Larger organizations will often have higher speed connections. Telephone companies lease dedicated circuits. Cost depends upon speed and distance to the telephone company central office. These have designations like T1 (1.544 mbps), T3 (43.232 mbps), OC3 (155 mbps), OC12 (622 mbps), OC48 (2.5 gbps), and OC192 (9.6 gbps).
In the commercial districts of large cities, metropolitan area Ethernet links are also available. When available, these are generally cheaper and more flexible than leased lines from telephone companies. The setup time is relatively short, link speed can be varied at will, and setup and recurring costs are lower.
High speed terrestrial wireless connections are unusual, and are only available in a few cities. WiMAX may make this alternative more attractive in the future.
Wireless optical transmission at up to 2.5 gbps is available at high cost in some cities.
Organizations in rural areas or developing nations may use very small aperture satellites (VSATs) for connectivity. These are similar to home satellite connections, but the performance and cost of both equipment and service are higher. Transmission rates are often asymmetrical, with downloads up to 30 mbps and uploads of up to 2 mbps. Ground stations cost around $2,000 and latency is relatively high because of the distance of geosynchronous satellites from the earth.
Organizations often negotiate a service level agreement (SLA) with their ISP. An SLA guarantees quality of service (QOS) in terms of guarantees for link speed, latency, availability, etc..