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CLECs Target SMBs with Dynamic T1
Monday May 25, 2009,
01:46 am ET
CHARLOTTE WATER DEPT, North Carolina, May. 25 /Brendan Luna/ --
Small businesses all over the country are discovering a whole new universe of broadband access.
As the price of commercial-grade telecommunication services continues to drop, more and more
enterprises are starting to drop their plain old telephone service lines in favor of all-digital
T1 trunks that deliver voice and data over the same connection. These new enhancements were
made possible by the increasing pace of consolidation in the telecommunication industry along
with the increasing value bigger phone companies can provide.
There are two basic "integrated" DS-1 configurations, analog and digital. The 24-line
bundle in which they come is termed a "trunk". The main difference between analog and
digital trunks is their flexibility. With digital trunks, voice lines not in use
can be dynamically reconfigured to carry data traffic, so they don't sit idle.
Analog trunks on the other hand can not change their function once configured
by the service provider. Data channels remain data channels and the same for
voice channels, even if there is no voice traffic.
"Commercial telecommunication providers were never on my Christmas card list"
commented Jake Chang, a small business owner in Denver, Colorado. "Dealing with them
meant erroneous bills, long wait times when trying to reach customer service, and
taxes I could never understand. Now that we migrated to a dynamic integrated
T1, my phone lines and high speed internet are bundled into one line with super
reliability. Not to mention the fact that XO Communications, a CLEC, treats me
like they actually want my business - not like I'm a pain in the you-know-what."
The same basic economic model described in the book "Blue Ocean Strategies" is now being
applied to telecommunication services being offered to small businesses across the country:
more value for less money. According to many industry watch dogs, hundreds of thousands
of business will dump their POTs lines in favor of dynamic integrated T1 service within
the next 12 to 24 months, saving money in the process. With the introduction
of sub-$475 dynamic integrated T-service, customers are now able to receive up to 1.5 MBPS
of high-speed Internet with 24 digital phone lines all on one line, for less than what they
pay now for 5 regular phone lines" Stallions continued.
Evolution has lead to a better, cheaper alternative to TDM services that the Bells were
peddling for decades in a vacuum of competition. Now the industry, lead by the innovation
and great business practices of the CLECs, seems to have turned a corner - leaving the
incumbents playing catchup. Obviously, the main benefactor of all of this competition
is the small to medium size business - a segment of the market that was taken for granted
until today.
The recent progress made by CLECs leaves us thinking in hypotheticals. "What if the
Clinton administration wouldn't have passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, requiring
RBOCs to lease their lines at reduces rates to the CLECs?" "Will the FCC continue to
enforce this law, or will it be overturned by the powerful AT&T and Verizon lobbyists?"
It is impossible to know either way, but for the time being we can just be grateful
that the industry has evolved to the point were small businesses can actually benefit
from telecommunications at an affordable rate.
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