At the time when our company was growing fast, it became obvious that we needed additional bandwidth.The T1 line that we had just was not big enough to handle the data.

As in charge of the IT department, I was the one renegotiating our existing contract. Luckily our company’s 1 year term was almost over, so we were able to investigate different alternatives.

The most apparent choice was to move from a single t1 to a bonded T1. Nevertheless pretty soon that also would not be adequate.

My sales rep with this bandwidth provider (who will remain nameless here) of course was happy to recommend a bigger and far more costly solution: ds3 bandwidth (T3 line) with a capacity of 45 mb. This is surely enough taking our envisioned growth rate into consideration, it was perhaps even a bit of an overkill. And monthly cost was in the higher 4 digit figures.

I found a new solution though. A new technology (or at least new to me) that can deliver bandwidth via an Ethernet port over phone lines, also called Ethernet over Copper. The pricing was super; we were able to get a 10 meg port for less than a 3mb bonded t1!

Another main benefit of Carrier Ethernet is the scalability. We can just add bandwidth by simply ordering more, in small incremental steps of a few megabit, even all the way up to a gigabit Ethernet circuit.

Be sure to shop around with several carriers and make sure you are aware of new technologies (or use a telecom consultant that is).