the underlying networks. They’re all being upgraded from switched circuit time division multiplexing technology to packet switched IP networking.

This revolution in wide area networking (WAN) technology has also opened the door for new competitive carriers who don’t have a legacy telephony switching system to support. They’ve hit the ground running with all-IP fiber optic networks with both fiber and copper access. In some cases, wireless access at speeds similar to T1 lines is also available.

To be fair, the pricing on both T1 lines and the newer Ethernet services have dropped substantially over the last few years. But you wouldn’t be aware of that unless you shopped competitively for bandwidth using a service such as GeoQuote. The Telarus GeoQuote search engine calculates the distance from your business address to the nearest carrier points of presence (POPs). It then accesses the carrier databases to get pricing information for various levels of service.

Now, here’s what’s really exciting about the quotes I’ve seen coming out of GeoQuote lately. T1 line prices have been on a steady and rapid decline over the last few years. At the same time, Ethernet services have been expanding at a rapid rate with both higher bandwidths and lower costs per Mbps. If you are a long time user of T1 line services, you may well be paying a small fortune on your T1 line lease. But I’ve seen some quotes for 10 x 10 Mbps Ethernet coming in at less than the quotes for standard T1 that were common only a few years ago. If you simply traded in your expired T1 line lease for Ethernet over Copper (EoC) service, you could easily double or triple your bandwidth for the same cost. It’s even possible in some cases to move from 1.5 Mbps to 10 Mbps without having to increase your telecom budget.

Like all business telecom services, Ethernet pricing and availability is highly dependent on location. In fact, two businesses across the street from each other could have different lease rates for exactly the same service. So, how do you find out what’s available and how much it is going to cost? The fast and easy way is to simply run an online check for business Ethernet service for your building’s address and see what shows up. A Telarus consultant will be happy to discuss your particular needs and budget and see if there are any current special offers that are available at even better than the standard rates.

If you are in the dark about where to get higher levels of business bandwidth, what you should be looking for is a lit building?

Sure, you can wait until dark and then look to see which buildings are illuminated, but that’s not going to get you the kind of lit building you’re looking for. What you need is one that is on the receiving end of telecommunications laser. In other words, you want to find a building that is “lit” for fiber optic service .

What difference does it make if the building is lit or not? It makes all the difference in the world when it comes to bandwidth. We’ve become accustomed to being able to just call up and order T1 line service without giving any thought as to how it would be provisioned. The technicians just show up one day and wire up the demarcation point. The reason is that nearly every building is automatically wired for telephone service. Businesses usually have multi-pair telephone cables brought in to support two or more business phone lines. T1 is a telco technology that uses the same twisted pair cable that connect analog telephones. So, you might say that businesses are pre-wired for T1 service.

That makes PBX telephone, dedicated Internet access, and point to point data connections easy to come by as long as you only need the bandwidth a T1 line can provide of 1.5 Mbps. You can also order multiple T1 lines to get 3, 6 or 9 Mbps as long as you have extra copper pair available. But what if your business needs bandwidths of 10 Mbps or more?

Ah, that’s where the power of light shows its value. Fiber optic bandwidth is nearly unlimited. In fact, you’ll run out of money before you run out of bandwidth capacity. A single fiber can support at least 10 Gbps. There are almost always multiple strands of fiber within a fiber optic cable. Beyond that, you can split the laser beam feeding each fiber strand into multiple colors, or lambdas, with wavelength division multiplexing. Each wavelength gives you the equivalent of a whole new fiber. We’re talking terabits per second at least.

If you have fiber optic communications service provisioned to your building, it’s pretty easy to turn up the bandwidth to whatever you require. Sometimes all it takes is a phone call. But what if you go into the equipment room and find only copper wiring as far as the eye can see? Then what?

This is where the next best thing to having a lit building is being near one. The reason is construction costs. Generally, the farther you have to build-out fiber optic service, the more expensive it will be. It’s a one-time expense, but the costs can easily be prohibitive. It might just make more sense to move your whole business than pay to have trenches dug or cable strung on poles for miles.

So, do you have to be right next door to a lit building to get your building lit at a reasonable cost? That sure helps, but you have options even if the nearest service is way done the road. Remember all that copper? If you only have to deliver high bandwidth services a few miles from the nearest lit building, a technology called Ethernet over Copper (EoC) can transport 10 Mbps bandwidth. In fact, within a mile or so you might extend that up to 45 Mbps. That’s as much as many businesses really need. For longer stretches, Ethernet over DS1 (EoDS1) bundles twisted pair capacity using T1 technology to give you 10 Mbps to many more locations.

You should also know that you don’t always have to pay fiber optic construction costs. The carrier may well bear that expense, as long as they have enough service commitments to justify the investment. This is something to consider if your business is located in a large office building or industrial park. By getting together with other businesses who have the same need for bandwidth, you may be able to convince a provider that it is worthwhile to light your building.

So, do you know where the lit buildings are in your area? You can find out in seconds by simply using this fiber optic service lit building finder. Just enter your building’s address and see what shows up on the map.

How do you get a bunch of unruly teenagers on a school bus to behave themselves on the trip to and from school? Have the driver scream threats? Hire a pro wrestler to intimidate them? Put in a spy camera and give the troublemakers detentions? Nope. The answer is much easier. Just give those kids access to WiFi Internet and you won’t hear a peep out of them.

That’s what Vail, Arizona has done to one of its busses. Reports are that once the WiFi router was installed, rowdy behavior simply disappeared. What’s more, there is more homework is getting done that ever before. Can you find a better return on your school district dollar than this?

Of course, not all of those students are likely writing term papers. Some are tweeting about their teachers, some are sending amorous emails to classmates, some are reading computer and science news sites, and I’ll bet a bunch are playing online games. It really doesn’t matter. The problem was discipline. The Internet was made available. Afterwards, no discipline problem.

I suspect there is a wider lesson to be learned here. We’re constantly hearing about those computer or gaming addicted kids who just won’t go outdoors and play. Yeah? Well, those are also the kids who aren’t tagging buildings with spray paint, stealing other kids’ lunch money, or terrorizing the neighborhood. Perhaps the solution to both childhood and adult behavioral problems is more Internet, not less.

There’s and old saying: “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” That’s as true today as it ever was. For some kids, the under-supervision problem is severe, with parents absorbed by careers and social lives. A lot of adults fare no better. They’ve been trained through childhood and schooling to do what their teachers and then their bosses order. But with unemployment rampant, there is no boss anymore and they find themselves both directionless and squeezed financially.

What’s that got to do with the Internet? I think there’s a case to be made that universal Internet access is at least as important as universal telephone service or public libraries. The information world has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. Everything is moving online, including communications, reference and research materials of all sorts, newspapers, job postings, magazines, games, and a lot of socializing and support. If you aren’t connected, you are more than disconnected. You are disadvantaged.

There’s something online for everyone. Whether you want to solve a puzzle, read up on what’s going on in the world, do your homework, look for a job, or even make your own job using your computer. Every profession, every trade, every hobby, every political action, and every interest is represented online. It’s even possible to go to college and get a degree online.

So, here’s something to roll around. How much could we reduce our juvenile delinquency and adult crime problems by making the Internet not only available, but mandatory? We need to insist on broadband everywhere as being as important as electricity and indoor plumbing everywhere. The “one laptop per child” project isn’t just important in Africa. It a crying need in the United States. Instead of turning kids into hunchbacks with backpacks loaded down with heavy and non-interactive textbooks, why not get those lessons online and accessible through the tablet or laptop computer every child gets from school day #1?

Yes, the vast majority of kids are going to use those computers for a lot more than grinding out rote homework assignments. They’ll be exploring all sorts of web sites, playing games, sending each other messages and whatever else they find interesting. We should be thankful that happens naturally. It’s curiosity, exploration and self-teaching that is going to be as important to their success as any assignments they’ll ever receive.

Are you looking for a toll free number for your business, but want to pay as little as you can and still get quality service? Your best bet may be Kall8 toll-free service .

This is much more than just a simple telephone number where you pay the cost of the call instead of the person calling. Kall8 offers a complete suite of telephone services that can make your mobile phone as powerful as your office phone. We’ll take a look at those services, but first you have to hear the price...

Kall8 low price toll free numbers start at $2. That gets you an 866, 877 or 888 toll free number all set up and ready to use immediately. Plus you get an online management account plus all the features that work with this number. You can keep your toll free number by paying just $2 a month for as long as you want it. If you decide to stop using the service, you pay only for the cost of the calls that have come in. Nothing more. There are no contracts or disconnect fees.

Yes, you can also get an 800 toll free number. These have all the same features as the 866, 877 and 888 toll free numbers. The cost is slightly more at $5 each plus $5 per month to keep the account.

But how much will you pay for those toll free incoming calls? Most calls are just 6.9 cents per minute. I say most calls, because calls that originate in Alaska, Hawaii or U.S. territories have additional surcharges. Even so, may businesses pay more than 6.9 cents per minute for just their regular outgoing long distance calls.

Now let's take a look at the features included with your toll free number. First of all, you get to set the ring-to number and change it anytime you want. The ring-to number is the number of the phone that will ring when someone calls your toll free number. In a sense, your toll free calls are automatically forwarded to the phone number of your choice. That can be an office phone, home phone or even your cell phone. If you move around a lot, you can go online and change the ring-to number at anytime.

Kall8 low price toll free numbers all have their own voice mail. You have a choice of how you want to retrieve those voice mail messages. You can call-in and listen to them. You can go to your online account from any Web browser and listen to them on your computer. Or you can have those messages sent as audio attachments to email messages.

Your Kall8 number will also accept fax messages. If anyone sends you a fax message, you can get a copy as an email attachment or go online to read it. Your choice.

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Can you believe that all this is yours for a mere $2 a month plus the cost of calls? It’s time you had your own toll free number. Learn more and order Kall8 low price toll free numbers now.