Business DSL

Business DSL Advantages

Business DSL has been touted as an affordable answer for SOHO and small-to-medium-sized businesses. It is in most cases, where heavy-duty data transmission and receipt are not needed. Once advantage DSL offers is simultaneous use of your phone for outgoing and incoming calls while you continue to surf the net, a big advantage to the SOHO user who may be operating an online business. Without this feature, most small businesses couldn’t operate efficiently. Normal dialup connections only allow one function at a time at a maximum speed of 56 kilobytes per second (kbps), AKA 56K. Either you talk, or your surf. Those are the only options you have. Opening several Internet windows or Web sites simultaneously while talking to a client, associate or customer just isn’t possible. Speeds of reliable DSL service providers can go as high as 3 megabytes per second (Mbps), but most don’t achieve this, averaging 1.5Mbps or less.

How DSL Works

Traditional telephone connections are made of switches and copper wired pairs that cross-connect lines across the U.S. installed in home offices or businesses. Copper is an excellent conductor and transmits data in frequencies. Your modem, usually provided as part of your service package from your DSL provider, helps in the data juggling act. Part of the data path or phone line frequency allocation in these copper wire pairs is for voice, which only requires a small amount of the data stream available compared to other forms, or a greater range of frequencies or what’s referred to as bandwidth. Your telephone company's equipment design limits the frequencies that it can transmit.

Because these frequencies are limited, several wires can be bound into huge cable pairs without cross-connections in the transitions of analog data. Digital data uses more line capacity.

What Your Sales Rep Won’t Tell You

DSL is distance-sensitive technology, which means as a connection's length gets longer, signal quality and speed decrease. The upper limit for DSL is 18,000 feet. So the farther your office location is away from the central office’s virtual location, the slower your DSL data speed will be. The opposite is also true. The closer you are, the faster the connection speed. This maximum downstream or Internet to customer speed is about 8 Mbps, with upstream speeds are about 640 kilobits per second (Kbps). The best speeds are 1.5 Mbps downstream, with upstream speeds averaging 640 Kbps. DSL connections are always faster when receiving data then transmitting it. Add this is the fact that DSL isn’t available everywhere, won’t work with fiber optic cables and its Caveat Emptor.

The Point of Diminishing Returns

There is a point with increasing distance when no signal can reach you, promised speed drops to an unusable range, or your DSL modem fails because it cannot capture the signal speed it was designed for. Should that happen, prepare for a service nightmare. Customer service/customer resolution will claim that you are getting the service you purchased, and tech support will scratch their collective heads and either deny that you have a service problem or finally break down and admit you’re not getting what you paid for. Make sure you get a guarantee in writing, especially from the larger service providers, and a 30-day opt-out clause. Then use one of these tools to measure the actual speed you’re getting: Modem Speed Test.

Types of Business DSL

Most small businesses use asymmetric DSL (ADSL). This service is based on an assumption that the user views more data than he/she downloads. That’s why your connection speed from the Internet to you is about four times faster than the connection from your work station to the Internet, or about 8 to 10 Mbps.

Very high bit-rate DSL (VDSL) - This super-fast connection is limited to short distances. VDSL has a bandwidth around 52 Mbps. It’s not yet widely available, but has great potential that could allow business owners to combine several services into one and get a cheaper rate for much faster service.

Symmetric DSL (SDSL) - While this system won’t allow use a phone at the same time you send or receive data, but it provides equal receiving and transmission speeds.

Rate-adaptive DSL (RADSL) - A variation of ADSL, but has a modem adjusting connection speeds depending on length and line quality.