There are many ways for businesses to get connected. Growing businesses need cost-effective Internet and telephone service plans to survive in today's competitive economical market.

Luckily, there have been ongoing innovations in the telecommunications industry and businesses have their choice of connections for office phone and Internet lines.

There are many confusing terms for the different types of connection lines. The acronyms OC3, OC12, OC48, OC192, T1, and T3, are much more "techy" than the true names for connection lines: digital cable or fiber optic lines.

This article will focus on the OC3 connection. OC3 means Optical Carrier-3. OC3 is a 155 mbps fiber optic line used for large businesses. Mpbs stands for megabits per second and is a measure of bandwidth, or the total amount of data that can flow through within the OC3 connection specified amount of time.

OC3 connections are useful for businesses that have spread to different cities or even globally. These connections allow a large amount of information to be shared at high speed. Smaller businesses normally lease T1 or T3 lines which are adequate at serving 5-100 employees at one or more locations. An OC3 connection makes it possible for larger businesses to expand their digital network beyond a set geographic area.

OC3 Connection versus Other Connection

OC3 connections have a feature called point to point access. This means that there are multiple wireless access points that can exchange data. Up to 255 people can send audio, video, voice, and multimedia files from access point to access point.

This is a viable solution for businesses that have found their T1 and T3 connections clogged with data which slows down or even crashes databases. T1 and T3 connections have been around since the 1960s and were used originally to transmit date by basic telephone.

A T1 connection is A 1.544 Mbps fiber optic line. The T3 is quicker at 44.736 Mbps. Both have been upgraded since their inception and are still popular connections for small businesses. However, T1 and T3 lines do not have the bandwidth to serve larger businesses. Many are finding this out the hard way and upgrading to higher bandwidth connections.

An OC3 connection has many benefits and these benefits come at a high price. Service can be between $15,000 and $100,000 monthly depending on the size of the business, number of access points, and amount of data shared. The price is right for many growing businesses.