While Dave Letterman may never read this list on his show, we've created a Top 10 list of California T1 Internet Providers. In our review of service providers we considered realiabiltiy, customer support, provisioning and financial stability. In our opinion a top provider of services will have a high rating in each of the catagories. Unfortunately some of the providers we found were regional providers and may not be near you but two of them are so good you may just want to move closer to be on their network!

The top company in our survey was Telepacific. The only downside to this company is the fact that they only offer service in California and Las Vegas. Telepacific received top marks in all four or our categories and is what we recommend most to customers in California. The second carrier in our list was USLEC. Like our fist pick USLEC is a regional player offering services in the south and on the eastern seaboard. USLEC was founded and is run by engineers. These people have a passion for getting it right and keeping their customers happy. Number three on our list is New Edge Networks. New Edge is a national player found predominantly in metro areas. New Edge is large enough to be a strong player but still small enough to treat customers like a small company.

Our number four position goes to Netifice, formerly Epoch. Again, a small Tier 1 player but excellent service nationwide. Number five position goesto ACC Business. Available everywhere in the continental US, ACC used the ATT network exclusively and provides a high level of service. Positions six through ten when in the following order: Telarus, Sprint, Xspedius, PNG, and Megapath. When looking for a reliable provider you should be comfortable with any of these. Make sure you speak to your broker about the strengths and weaknesses of each carrier. While our rankings were based evenly on the four criteria mentioned at the beginning of the article you may decide that some criteria are more important to you than others. Good luck in your search.

If a full T1 isn't in your budget, you need to consider a fractional t1 line. Why not get all the advantages of T1 even if your not in a market for a full T1? For many people the biggest factor in their decision is reliability and if reliability is critical to the applications you run over your connection you should seriously consider replacing your DSL connection with a fractional T1. DSL is a quick and cost effective method of acquiring high speed bandwidth however it is not intended to support commercial applications or large numbers of users as are T1 connections.

One drawback to fractional T1 service is the price. Even though you won't have a full T1 you will be paying quite a bit more than you did for your DSL connection. This is due to the structure of T1 pricing. A T1 connections is established by providing a "loop" or wire from the users premesis to the CO where the service provider has equipment. Part of the cost of a T1 is the "loop charge" or the monthly rental fee for the wire that is rented from the local phone company. Once the connection reaches the CO it can access the carriers network and reach any destination. This loop is paid in full whether you use a fraction of the available bandwidth or the full 1.5Mbps and therefore your price for a 768Kbps fractional T1 connection will never be half the price of a 1.5mbps full T1 connection.

Although the price reduction is not what you might expect it to be, this may put a T1 in your budget and be a great way to get dedicated service into your building. Once you have fractional service upgrading to full service is easy. Fractional service typically comes in 256Kbps increments from 256Kbps all the way to a full T1 at 1.5Mbps. Find the service that's right for you, but if you are supporting critical services think reliability. Reliability becomes critical when customers or employees depend on your connection for immediate responses. If your customers use your connection to access your databases or your server or the internet then reliability of your connection is critical. If your employees depend on your connections because you host the e-mail server in house or host web servers or ASP type products, your connections is considered critical. A critical connection can be viewed much like a lifeline, without which your business would be negatively impacted.