They must decide which broadband solution will enable the most services and the greatest economic advantage for the lowest cost. LRE extends Ethernet over single-pair wiring at distances of up to 5,000 feet. The result is a cost-effective, highly available, and rapidly deployable technology that provides needed bandwidth to MTUs. The Current State of Access Today, MTUs connect to the Internet through a variety of slow, cumbersome, or costly technologies. While enough to send simple e-mail, these links are good for little else.
Web access is painfully slow, and even a straight text document can be time-consuming to download.
As a result, efficiency suffers whenever employees link to the Internet through dial-up. At rates of up to 128 Kbps, ISDN can help speed the download of simple text documents. However, it remains far too slow for most other uses, such as quick access to files that contain large graphics. In addition, ISDN cannot support most multimedia files, especially those featuring video. ISDN can also be very expensive, because users pay for each minute of use.