Our customers often ask us for advice on Internet services for their primary, branch, and remote (home) offices. At a street price of about $390 per month T1s are simply beginning to come up short on meeting the bandwidth needs of real-time business applications featuring audio, video, and voice. DSL also proves hit or miss depending on your distance to the local exchange office. Even more disenchanting is the fact that most homes in Japan and South Korea have enjoyed speeds in excess of 20mbps for some time.
Seeking to expand into business services, Comcast has recently launched a new business class cable Internet service to meet the smaller organization’s “need for speed”. The service comes in a few grades ranging from 6 to 50 mbps on download and 1 to 5mbps for upload. (Note the 50 mbps service is only available in the Minneapolis - Twin Cities area currently). Additional features such as antivirus security, website hosting, and basic Exchange email and Sharepoint communications hosting are also included.
The price is nice as well. With the Preferred service coming in at around $109 per month, and with install fees included on a 24 month deal, giving the service a try is almost a no-brainer.
That said, stability and performance are the primary question marks. T1s have been around for many, many years, and once installed they’re pretty hassle-free. Although the initial Comcast installs we’ve been involved with have been rock solid it will be important to see the service perform over time. It will also be critical for the Comcast business team to continue to refine processes for customer service, network security, and capacity management. But again, $109 per month for 16mbps of download speed is tough to beat!
Happy surfing!
To learn more about Kennedy Technology Group, please visit us at http://www.kennedytechgroup.com/.
