Are all Internet providers the same?
Mike Terry
Agility Communications | Helping businesses get Fiber Network Connectivity| Hosted VoIP| Internet and all things Cloud| US Air Force Reserve veteran
I've been in the telecom and IT space for 20 years now and I have watched as much of the telecom industry has become commoditized. It's not that they no longer offer quality IT solutions anymore it's that many business owners don't understand the difference between carrier grade Internet providers and regional or local mom and pop ISPs. My goal of this article is to point out a few of the differences so business owners can make better decisions and not be so frustrated with their provider.
Ten years ago, the Internet market was different. The regional ISPs were often selling wireless connections in locations where the larger carriers couldn't justify investing in more infrastructure. It was a win for the provider and for the more rural customer. Sure, there was some overlap, but the smaller ISPs were selling best effort connections with lower bandwidth. If a business had mission critical applications and required dedicated high-speed bandwidth they went to a carrier for connectivity. To a certain degree that is still true today however the market has been flooded with cheap high-speed options. Many small businesses have found they can get away with a 200mb x 20mb coax cable or wireless connection that is not dedicated because they are drawing so much bandwidth that the lower performance of the circuit is tolerable.
The problem with that is eventually those oversubscribed solutions saturate the ISPs network and performance is de-gradated more and more. But the math is still in the favor of the smaller ISP. It's still cheaper and business owners come to believe that the market for such services should be at a certain price point, well below what solid performing circuits cost. To make matters worse the carrier ISPs joined the race to zero cost for bandwidth and flooded the market with GPON services which are fiber based and very competitively priced. For a while the carriers started winning back customers because the GPON service was faster and more reliable. The main characteristic of GPON is that it uses passive splitters in the fiber optic distribution network. This allows one single feeding fiber from the Internet service provider (ISP) to multiple businesses. The carrier ISPs had one up'd the regional ISPs. They could now also sell an oversubscribed solution and theirs is on fiber.
GPON has further cemented the market rates for business internet. Customers are being offered cheaper and cheaper solutions by the new younger generation of carrier salesman. Because of this, businesses continued jumping on an oversubscription model sharing bandwidth with every other business around them. Carriers soon found they couldn't justify the same business grade support that the traditional fiber solutions offered because they were selling it too cheap and support on GPON circuits has all but disappeared.
After Covid happened the rate of digital transformation accelerated greatly. Suddenly 10 times the number of businesses were using web conferencing, VoIP and Teams. The need for reliable bandwidth has increased enormously and this is where businesses need to learn the difference between carrier grade and Tier 3 providers in order to support those bandwidth demanding services.
Comparing Carrier grade DIA and regional or local ISP Internet
What is the difference between regional or local ISP bandwidth and carrier grade fiber solutions?
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Let's look at a few other differences that add value to the carrier grade solution that businesses fail to notice.
Characteristics of Tier 1 ISPs include:
Examples of Tier 1 ISPs include AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink (now Lumen), NTT Communications. These providers play a critical role in ensuring the global connectivity and resilience of the Internet infrastructure.
Characteristics of Tier 2 or 3 ISP include:
The bottom line here is that there is a big difference between a carrier grade Internet connection and a local ISP Internet service. Both have their place in the market but if you are frustrated with your Internet provider. It may be that you are shopping at Walmart for something that can only be found at Nordstroms. You can still be frugal and find value with a carrier solution but when it comes to Internet connectivity you often get what you pay for. If you want to be satisfied with the performance, support and reliability of your mission critical Internet service step up to carrier grade and watch your connectivity issues go way down.