A fixed wireless connection, although still fairly new and unproven, may be available in your area, while DSL and cable are not. And finally, there's the most expensive alternative of the bunch: a leased dedicated line that links your company's LAN directly to the Internet.
Go with in-place wireless
A high-speed option for some businesses outside DSL and cable coverage areas is wireless local loop (WLL), also called fixed wireless. Cable requires providers to install expensive cabling, and DSL restricts availability to users who are within a limited distance of a central office. WLL, on the other hand, has much greater range and is a lot less expensive to deploy than either DSL or cable, making it a suitable substitute for ISPs trying to compete with local carriers and mega-media corporations. (Not all's wine and roses with WLL; getting permission to hang repeaters is sometimes tricky and availability is currently very limited.)
Here's how it works. Internet data is converted at the WLL provider's headquarters, then broadcast over radio frequencies to low-power-level repeaters hung on lampposts or telephone poles. A small radio receiver and directional antenna attached to your computer send and receive the data carried by this radio signal. The result: an area can be blanketed with signals for a lot less money than it takes to run wiring.
WLL prices are all over the map--Sprint offers its Broadband Direct Office for US$200 a month for 512Kbps to 1.5Mbps download speeds (though the asynchronous WLL sports a relatively slow 256Kbps upload speed) and $300 or so for the hardware. In an effort to compete with big boys like Sprint, many smaller ISPs are also plugging WLL. One local ISP in my home town, for example, sells a variety of monthly plans suitable to small business, but its price--around $300 a month for 256Kbps bandwidth, and about $1,300 for the hardware--makes it uneconomical.
That may change if pundits are on target about WLL's future. According to eMarketer, by 2003 some 3.9 million subscribers will access the Net wirelessly--80 percent of them small- and medium-sized businesses. Until wireless providers recoup their infrastructure costs and prices start to come down, I'd give WLL a wide berth and time to shake out all the kinks before tying your company's fortunes to the technology.
There's one last kind of broadband that's not only as old as the hills, but a proven way to get to the Net in fast order--the trouble is, it costs a fortune. I'll take you on a tour of dedicated leased lines next.
Get a dedicated leased line
Even though the idea of bundling together several circuits into one line goes back four decades or more, a leased T1 line remains the broadband Holy Grail for many businesses. Although you may not need the full 1.544Mbps bandwidth that a full T1 line offers (nor be able to afford the $500 to $1,000+ monthly cost of such a line), leased lines have several characteristics that make them a good fit for small businesses that house their own Web servers.
First, they're all yours. Like DSL, you don't share a T1 line, so there's no one but you chewing up the bandwidth--no slowdowns when every Tom, Dick, and Harry hits the computer after suppertime. Second, they're always on, unlike ISDN, so there's no waiting for a connection. Third, speeds are identical both upstream and down, with none of the asynchronous drawbacks of ASDL, fixed wireless, and satellite--that means traffic speed matches the rated bandwidth both ways. Fourth and most importantly, leased lines come with in-writing guarantees of speed and availability, unlike every other Net access approach available to small business. That's crucial when you're tying your company's livelihood to its ability to reach the Internet.
Put 'em all together, and you have the only broadband option reliable enough and fast enough to handle traffic to a Web server. If you're running your site from your own servers rather than outsourcing the job, a dedicated leased line is the only way to go.
If your small firm doesn't have an in-house server, a leased line is expensive. You'll need some good reasons to justify the expense. In the next section, I'll give you three.
Three payoffs for a dedicated leased line
Although a dedicated line is an expensive proposition, it does have unique advantages over the other broadband options--namely guaranteed performance, flexible pricing options, and no hard cap on bandwidth limits.
You get a guarantee. Even if you could get DSL or cable, those links to the Net are too iffy for business. One minute the DSL line's up, then without a second's warning it's down. Or the cable connection, which had you soaring at 1+Mbps, suddenly slows to the speed of a septuagenarian shopping at Safeway. Face it: not only is it the most reliable link to the Net, but the best argument for a leased line is that providers guarantee it in writing.
As you evaluate providers, closely read their service level agreements (SLAs). You should find guarantees of network availability (with refunds or credits if the guarantee's not met), maximum latency guarantees (important if you'll use the line for, say, video conferencing), and packet delivery promises. Peek into every clause of the agreement, and if you have questions, don't hesitate to call the provider and get picky. Some providers, like XO.com (which was once Concentric) sport relatively terse SLAs, which you'll need to augment with some telephoned queries. UUNet's SLA, on the other hand, is more thorough, and leaves little room for doubt.
You can pay for just part. Rather than emptying your budget for a full-blown T1 line, you can pay less, and get less, by buying just part of the leased line. That's the thinking behind fractional T1 pricing. You still get the service-level guarantees of a full T1, including network availability and speed performance assurances, but you get less bandwidth. Providers split the T1 into fractions, typically at speeds of 128Kbps, 256Kbps, 384Kbps, 512Kbps, 768Kbps, and 1Mbps.
When investigating a fractional T1 line, get several quotes, check out providers' service level agreements, and run the numbers to get some comparisons at different fractionals. Provider A's 384Kbps fees, for instance, may be only slightly more than Provider B's 256Kbps charges.
One final note to remember: setup fees for T1 fractionals are often identical to a full T1, so before you commit ask if there's any charge to upgrade your fractional to a bigger chunk of the 1.544Mbps, or the entire line.
You get a burst. Sometimes you just don't know how much speed will be enough for your business--that's why some leased line providers sell burstable service. Rather than a set bandwidth limit--256Kbps, for instance--that places a ceiling on speed, burstable service lets you exceed the guaranteed speed when necessary, and pay only for that occasional kick. This gives your biz a guaranteed minimum pipeline to the Internet, but lets you instantly widen that conduit when conditions require it.
Service providers deal differently with burstable services. UUNet, for instance, provides a full T1 line and meters your business's usage throughout the month, then tosses out the top 5 percent, essentially giving you a burstable bandwidth cushion for nothing. XMission, a Salt Lake City ISP, takes another tack: it monitors users of its Burstable to T1 service, but only makes businesses upgrade to a higher bandwidth if usage exceeds the contracted Kbps rate for a week or more.
Leased lines aren't for every small business. Sole proprietors and firms with five or fewer online employees shouldn't bother unless they're operating their own Web server for e-commerce. Larger outfits may also find the economics daunting, and ultimately settle for something less reliable (like satellite or wireless) or slower (such as ISDN) to cut costs. But if your business lives and breathes the Internet, there's no broadband choice that can touch a leased line.
