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Why A Commercial T1 Line Ought To Help Lower Your Costs
You should consider a business T1 line if your business could benefit from a highly reliable phone and Internet service that will reduce your overall telecom costs. If your business has at least seven individual phone lines and your employees use the Internet, your business is an excellent candidate to save money with a business T1 line.
What Precisely is a T1 Line?
A T1 line is a dedicated line carrying digital data between your business and your phone company's customer office. It has a throughput 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 handle 24 simultaneous external phone calls. Each call is carried on a discrete "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--similar to 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 functions. Your PBX also handles 24 external calls simultaneously. For numerous businesses this handles the external calling requirements of a hundred or more employees.
An alternate adaptation of T1 is T1 PRI which is often found in customer service centers where customer reps review customer records with your customers. With T1 PRI, there are 23 voice channels and a data channel that can be attached 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 rep as they receive the incoming call.
Your business T1 line can be dedicated 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 bandwidth is equal to 30 to 60 dialup connections (depending on the dialup line quality). Because the T1 line is digital, there will be no reduction in quality caused by crosstalk or line noise.
Alternately, your T1 line can integrate both phone and Internet services. You would devote a certain number of "channels" to phone service and the rest to the Internet. An additional card in the PBX streams the Internet data to an interface card in your LAN server. This is a widely used option for many small and medium sized businesses.
How Will You Reduce Expenses By Using a Business T1 Line?
Consider a business that wants 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 ongoing expenses will include a monthly lease expense 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 expenses for the PBX device and other interface devices and cabling that your physical plant requires. There will also be continuing maintenance fees related to the PBX and other devices.
Many small and medium businesses have found a T1 line to be an excellent means to shrink overhead as well as provide higher quality and reliability to their customers and employees. You should get a business T1 line quote to see if this is the right choice for your business.
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