Business Bandwidth - Using OC3 Bandwidth to Compete in a Tough Economy

In today’s ever growing competitive markets your business needs whatever advantages it can get to maintain a healthy profit margin. With budgets tightening it can be easy to pay more attention to marketing and development overlooking the I.T. sector in the effort to boost profits. By ignoring the communications department though you can be making a big mistake. Before we continue this discussion let us take a closer look at what OC3 is first.

OC3/OC-3 is one of the many backbone bandwidths of the SONET family. SONET stands for Synchronous Optical NETwork and offers many flavors of optical carrier bandwidths including OC12, OC48, OC192, and OC768 to name a few. OC levels are for the most part a T1 line on steroids allowing for larger data and voice traffic payloads for businesses in growth or in current demand for larger communication needs. One OC3 circuit alone is equivalent to 84 T1 lines or 3 T3 lines and runs at the speed of 155 Mbps.

Other OC-x Speeds:

OC9         466 Mbps = 252 T1’s

OC12       622 Mbps = 336 T1’s

OC18       933 Mbps = 504 T1’s

OC24        1.2 Gbps  = 672 T1’s

OC36        1.8 Gbps  = 1,008 T1’s

OC48        2.4 Gbps  = 1,344 T1’s

OC96        4.9 Gbps  = 2,688 T1’s

OC192      9.9 Gbps  = 5,376 T1’s

OC768    39.8 Gbps  = 21,504 T1’s

Common uses  in large enterprises include hosting servers, WANs, ISP, VoIP, SIP Trunking, PBX voice, and other applications. As a matter of fact, when it comes to voice use for call centers, an OC3 is capable of handling the transmission of over 2,000 lines of voice traffic simultaneously. These larger capacities can be accredited to the capacity associated with fiber optics.

One feature that makes this bandwidth type a popular choice for large businesses is the redundancy (reliability) normally associated with the SONET architecture. Reliability is obviously necessary for productive continuity in the workplace for any successful business so this is a main selling point. This can help keep money allocated in other areas as there is usually less expense for technician for downtime analysis and repairs as well as lost revenue to paid employees for man hours during such outages.

Your company saves more per Mb in larger quantities of bandwidth making a partial port, full port, or busrtable OC3 driving your business Internet and voice communications more economical in a belt squeezing economy. This is yet another attractive selling point for many corporations in America in these trying times.

The future of  applications associated with many bandwidth technologies will require extensive liquidation of hardware and the purchase of new technologies which can drain any hardened bottom line. The beauty of the SONET standard is it’s seamless integration with newer technologies as they present themselves saving your enterprise the hassle of implementing new hardware as well as the purchase of it.

Ultimately, when you are able to combine added productivity and functionality to your everyday operations with cost considerations in place, your business can then allocate funds into other areas that can keep your business growing to the capacity of your market increasing profitability.

There are other features and options for OC3 that may or may not be right for your business so consulting with your I.T. staff as well as a good broker specialist can help you find both the right bandwidth and a cost effective solution suitable for your growing network needs.