Why Are T1 Lines Still Expensive? 556
badfrog asks: "Over the last 10 years, DSL and cable modem has upped its speed (although in some instances only slightly) and dropped its price. However, the price of a T1 has stayed almost exactly the same. If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have predicted any geek that wanted to would have fiber or their own T1 line to the house by now. What is with this sad state of affairs that a 'business class' 1.544Mbit connection is hundreds of dollars more than a 6Mbit cable connection? Is it a legitimate case that a high upload rate should increase cost so significantly?"
Inertia and Marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course thats all crap, but hey, there's one born every minute.
Fairly straight forward to me.. (Score:5, Insightful)
You dont have the option of moving to a Cable connection, or even several, because of the need for so much upload. You're stuck. And there's no incentive to lower prices.
It's marketing (Score:3, Insightful)
T-1s are "old", business-class products. So they are not sold by the same marketoid types who push consumer broadband.
Dont't forget that you're dealing with a big phone company, so your everyday normal cartesian logic will not take hold there.
Service level (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the hardware costs for T1 are higher. We can support something like 8000 DSL subscribers on a $25K BRAS, while a 4 port channelized DS3 card (supporting 112 T1s) runs around $45K (and that's just the interface card; the router costs another $30K+).
Re:Not surprising? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Absolute BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen it done, and would not be surprised at all if the majority of tier 1's do it. It's a huge waste of money to assume that all your customers will use all their bandwidth all the time.
The only added service a T1 buys you is a more sympathetic ear when problems crop up.
You're not paying for the bandwidth (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
But, my understanding was (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) that a T1 line is a dedicated connection: The telcos create a complete, unimpeded circuit, point-to-point, from where you are, to wherever you are paying to have it terminate (generally at your ISP).
If "where you are" happens not to be serviced by fiber, then they have to dedicate a pair of copper wires to you: That removes a physical pair of wires, along the entire pathway of the T1 circuit from where you are, to where it terminates, for so far as is necessary to do so.
And, I suppose, even if you have fiber servicing where you are, somewhere along the way they still have to provision that bandwidth, to dedicate it to you, and again that removes part of their capacity from "general" use.
Compare and contrast that to DSL and Cable broadband access: They both *share* bandwidth: For DSL, it's shared on the phone line, for Cable, it's shared on the cable connection.
But, in neither of the latter 2 cases, is any of the upstream bandwidth dedicated exclusively to your use, in either direction.
THAT is what you are paying for, for a T1 line, etc. - dedicated symmetrical bandwidth: For a T1 line, you get 1.54 Mbps, in BOTH directions, guaranteed.
And again, that's my poor understanding of this.
As much as I hate car analogies, here's one that is close, I think: Consider the current road systems, in any particular country. You have a combination of local roads, that link to freeways, highways, etc.
When you get a dedicated circuit, such as a T1 line, you are paying for a "road", from where you are, to your ISP, one which has no other "cars" on it, except for those that YOU put on the road. At some point, that "road", merges onto a "highway", and then YOU are then paying the "road provider" for the privilege of a dedicated "lane": They are blocking off a section of their "highway" to make a "lane" for YOUR use, only, and in doing so, they are removing it from general use.
And, that "lane" is "two-way", BTW: The "cars" that travel from where you are, do so at full speed, without "stop lights", etc. - and when they return, they return in the same way.
And that's why T1 lines are still "so expensive" - though their cost HAS dropped, and remarkably so, considering.
Oh, and yes, the analogy breaks down, past the point where the "lane" meets the ISP... so?
Re:Guaranteed transport security (Score:5, Insightful)
T1s are point-to-point circuit switched connections. The Internet only factors in if one device on that point-to-point connection happens to be a gateway router.
Being point to point, it's isolated, secured, easier to secure, and probably guaranteed via some policy or contract. You don't share with no one.
DSL has a same setup; you don't share your connection like cable internet. However, with DSL, you only have a closed circuit between you and an isp. To reach your office across the state, the connection has to traverse your ISP's routers and distribution systems then to your office's. Do a traceroute one day.
With a T1, the closed circuit is between you and your office cross-state. Your ISP only uses layer 2 switching to make sure the circuit takes the optimal path. Once it's connected, it's locked in. And unlike internet via DSL or cable with your ISP in the mix, TCP/IP doesn't have to factor in at all if you don't want it to. You get your choice of protocols for addressing and transport.
You seem to think because since you saw some guy hooking up what looked like a phone jack to your buddy's computer that you're en expert in the field and have the right to be a pretentious dick about it. Sorry to disappoint you.
In this case, the medium is not quite as important. The cabling is nothing much more then a polished POTS line. However, you still have the other 6 layers of the OSI model to think about.
Re:P & T (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Absolute BS. (Score:5, Insightful)
But you do most certainly oversubscribe the connection onwards from wherever the lines (be they t1 or adsl) terminate.
Put differently, if you've got 10.000 subscribers for 1Mbps ADSL, you most certainly don't hook these into the Internet using a 10Gbit link. If you did, you'd be having 95% overcapacity on average, and probably 80% overcapacity at the peaks. (i.e. you'd literally *never* use more than 20% of your bandwith)
Same applies if your customers come in over T1-lines.
Now, there's still differences. Typical el-cheapo consumer-isps tend to simply accept that their lines spike for 10% or more of the time. In other words, if their actual load is 100Mbps average, 500Mbps peak, they'll buy perhaps 200Mbps, and simply accept that nobody gets more than half their rated speed if surfing at peak times.
ISPs with a higher service-level try to keep their capacity around peak. Which means that if they calculated correctly, you'll "always" get your rated speed. You *may* on occasion experience sligthly less if they miscalculated.
Insane ISPs, like Uninett has a target bandwith of 150% of the highest experienced former peak. In other words, aslong as *now* doesn't have 1.5 times the highest load experienced in the past, you'll get your rated speed. Notice that this too is probably an order of magnitude less bandwith than you'd need if you did not overprovision.
Not overprovitioning is a lot like building roads as if everyone who owns a car would be driving it 24/7/365. If you did, you'd be spending 10 times the money on roads from whats really required.
Re:Oh, come on! (Score:3, Insightful)
It may be that the marketing gurus brand T1 as "the product with the guaranteed bandwidth", but believe me, I have 512/512 SDSL here, also with a guaranteed bandwidth of > 90%.
Moreover, the connection between your DSL-Modem (ADSL/SDSL whatever) and the DSLAM at the telco can never be overbooked, if the data rate is set to e.g. 2048/512 then this speed is fixed. From the DSLAM to the provider/Internet, the line may of course be overbooked, but this has not much to do with the connection type.
What happens often is that one product technologically outperforms another (as here with SDSL vs. T1). So the marketing people have the problem that the better, often cheaper product cannibalizes their old one. As they still want/have to sell the older product, they have to give some "advantages" of the old product - which are often "reliability", or - in this case a guaranteed bandwidth.
There are other connections, that really share bandwidth, such as radio based solutions (UMTS, WiFi) but also cable connections and the like. But 2-wire copper based connections are set up as a star topology and not as a bus.
High prices (Score:3, Insightful)
This is in Atlanta, Georgia. Not sure what prices are running in other regions of the country.