Why A Commercial T1 Line Should Help Reduce Your Expenditures
You should consider a business T1 line if your business could benefit from a highly reliable phone and Internet service that very well may reduce your total telecom costs. If your business has at least 7 individual phone lines and your staff uses the Internet, your business is a good 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 throughput of 1.544 Mbps that you can imagine as being divided into 24 channels.
When a business T1 line is dedicated to phone service, it can carry 24 simultaneous external phone calls. Each call is carried on a separate "channel" or segment 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 can allow 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 concurrently. 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 can be connected to a server. When a customer calls, the caller ID data is passed to the server which pulls up and displays the customer record on the computer screen of the customer representative as they are answering the incoming call.
Your business T1 line may be dedicated to Internet access. You could 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 reduction in quality caused by crosstalk or line noise.
Alternately, your T1 line may integrate both phone and Internet services. You will dedicate 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 lots of small and medium sized businesses.
How Can You Cut Costs By Using a Business T1 Line?
Consider a business that wishes to replace their existing individual phone lines and their Internet service provider with a T1 line. The major reduction in costs is due to the elimination of the monthly charges for the individual phone lines as well as your Internet access charges.
Your ongoing costs will include a monthly lease charge for the T1 line and phone charges which come packaged with the T1 line. The cost to you for a T1 line chiefly depends on the distance between your business and the phone company's customer office. Additionally, there will be one time charges for the PBX device and other interface devices and cabling that your physical plant requires. There will also be continuing maintenance fees associated with the PBX and other devices.
Lots of small and medium businesses have discovered a T1 line to be an effective means to shrink overhead as well as provide higher quality and reliability to their customers and employees. You ought to get a business T1 line quote to see if this is the right choice for your business.
