Broadband service provider Speakeasy today announced a new set of services for small businesses, intended to let them cost-effectively add bandwidth above the traditional T-1 speeds.

Using Juniper Networks E-series and M-series routers, Speakeasy is offering bonding of T-1 lines to deliver data speeds up to 6 Megabits per second to businesses with up to 100 employees.

“There is a growing need that has been unmet in the small business segment for multi megabit data services,” said Bruce Chatterley, Speakeasy's president and CEO. “The gap is in what is available is between a T-1 and a fractional DS-3. The cost difference between those two is dramatic – you can go from $500 and $4500 a month. But small businesses today don’t have a choice. We are attacking that segment and giving small businesses the ability to add bandwidth cost-effectively.”

Speakeasy is using the Juniper technology to offer bonded T-1 links, initially up to four at a time but eventually up to nine, and to deliver Quality of Service capabilities to support VoIP, and offer Service Level Agreements for 99.999% reliability.

Speakeasy, which targets high-end residential as well as small business customers, has added 14,000 small businesses to its customer rolls in the past two years, Chatterley said. In addition, most of its consumer customers are SOHO users or teleworkers, he added. Bandwidth demand is going up for small businesses, particularly as they try to integrate their voice and data services onto an IP offering.

“If you are a small business with 20 employees and you are running your business on a T-1, you might be okay, doing Web surfing, etc., depending on what kind of business you are in,” he said. “As soon as you do things such as adding 20 seats of VoIP, you absolutely run out of bandwidth. In addition, some businesses have a need for bandwidth, because of the nature of their business – some are contributors or users of content on the Internet.”

Customers can add bandwidth as needed, or even take it away. In addition, Chatterley said, if there is a T-1 failure, the other bonded T-1 or T-1s continue to operate and rebonding happens automatically when service is restored.