Service providers have different long distance charges, but all of their rates are very competitive.

Intra and Interstate Calls

Long distance calls can either be intrastate and interstate. Intrastate calls are calls within the state (for instance, a call made from Hollywood to San Diego), whereas Interstate calls are calls made between states (such as a call made from Miami, Florida to Denver, Colorado).

Intra-LATA calls are made outside your local area, but are within the LATA lines the phone company has established.

Switched and Dedicated Long Distance Calls

There are two types of long distance calls: Switched and Dedicated.

Switched Long Distance is when calls are run through a local carrier, or “switched.” An ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) owns the wires that run through a location, while client companies can use these wires on lease from the ILEC.

However, local carriers don’t own exclusive rights to the long distance lines that run from one phone company to another. IXCs (Inter eXchange Carriers) provide these. Over the last twenty years, deregulation has encouraged competitive providers other than the original (AT&T) to offer this service to customers. This means customers can select which carrier to handle their state and in-state long distance calls, along with IntraLATA calls (nearby long distance calls).

Local phone companies offer a combination of different local and long distance services at a high price.

Dedicated long distance is a dedicated point-to-point digital data service transmitting at speeds of Fractional T1 and higher. This is usually directly connected to IXCs, which, along with ILECs and re-sellers, provide a variety of options to their customers for monitoring, privacy in transmissions, and diagnostics. The signal of dedicated long distance calls is very reliable, very secure, and most of all, high quality, because the service is designed to transmit voice from end users to service providers.

Transmission speed and a fixed rate for central office termination affect the pricing of dedicated long distance services. Usually, service provides bill charges monthly.

AT&T achieves this high-speed T1 capability with their unique, industry-leading OC48 / OC 192 IP Backbone. The multiple-ringed network is protected by a variety of security features to ensure the safety of both the hardware and the infrastructure of the line that your Internet relies on, making it ideal for any business that desires on a high-speed Internet solution bundled with world-class service.

Multiple Options

Your direct Internet access (DIA) option is designed to meet all of your critical broadband needs. AT&T has taken into consideration the possibilities of network failure and found ways of working around them. In the event of a failure, your continued network service will be achieved through AT&T’s Managed Access Redundancy Options (MARO) service, which gives your network multiple backup options.

Tech support experts are provided to assist you in setting up your redundancy solutions and designing the rerouting of your network when your main line fails – ensuring your traffic flow requirements are met. With AT&T, you can set up multiple routers for your line without having to leave the comfort of your office, and STILL get the unique network solution that works just for you.

AT&T provides a series of reliable rerouting points that let you isolate the error in your line without having to disrupt the rest of the network connection. You can set up:

• Backbone node redundancy points, giving you the widest array of choices for your connectivity
• Access router redundancy points, because sometimes the errors happen when you’re trying to access various sections of your line (which could occur at your own physical mainframe or in the access routers that connects your office to AT&Ts main network)
• Automatic load-balancing options, letting you segregate your traffic through two circuits. This works as a backup solution for your main line, or backbone and access router redundancy points

Ease of use

Once your network has been set up, all you need to do is connect to the Internet and browse. You will never have to keep an extensive IT staff to take care of your DIA because AT&T’s customer support staff is available 24/7. Once you have an AT&T connection, you can rest assured that your business is in good hands.

AT&T’s PNT service will let you link your entire network to one IP. This service upgrades your traditional packet-based network into a highly efficient network-based VPN designed to facilitate the free and seamless flow of heavy data.

A flexible network solution

The PNT solution will work with you in order to get your media available to a wide network. Whether you’re hosting large packets of data or streaming long hours of voice and video, AT&T assures the lossless transfer of data. The unique classes of service (CoS) feature keeps the line clean and free from irregularities by marking the various kinds of traffic going through your network and prioritizing heavy packets of data over those with a lighter load, such as e-mail hosting and browsing.

Other features that make your network even more efficient include: support for either private or public LAN addressing, static or border gateway routing protocols, and the ability to manage your own network or let AT&T manage it for you.

Visibility in performance

AT&T lets you review the performance of your PNT network via a series of network management tools available for network owners. Your administrators can also manage the ticketing system of the CoS traffic control and review the prior months of billing. A web-based portal that chronicles reports on the integrity and performance of your system is also made available to you.

The service will also adapt to your network needs. If you need to attach new sites and applications to your network, you can easily do so without disrupting the flow of data throughout your network. And the unique MPLS framework ensures the integrity of your data is never compromised.

While this is good news for businesses the world over, the problem of management and communications becomes trickier. How will you effectively connect office branches in a way that they can easily get in touch with each other? How can you easily facilitate the transfer of large documents from office to office without making it available to the public domain?

AT&T offers the solution with its Private Line service; a high-speed intra-network connection that connects your entire system of operations to each other. This lets you facilitate communication and interaction within the various departments of your office without having to resort to setting up expensive and complicated networking solutions.

Customizing your network

AT&T recognizes the fact that you need a simple solution for connecting your office throughout a singular network. They will help you set up a reliable network of communications connecting your various sites to each other in a manner that’s simple and non-intrusive. This connection is made via a series of network servers connected to a main server in your office.

This private line uses a variety of service solutions to meet the needs of your enterprise. These range from a single channel connection of 9Kbps for simpler networks, to a heavy 10G wavelength connection for a multi-network WAN. They also offer other infrastructure solutions such as an optical mesh service and Ethernet connections if you’d rather use those for your network.

Thanks to their state-of-the-art infrastructure, AT&T has made sure that any private line they install is fast, reliable, and secure. They realize that no intranet solution is perfect, and will help you set up a series of backup plans should your main network fail. This includes using Mesh network architecture in your system, as well as the option to utilize FASTAR and SONET network setups. SONET premium private line customers have the choice to set up redundancy circuits to serve as backup data routes.

If you’re worried that AT&T doesn’t cover your area, stop worrying. AT&T offers this service in up to 80 countries around the globe, and that service coverage is expanding. Just to give you an idea of how wide their coverage is – AT&T sports up to 77,000 miles of fiber optic cables connecting all of these networks to each other, so you can be secure in the knowledge that they will have no trouble setting you up as well.

Easy Management and Support

Since this service is important in the integrity and productivity of your office, AT&T makes sure that you can easily fix network discrepancies throughout the line. AT&T’s customer and technical support crew is available 24 x 7. They will be able to help you manage and, if necessary, fix your network whenever the need arises.

Thanks to its unique infrastructure, Opt-E-Man is highly capable of providing its customers with a variety of flexible bandwidth options, ranging from a network connection with transfer speeds of 5Mbps to a Gigabit Ethernet connection that transfers 1Gbps. All network infrastructures come with a guarantee that the network solution is scalable – which means that if you find that you need to switch to an Ethernet service that’s faster than your current setup, it’s as easy as letting AT&T know.

Opt-E-Man supports a variety of ways in which you can send data to anywhere within your network. Some of the transport configurations it has include the basic point-to-point configuration, a more complex point-to-multipoint setup, and the ultimate multipoint-to-multipoint mega connection.

That’s because Opt-E-Man uses a unique mix of physical and virtual connections to make sure that your data gets through when you want it, where you want it. The Ethernet virtual connection solution is a unique method of transferring information through optical fiber connections. By shooting Ethernet LAN packages through these optical fiber cables that travel through your intraLATA network, Opt-E-Man is capable of transmitting information to virtually anywhere in your network – even to the Internet. It can also access network-based VPN services by connecting you to a network-terminating server at your location, and then using a network router, switch, or bridge to connect to the service.

Components of Opt-E-Man

A service wouldn’t be exceptional if its basic parts weren’t exceptional – and Opt-E-Man uses components that are some of the best in the industry today. For its specialized network terminating functions, Opt-E-Man uses an Ethernet interface capable of handling multiple payloads at any given time. This interface uses a specified Ethernet port to transport the data, which is used to end the flow of incoming data and begin the execution of incoming payload.

As mentioned earlier, the Ethernet virtual connection used by Opt-E-Man is the system’s way of generating a variety of randomized circuits to facilitate multipoint connections. This enables the Ethernet line to connect to a variety of physical end connections, as well as to connect to the Ethernet cloud network

Users are also given the choice to select an option which they think will fit their business best:

• Bronze service assures you of full support for your data applications, and will be most beneficial for users who wish to just get their network connected.
• Silver service users are given all the benefits bronze service customers receive, but are also given high-speed support that will ensure the minimal loss of data integrity, as well as a low latency rate for services that require unusually fast connections, such as Voice over Internet Protocols.

What you get from Opt-E-Man

Opt-E-Man’s private line network is a scalable solution, so if you need to change the parameters of the service you’re currently using or add new locations into your network, you won’t have to worry about going through a full-scale network revamp. That’s because this Ethernet network’s architecture is simple in structure, requiring less servers and relying mostly on physical cable connectivity instead. And since it’s a simpler network structure, Opt-E-Man is a cost-effective alternative for customers who are looking for a reliable and secure way of setting up a private network for their company.

AT&T achieves this high-speed Internet T1 capability with their unique network backbone. The multiple-ringed, OC48 / OC 192 IP Backbone network is an industry leader, and is protected by a variety of security features that ensure the safety of both the hardware and infrastructure of the line that your Internet relies on.

Multiple Options

The performance of your direct Internet access (DIA) option with AT&T is specifically designed to ensure that all of your critical broadband needs are met – no matter what. This means that AT&T has taken into consideration the possibilities of network failure and found ways of working around them. This is achieved through their Managed Internet Service Access Redundancy Options (MARO) service, which gives your network multiple backup options in the event of line failure.

Basically, what this does is enable your single network connection to connect to a variety of multiple Internet circuits that will pick up where your traffic left-off when one avenue of your network line fails. It arrests all network failures anywhere in your line, and reconnects you using another avenue in order to maintain the integrity of your network connection.

While this is a complicated process, rest assured that AT&T will provide you with tech support experts who will assist you. They will help you design the rerouting of your network in the event your main line fails, ensuring your traffic flow requirements are met. This way, you can set up multiple routers for your line without having to leave the comfort of your office, and STILL get the unique network solution that works for you.

AT&T gives you a series of reliable re-routing points that let you isolate the error in your line without having to disrupt the rest of the network connection. You can set up:

• Backbone node redundancy points, which gives you the widest array of choices for your connectivity
• Access router redundancy points, because sometimes the errors happen when you’re trying to access various sections of your line (which could occur at your own physical mainframe or in the access routers that connects your office to AT&Ts main network)
• An automatic load-balancing option, which lets you segregate your traffic through two circuits. This works as a backup solution for your main line or backbone and access router redundancy points

Ease of use

Once your network has been set up, you don’t have to do anything aside from connect to the Internet  using t1 internet line and start surfing. You will never have to keep an extensive IT staff to take care of your AT&T DIA because AT&T has a customer support staff that is available at any time of the day, seven days a week. So once you have an AT&T connection, you can be sure that your business solution is in good hands.

GigaMAN works similar to an adapter. It copies your LAN protocol, then simulates and uses the exact same protocol to connect to WANs. By doing this, GigaMAN lets you use the full potential of your existing LAN while transmitting and dispersing the data you send throughout your network.

Whether you’re trying to connect to the building across the street or to an office across the city, GigaMAN gets it done. This service lets you transmit SONET payloads at 1Gbps, a speed that’s twenty two times faster than your average DS3 service.

GigaMAN works by connecting your Ethernet switches. The existing switches are connected via dedicated single-mode optical fiber cables. Throughout the connections are sections called demarcation points where specialized fiber repeaters are installed. This technology is the same interface used for both multi-mode and single-mode optical fibers, and uses a standard stick-and-click connection to serve as a demarcation for where the network terminating equipment are.

Service Features

Both GigaMAN and DecaMAN come with top-quality service features that are tailored to meet the heavy networking requirements of most networking systems today.

Depending on your specific network needs, you can choose from the standard GigaMAN service, ranging from 1000Base-SX and 1000Base-LX single mode services. Or, if you need something that’s even more powerful, the DecaMAN services offer high gigabit levels of network speed. This includes the 10GBase-LR that gives you a service option of a physical LAN with 1310nm of single mode fiber optics; or the 10GBase-LW service, which gives you a WAN with physical 1210nm single mode fiber optics.

Using wavelength division multiplexing, AT&T can implement a network architectural design that will deliver multiple circuits over the same fiber optic pair. This serves as a redundancy measure to conserve the facility size that is needed to implement the system. AT&T engineers will design the system to meet with your current network needs, and will be on hand to provide the necessary equipment required by the network upon installation.

If you have pre-existing network equipment, they will utilize it to improve the speed of installation and the quality of service you will be getting out of your network.

Why choose AT&T

GigaMAN and DecaMAN high-speed Ethernet are two of the best private-line options in the market today. In terms of product breadth and stability, you are assured that whatever service you get will be the most robust Ethernet solution your business will ever experience.

You won’t ever have to worry about your network’s performance – AT&T monitors your network 24/7, because you can’t have a network that crashes when you need it most.