|
Here's Why A Commercial T1 Line Can Help Lower Your Expenses
You may want to consider a business T1 line if you are interested a highly reliable phone and Internet service that may reduce your total telecom costs. If your business has more than 7 individual phone lines and your staff uses the Internet, your business is a great candidate to cut costs with a business T1 line.
What Precisely is a T1 Line?
A T1 line is a dedicated line that carries digital data between your location and your phone company's customer office. It has a bandwidth of 1.544 Mbps that you can think of as being divided into 24 channels.
When a business T1 line is devoted to phone service, it can process 24 concurrent external phone calls. Each call is transmitted on a separate "channel" or slice of the data stream. Your T1 line and your internal phone lines plug into a PBX device that is your private branch exchange--like your own phone company. The PBX allows internal calling with a 3 or 4 digit extension, provides functions like voice mail, call waiting, hunt groups, music on hold, and other features. Your PBX also handles 24 external calls simultaneously. For a lot of businesses this handles the external calling needs of a hundred or more staff.
Another version of T1 is T1 PRI which is often found in customer service centers where customer agents review customer records with your customers. With T1 PRI, there are 23 voice channels and a data channel that would be connected to a server. When a customer calls, the caller ID information is passed to the server and the server can pull up and display the customer record on the computer screen of the customer rep as they are answering the incoming call.
Your business T1 line can be devoted to Internet access. You can plug the T1 line into a card in your LAN server to provide a bandwidth of 1.544 Mbps to the Internet. This speed is comparable to 30 to 60 dialup connections (depending on the dialup line quality). Since the T1 line is digital, there will be no degradation caused by crosstalk or line noise.
Alternately, your T1 line may integrate both phone and Internet services. You would commit a certain number of "channels" to phone service and the remainder to the Internet. An added card in the PBX streams the Internet data to an interface card in your LAN server. This is a popular option for numerous small and medium sized businesses.
How Can You Cut Costs With a Business T1 Line?
Consider a business that desires to replace their present individual phone lines and their Internet service provider with a T1 line. The main reduction in costs is due to the elimination of the monthly costs for the individual phone lines as well as your Internet access expenses.
Your continuing overhead will include a monthly lease cost for the T1 line and phone charges which come packaged with the T1 line. Your cost for a T1 line chiefly depends on the distance between your business and the phone company's customer office. In addition, there will be one time charges for the PBX device and other interface devices and cabling that your particular physical layout requires. There will also be ongoing maintenance fees associated with the PBX and other devices.
Many small and medium businesses find a T1 line to be an effective means to shrink overhead as well as offer higher quality and reliability to their customers and employees. You ought to get a business T1 line quote to see if this is a profitable choice for your business.
|
