Seriously high-bandwidth (T1, T3, etc): how much does it cost?

[pm]

Someone on here was asking about ISDN and mentioned that T1's are too expensive. That's pretty much the conventional wisdom, and it's probably true, but does anyone know for certain how much it costs? If I wanted a T1 into my home, how much would it cost me? A T3? An OC-48?

I was thinking - not seriously, but just musing - that with a T1 into your house, a couple of thousand in servers and network equipment and a 802.11b wireless network you could set up a neighborhood ISP for under $5k for equipment. If you amplified your 802.11b antenna, used encryption and MAC filtering, you could probably get enough subscribers paying $40/month for access to actually start making some money in less than a year. But the bit that I'm missing out of this musing is an estimate of the monthly cost of a T1 and the equipment needed to run a T1 and how much it costs to tie this T1 to a real ISP per month.

I'm not seriously considering doing this, I was just thinking about it.

Does anyone know any real cost numbers for seriously high dedicated bandwidth?

Qwest, unfortunately my local telco, seems to want all of the information required to clone me before they will reveal the super-secret pricing numbers.

 

[jsm]

I was doing some work for ActiveSky who was getting a T1 from AT&T. They were going to pay 1500$ per month for it. That was without paying for the router and CSU/DSU.

When I was working at Palm, we had a T3 that I heard we were paying something like 40k$ a month. This is just a rumour, so I would probably ask your local tier 1 ISP, though they may be poopy like Qwest.

 

[CTR]

There is the local loop cost, which is calculated by the total length of the circuit. Then there is the port cost which offsets their facilities costs for DSX ports, DACS ports, etc. Then you have to worry about the cost of the internet service which offsets thier data equipment and bandwidth costs on top. No wonder this is expensive. All telco's phrase it differently but there is always a charge for the circuit, the telco equipment, and the data service. And there is also a one-time installation fee. I've seen the total monthly recurring on a T1 at $700/month in Texas with Southwestern Bell. And it was a short local loop. I've also seen $1500/month on a really long local loop, again in Texas. I don't know about getting an OC-anything delivered to your house.

Why not just colocate some equipment and resell? Maybe you'll get bought out by Intel

 

[pm]

I'm definitely not thinking about doing this. Call it a thought-experiment. And my point in asking is merely to satisfy my curiousity.

So I'd mentally thought that a T1 (is this the same as DS-1?) would be approx $1000/month, and this looking like it may not be too far off.

 

[Vegito]

a lot of people does that.. get a t1 for local and change for service...

EXPENSIVE... but t1 are getting cheaper.. well in Ct anyway, 1 t1 with 16 /28 block for 999 including local and router...

 

[CTR]

T1 is the carrier, DS1 is the signal. T3 is the carrier, DS3 is the signal. So if someone tries to sell you a DS1 they are probably going to tack on charges for the T1 carrier. Or maybe you can tell them, "I would like a carrier for that DS1 signal, please." It's like supersizing your fries at McDonalds. Sometimes they ask you, sometimes you have to ask them. I like to compare Qwest to McD's. I think they get a lot of the same employees. All telco's do.

[Edit sp]

 

[seewhy]

I was the one asking about ISDN. I actually called UUNET, subsidiary of worldcom to find out what T1 cost. Now there are many different forms of T1, and the one I looked at are the fractional T1 where they basically sells a combination of 24 of T1's channel. So basicall a T1 has about 1.5mbp (mbp??not sure) of bandwidth, and they divided up the bandwidth and sells them in 56k, 128k, 256k...up to 1.5m. There are baiscally two charges, one from the ISP, and one from the local telephone company called local loop charges. UUNET offers 756k for about $650 a month and local loop charges is about $600 as well(based on my home location). Earthlink offers full T1 at about $1000 not including loop charges(you can go to their website and see different charges for different bandwidth under business offerings). So the ISP charges depends on the bandwidth, and it can be as low as $200 for 56k access. But I am not sure about the loop charges, if they are dependent on the bandwidth or not. From what I understand, they depend on distance of either your home to the ISP, or ISP to the local phone company's central office. So they may not change based on bandwidth.

There is also something call frame relay, which is pretty much the same thing with different loop charges. I am not exactly sure, but it is suppose to save abit of loop charges depending on where you are.

Actually you may find fractional T1 pretty cheap from some ISP with excess bandwidth(I've seen some charges $600 for full T1), but the killer is the loop charges, that's why I went with ISDN.

PM:

Actually some people have done the stuff you are thinking of doing. Some of them using wireless technology. Just a word of caution, few guys from Berkely just found some serious security bug about 802.11b protocal, so it is pretty easy to break to security of a network made up of 802.11b. I am not sure if encryption and MAC filtering gonna help any.

But that would be cool if your plan works out. I would like to do the same as long as I breakeven and I can get some kind of high speed to my place!!

 

[Eug]

Just a note: When I was looking for a condo, if it had a T1 it was immediately crossed off my list. Essentially it meant that 25 of us or whatever were sharing the fractional T1 speed for extra US$15/month in condo fees. Why bother when it costs US$26 to get cable??? Or even dialup for $10, which might even be faster at peak times. It makes absolutely no sense to me to split a fractional T1, or even a full T1 ($$$). On DSL, I got usually about 850 Kbps download, for US$26. On cable I'm paying $33 (because I don't subscribe to cable TV) and my speed ranges from about 500 Kbps to 2200 Kbps download.

It seems like a shared T1 is LOW bandwidth to me, even considering the fact that the upload speeds are so much better. It is interesting to note that even my friend's company (a big computer company) with several T1 lines is looking into getting several business ADSL lines for the non-mission critical stuff.

 

[seewhy]

Yeah, for consumer use, nothing beats good old DSL or Cable. But for someone like me who doesn't have lots of options, gota look at everything out there.

For mission critical business applications, T1 is still better than DSL or Cable. And don't forget the upload speed, unless you get SDSL, your upload speed is gonna be significantly slower. I used to work for a networking company installing DSL for small businesses, it is still relatively new and there are so many people involved in an implementation process and no one talk to each other (local telco/ wholesaleer (such as covad)/ISP) so many screw ups can happen and people usually get very furstrated.

So for business use, DSL is probably no there yet. But for everyday use, it is definately better than T1. IF YOU CAN GET IT!!!!

Oh yeah, don't forget, DSL ISP is dropping like flys, make sure your ISP is still in business and those wholeseller supporting your ISP hasn't pull out of your local Central Office. Companies like Covad are close to bankruptcy and is rapidly closing facilities that are not profitable.

 

[Eug]

Yeah, like I said, for non-mission critical stuff. I think they are looking at DSL for the clerical staff's webbrowsing bandwidth or something like that, to free up more of of the T1 bandwidth for the more important stuff. I think it's AT&T that is supplying the bandwidth - but it's still several hundred CAD$ per month per 2.2 Mbps. So it ain't your regular business DSL, but it's still a helluvalot cheaper than a T1.

For my consumer cable it's Rogers@Home and for my DSL it was Bell Sympatico High Speed. Both are HUGE companies, and they're both doing fairly well.

 

[pm]

I'm truly, honestly not thinking about doing this.

It was just an idea - something that I was thinking about when I brought my laptop over to my neighbors house and we say that the range on my wireless network would be enough for him to share it - if this wasn't a violation of the cable modem agreement. I started thinking, "what kind of setup would I need to share the connection with my neighbors?" and that led thoughts about banded SDSL, but we are pretty much out of range of DSL, so then I started thinking about T1's.

I'm not even remotely thinking about implementing this. Intel pays me enough to design chips, I really don't want to have to come from a hard day at the office to deal with ISP issues with my neighbors. It is just a thought experiment.

But thanks for all the answers, everyone, I have learned several new things - especially the DS-1 and T-1 terminology.


Seewhy: do you have any more details on hacking the wireless system.? I've been appointed to evaluate wireless technology for an Intel site and I wasn't aware of any security holes in the 104-bit WEP. Do you have a link to the story? This might change things a bit as far as my paranoia level of broadcasting Intel's network. I've been talking to corporate IT and Intel security and no one mentioned anything about this to me.

 

[spidey07]

T1 local loop charges are where you get taken. Some charge 150 a month some charge 1200/month. Depends on mileage (distance).

FYI, I get full internet T3s for $7000/mo. $3000 of which are loop charges. DAMN THOSE BELLS!!!!!

Stay away from UUnet/worldcom. They rape you on price. Flat out consumer rip off...rape.

spidey.

 

[seewhy]

here is the story on security problem with 802.11b standard

story

 

[pm]

double-post... sorry But while I'm editting this, thanks for the link, SeeWhy.

 

[pm]

Here's prices from QWest - I got these from a co-worker and I'm not sure what these include or don't include, but these should be pretty good rough estimates.

DSL: 768kb $140/mo
1Mb $220/mo
T1: frame relay $1375/mo
: no frame relay $860/mo-1260/mo
T3: 3Mb $5K/mo
: 45Mb $30K/mo
OC-3: 155Mb $100K/mo

And I got a quote of $1200/mo for a frame-relay T1 from AT&T.