There are many ways for businesses to connect. Growing businesses need cost-effective Internet and phone service plans to survive in today’s competitive economic marketplace.
Fortunately, there have been continuous innovations in the telecommunications industry, and businesses can choose the connections for office phone and Internet lines.
There are many confusing terms for the different types of connecting lines. The initials OC3, OC12, OC48, OC192, T1 and T3, are much more “technological” than the true names of the connection lines: digital cable or fiber optic lines.
This article will focus on the OC3 connection. OC3 stands for Optical Carrier-3. OC3 is a 155mbps fiber optic line used for large companies. Mpbs stands for megabits per second and is a measure of bandwidth, or the total amount of data that can flow within the specified amount of time of the OC3 connection.
OC3 connections are useful for companies that have spread to different cities or even globally. These connections allow a large amount of information to be shared at high speed. Smaller companies typically lease T1 or T3 lines that are adequate to serve 5-100 employees at one or more locations. An OC3 connection makes it possible for larger companies to extend their digital network beyond a certain geographic area.
OC3 connection versus another connection
OC3 connections have a feature called point-to-point access. This means that there are multiple wireless access points that can exchange data. Up to 255 people can send audio, video, voice and multimedia files from one access point to another.
This is a viable solution for companies that have found their T1 and T3 connections clogged with data that slows down or even crashes their databases. The T1 and T3 connections have been around since the 1960s and were originally used to transmit data over basic telephone.
A T1 connection is a 1.544 Mbps fiber optic line. T3 is faster at 44.736 Mbps. Both have been upgraded since their inception and remain popular connections for small businesses. However, the T1 and T3 lines do not have the bandwidth to serve larger companies. Many are finding this out the hard way and upgrading to higher bandwidth connections.
An OC3 connection has many benefits and these benefits come at a high price. The service can cost between $15,000 and $100,000 per month depending on the size of the company, the number of access points and the amount of data shared. The price is right for many growing businesses.