Ds3advantages
A fractional T3 offers less bandwidth than a full T3 and comes with the same quality and performance guarantees as a full 1.54 Mbps T3 but costs slightly less. How much less bandwidth vs. the cost savings is the question. See Fractional vs. Full T3 below. Although the price reduction is not what you might expect it to be, this may put a T3 in your budget and be a great way to get dedicated service into your building. Once you have fractional service upgrading to full service is easy. The reason it is easy is due to the install. Same amount of overhead, crews, time, and connections. A fractional T is a full T3 capable circuit - it is throttled back to deliver only a portion.
Fractional service typically comes in 256Kbps increments from 256Kbps all the way to a full T3 at 1.5Mbps. Find the service that is right for you, but if you are supporting critical services think reliability. Reliability becomes critical when customers or employees depend on your connection for immediate responses. If your customers use your connection to access, your databases or your server or the internet then reliability of your connection is critical. If your employees depend on your connections because you host the e-mail server in house or host web servers or ASP type products, your connections are critical. A critical connection can be viewed much like a lifeline, without which your business would be negatively impacted. In the late 1990's, the cost for a fractional T3 might have been about 35% - 40% less than the full 1.54 Mbps T3. Today, there is hardly any difference in price, maybe 10% to 15% at best. The cost of a Full T3 has come down considerably in recent years. A fractional T3 has a 50% - 75% bandwidth decrease but only a 5% to 15% price decrease. Fractional DS-3 (T3) on the other hand is a very cost effective solution since pricing is based on a portion of a 45 Mbps circuit. While it does not hurt to check fractional T3 pricing since every locations' cost do vary, the majority of T3 line users opt for the full T3. The price break point vs. speed averages around 768 Mbits, half a T3. You will find you can get a Full T3, twice the bandwidth, for approximately $10 - $25 more per month. Use the "State Select" below to request both fractional and full T3, DS-3 pricing information. You can also check to see if Business DSL is available at your location.
There is not much of a cost savings between a fractional T3 and a full T3. Therefore, we can better understand, we should start by looking at the specific costs of delivering a T3 service either Full or Fractional. The service provider has two costs associated with your fractional T3 - the "local loop" and the "port". The local phone company provides and installs the loop. The T3 provider supplies the "port" which is the connection between the local loop and the Internet.
The cost of your local loop is the same regardless if it is a full or fractional T3 because the local phone company always sets the local loop a 1.54 Mbps. It takes the same amount of copper wires, time to install and equipment to run a fractional T3. The LEC passes this cost to your T3 provider. Since there are no cost savings for the T3 provider or the local phone company on a local loop, the end user does not get any cost savings on this portion. Advantages - This can save time and reduce or eliminate install fees in the event you expand your bandwidth in the future. The Full T3 circuit is already in place.
The cost of the port has two parts. The equipment is the same for the local loop. The amount of time required to install and maintain the fractional T3 port equipment is the same as required for a full T3 port.
For the T3 provider, bandwidth charges make up probably only 10% of the total cost of providing a T3. Fractional T3 providers are willing to discount services only slightly because it only costs them slightly less to offer the fractional T3 instead of the full T3! Except for bandwidth expenses, the T3 providers' cost of offering fractional and full T3 service is nearly the same when selecting speeds of 512 Mbits or 768 Mbits.
