Small business telecom options.

• Author: Gallup, Robert P.
• Position: Communications

Over the past three years, we have seen countless telecommunications companies come and go, and far too often it is the business user that is left disconnected.

Large companies such as Global Crossings, Qwest, McLeodUSA, Teligent, Covad, Rhythms and many others jumped into telecommunications to compete with the regional bell operating companies (RBOCs) such as SBC Ameritech, Verizon, Bell As antic and others. To the consumer, competition means choice--and choice typically means lower prices, better service and flexibility.

Companies invested billions of dollars to create a network that would wield tremendous competitive pressures on the RBOCs resulting in more choice and better service for the user.

So where does this leave the business user today? Fortunately, there are smaller full service telecommunications companies that are developing. These firms tend to be regional in focus, offer a full complement of services such as high speed Internet access, Web-hosting, long distance, local phone service, voice and fax messaging and will price these services conveniently all on one bill.

The RBOCs, however, were less than cooperative in interconnecting the networks and laying the "last mile" of wire to your business premises. In the end, the large competitors crumbled under a huge debt structure accelerated by the stock market value adjustment.

Internet access varies widely in quality and price from one provider to another. To illustrate, most people have heard of DSL. DSL stands for Digital Subscriber Line. Sounds simple, but then there are Asynchronous (one way) and Symmetric (both ways) DSL, plus the many different speeds (256k, 384k, 512k, 768k, etc.). ADSL is a flavor of DSL that is best suited for one to three users who use the Internet occasionally and more often...