Local Exchange Carrier

[Tomiga1]

Hello, we currently have all of our T1's with one carrier. In my 5+ years maintaining our PBX, there has been two or three times when we were dead in the water (no inbound/outbound calls) and had no alternative aside from cellular devices.

I'd like to get opinions on how to divide up service. I imagine that our savings may be better with one carrier, but the risk is higher too.

We are also interested in SIP trunking. Again, putting all eggs in one basket (SIP) sounds risky. Would it be wise to maintain some traditional T1/PRI service? I don't quite understand the SIP technology.

Thanks for any comments!

 

[bigindian65]

ideally, if cost effective, it is always good have local routes and then dedicated LD. Then, they can both be Entry 1 opposite each other on the RLIs to back each other up.

Mato' Was'aka

 

[KCFLHRC]

Typically a T-1 failure is in the cable, not an actual equipment fault. But it does happen. I would say if you can get some T-1's from the local Telco and maybe the local Cable Company that would be your best bet since they will come into your building on separate cables entirely. However, you have to consider one company or the other is going to own your numbers.

 

[trvlr1]

There is a possibility that even if you do get inbound/outbound from 2 carriers, they may all end up coming in the same telco cables for "the final mile" anyway. This would largely depend on what area you are in and what carriers are available. But if this is the case, one cable outage would still take everything down.
If calls are critical, ie Hospital etc, you may need to consider access diversity, where lines come in from different sides of the building, so a truck running in to the telephone pole only takes down a portion of your lines. This of course all comes at a cost that someone will have to pay.

 

[janaya]

trvlr1 is right. In most areas you can have competing LECS, but everyone has to go through ATT for that last mile since they own the copper on the street. Unless you were in a Metro area where a competing LEC had some type of fiber service into your building and could provide a tru seperate path.

but you can push your current LEC for this. We had a Call Center. the building had multiple entry points and we had the LEC bring in circuits via two seperate CO switches, but geographically we could do this. to do this from scratch could be expensive and not worth it to the people that write the checks.