Online options – ComputerScope Buyers Guide
If your business is going online for the first time or upgrading from a slower connection, these are confusing times. The means of access haven’t changed hugely in the decade or so since the first Internet Service Providers (ISPs) appeared in Ireland, but new and faster ways to get on the Net are tantalisingly within reach, it seems.
Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology, which uses existing copper telephone wires to send data at high speeds, is due imminently but its arrival is currently held up over regulatory issues. Similarly, access via the cable television network appears to have stalled.
These considerations shouldn’t be any reason to delay a decision, however. Fiona Flynn, head of sales and marketing at Eircom Net, points out that DSL will only be available for the Dublin market in phase one, whereas ISDN and leased line connections have a nationwide reach.
The most basic Internet access service available is dialup access over a standard modem, running at 56kbit/s.
An example of this kind of offering is Eircom Net’s ‘Starter Pack’ bundled service, which includes dialup Internet access over 56kbit/s modem, five e-mail accounts and a domain name. Another is Eircom Net’s ‘Business Progress Pack’, which includes ISDN access, e-mail, a domain name and a virtual server. With either of these bundled products, customers pay a once-off fee (although this doesn’t include call charges).
ISDN is not a new technology — it was first introduced in the 1970s — but it has proved to be an enduring one. It continues to be popular among small businesses and those getting online for the first time. As Peter McEntee, product manager with Esat Business points out: ‘A lot of small offices haven’t got a need for 24×7 access, so it makes sense to start on ISDN’.
It’s worth remembering that standard dialup and ISDN are both subject to call charges on top of subscription or installation fees. ISDN is faster than regular dialup and is available at speeds of 64 or 128kbit/s.
Stories abound of delays in the supply of ISDN lines, but according to the service level agreement laid down by the regulator, Eircom, as the incumbent national telecoms carrier, should be able to provide ISDN connections to businesses within 26 working days.
Under these rules, Eircom Net is classified as an ‘other licensed operator’ on a par with its rival ISPs, and not as a part of Eircom which supplies the physical circuits. (Interestingly, when DSL does arrive, it will be offered by Eircom and not by its Internet division.)
Some users complain that ISDN doesn’t always run at true 64kbit/s access. Fiona Flynn suggests that this may be because the ISDN connection is not being treated as such by the ISP’s termination equipment. To get the benefit of the additional speed, customers should tell their ISP to upgrade the connection, so that the equipment is aware that the data is being carried over an ISDN connection.
Some ISPs wouldn’t reveal their prices to ComputerScope, preferring to say that they are ‘competitive,’ but a rough rule of thumb is that an ISDN line should cost in the region of £300 per year, exclusive of VAT and of call charges (which are charged as local calls). It is worth keeping in mind that the additional speed provided by ISDN should mean that download times are reduced and is therefore a cheaper option than dialup over modem in the long run.
Fixed
Leased lines, or fixed access connections, are the next step up, for businesses that need to be online throughout the working day and beyond. Initial costs are significantly more expensive than with ISDN, but this should be weighed against the fact that it allows users to be constantly connected and dialup call charges don’t apply. The good news is that leased lines are now cheaper than ever.
‘Prices on fixed access have definitely come down in the last 12-18 months,’ reports Peter McEntee of Esat Business. ‘Dialup access was the entry level. Fixed connectivity was for heavy users. For anyone using the Internet for six or seven hours a day, it was thought to be more economically viable to switch from dialup to leased lines. Now that threshold is closer to four hours.’
In addition, leased lines offer a greater range of speeds — most major ISPs offer 64kbit/s to 155Mbit/s, with the top end of the corporate market being the main customers for the highest speeds.
As a rule of thumb, McEntee suggests that small companies whose online needs are based around e-mail and Web browsing will be well catered for by ISDN. For bigger companies, or those selling online and hosting their own site, leased lines may prove a better option.
Eircom Net, as part of the national carrier, is in a position to provide leased lines and Frame Relay or ATM connections on a nationwide basis. It has leased line points of presence (POPs) in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. Users based near these POPs pay for calls at local rates, but costs rise the further a customer is located from one of these centres.
Eircom Net says that for companies in Waterford, for example, an alternative is to connect over a Frame Relay ‘cloud’ instead of a leased line POP. This ensures that businesses located outside the major urban centres can still connect to the Net, at higher speeds and competitive prices.
Leased lines are priced at a fixed yearly rate whereas dialup and ISDN both operate on call minutes.
Esat Business supplies different flavours of dialup access that are primarily usage-based. Its fixed connectivity offerings are provided for a flat fee and they allow customers to be connected to the Internet all the time.
Nevada tele.com tends to focus on leased lines and Frame Relay Internet access although Nevada can also provide a dialup service. The telco claims to be ‘very competitive on pricing’ and says it differentiates itself on quality of service. Chris Watt, Internet programme director with Nevada tele.com, says: ‘We are undercutting the main competitors on most of the services.’
Via Networks’ leased line offering provides access speeds from 64kbit/s to 45Mbit/s. The company is targeting its dialup Internet service at smaller businesses, branch offices or remote users.
In some respects, the ISP market still trades on old reliables such as price and ratios of users to available bandwidth. Chris Watt accepts that striking the right balance between these two is critical for winning business. ‘There is no point in offering a low price to corporates if the contention rates mean they never get on. We can now scale to offering an optimum mix of users to bandwidth based on the usage patterns that we have observed.’
When dealing with businesses of five users or less, Nevada works from the basis of a ten to one contention. In the case of a larger business, contention rates are lower, the company promises. Watt observes that an increasing number of the company’s customers tend to consider leased lines rather than ISDN.
Businesses feeling starved of broadband connectivity may consider wireless Internet access.
Esat Business and Nevada tele.com have taken up the cudgels; both hold wireless local loop licences, which means they can offer fast access to a customer premises without needing to install or use a physical line.
Esat Business is actively using its wireless licence for the Internet (in tandem with its fixed line fibre and copper connections). It has more than 20 base stations located around the country.
There had been some initial reluctance in the market to take up wireless Internet connetions, based on the perception that wireless would suffer the kind of network overloads that can be experienced by mobile phone users. But McEntee says: ‘It’s very stable. The service is equivalent to copper and the network is not saturated. We use it as a replacement for Eircom leased lines.’
Esat has tended to locate its wireless base stations in areas of the country where it has no fibre or copper infrastructure. The company claims that it can connect businesses wirelessly within four to six weeks.
For wireless to work, there must be a clear line of sight between a customer’s premises and the nearest base station. Esat Business sets its pricing rates according to the distance from the building to the base station, up to a maximum of 5km, with no further costs accrued. ‘We don’t differentiate on pricing for fixed line and wireless,’ says McEntee. ‘We price it in such as way that it’s cost-efficient.’
Nevada tele.com has been evaluating a wireless Internet offering in the licensed and unlicensed bands, according to Chris Watt. But he adds: ‘It’s very unlikely we will back one horse. In order to get as full geographic coverage as we can, we will be looking at a mixture of technologies’.
Reach for the sky
Another alternative to going over the phone lines for Internet access, is going into the sky — via satellite. ‘The technology is coming into the domain of smaller businesses, particularly with the slow rollout of DSL,’ says Brian Lowe, product technical manager of Educom, a distributor of satellite Internet systems.
Uptake of the service by businesses has been very promising and prices have been dropping, says Lowe. Satellite connectivity offers an ‘always on’ service, so that businesses can be online 24 hours a day for a fixed rate, with no additional call charges.
The device that connects the PC or network to the satellite dish is available in two formats — one that plugs into a USB port, the other which works like a standard Ethernet hub. ‘As far as the computer is concerned, it acts just like a modem, albeit a much faster one,’ says Lowe.
The dish itself is normally mounted on the side of a wall and once installed, there is no need for any further adjustment. For the dish to work, it has to be in line of sight with the southern sky, but this isn’t too difficult an obstacle. Lowe claims: ‘If you can get Sky TV, you can get this.’
The standard service is 400/128kbit/s (the download rate is always the first listed speed, with upload as the second). The service can scale up to 20Mbit download. The upload speed is limited by the dish size. Although 128kbit/s is acceptable for most purposes, it is possible to arrange multiple dishes in a cluster for organisations that need faster upload rates.
According to Lowe, there are no contention ratios: there is ‘massive capacity’ available over the satellite feed and the Internet service runs at true 400kbit/s — this connection isn’t shared by any other user. Educom’s service will receive its formal launch this month and the company is currently taking orders for single user customers, to be connected in January.
There is a school of thought that doesn’t consider the absence of broadband to be a huge detriment to businesses; what the situation has done is to force people to look at more creative ways to get the best out of their connectivity.
There is a smarter way, argues Brian Lynch, sales director with Eurokom, a provider of secure e-mail. Most organisations’ use of the Net revolves around e-mail and Web browsing, but these two services use different protocols. E-mail uses SMTP, which is more bandwidth-intensive than Internet Protocol.
Eurokom can separate a company’s e-mail from its Web access; messages are sent through Eurokom’s servers, so that the company’s connection for Web access is not weighed down by additional traffic. This should have the effect of reducing the need to simply throw more bandwidth at the problem when network performance slows down, Lynch argues.
Assuming you have decided what access option best suits the needs of your business, what is the best way of arranging this? Most of the major ISPs sell directly — typically, though not exclusively to corporate customers — and they also maintain extensive reseller channels. As Chris Watt of Nevada tele.com points out: ‘The direct route is vital but given the demographics of the Irish market, you can’t address smaller companies by the direct route.’
Earlier this year, Eircom and Esat Business announced dealer schemes specifically aimed at winning customers in the small and medium business sector. In addition to affiliated resellers, there are organisations that operate totally independently from any ISP.
Eurokom is classed in this latter category as it supplies Internet access as part of its e-mail service. Sales director Brian Lynch says that resellers can provide an independent view. ‘We can say “You should be talking to X because you’re located here” or “You should be using Frame Relay”,’ says Lynch.
‘There are a number of factors that affect bandwidth requirements. For a customer to go out and evaluate all that is a nightmare, it’s mindboggling. What we do on behalf of the client is take that headache away.’
In addition, resellers tend to get a better response when it comes to resolving technical issues, because they have good contacts with the ISP, or expertise of their own. This is not to say that the ISPs resent this situation; they don’t, according to Lynch. ‘We’re bringing them revenue. We take out the lower end calls for them.’
Another advantage of using resellers is that customers are more likely to have a one-stop shop for their needs. ‘It avoids finger-pointing,’ says Lynch, ‘the customer dials one number for any problem.’
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