What Does Internet Service Cost?

Local Loop Costs
In general, providers do NOT include local loop costs in their quoted monthly recurring charge. Typically, you contract with your local telephone company for the necessary line from your office to the provider point of presence. This is not an insignificant additional expense. It will typically be half again as much as the port charge. Since some providers DO include the local loop charges in the port charge, you do need to ascertain whether it is included when comparing prices. Broadly, a 10-mile local loop at T-1 speeds seems to run in the neighborhood of $500 to $600 monthly right now. Frame Relay connections tend to be less expensive, but can suffer in efficiency and additional congestion. Often, the ISP will manage the local loop ordering and installation process for you, but it almost always involves a custom quote on the additional cost.

Incidentals
There are a number of small but important items necessary to complete your connection. Domain name registration, for example, typically carries a one-time fee of $100 to register your company domain name (i.e. Boardwatch.com.) for the first two-years and a $50 annual renewal fee. The provider typically maintains a domain name server and forwards e-mail to you. You may want a number of POP e-mail boxes maintained on the server so that you do not have to run your own mail server, for example. If you want a Usenet news feed, this may or may not incur additional charges. Most providers are now hosting web pages for customers on provider equipment, usually for a fee and some even offer design services.

Installation Time
Incredibly, in a world of instant networked communication, it can take 3 to 8 weeks to set up a high- speed connection to the Internet. Check to see average installation time from date of signed contract.

Network Operations Center
Despite all assurances of reliability you may hear, we've never heard of anyone on the Internet who did not encounter periodic service outages. How you reach your provider and what they do in response in the event of outage is a critical element to consider. A 24-hour network operations center manned and capable of getting your link back up with a simple phone call from you is a huge plus. If you get voice mail and pager procedures when your network is down, you'll not likely be a happy Internet camper.