ShopForT1.com today announced the grand launch of the long anticipated Real-Time quote engine designed to give the T1 shopper instant feedback, with 95% accurate loop pricing. Real time T1 prices have not existed until now. Many brokers claim to deliver real time information but the closest anyone has come to real time has been a page that you can check back and see vendors fill in prices the following 48 hours from when you entered your request.

"The real-time shopping model works" commented Adam Edwards, CEO of ShopForT1.com. "The travel industry is a perfect example of how the internet can enable everyday people to access very complicated databases. Now, we are pleased to bring instant gratification to those looking to price T1 lines." Apart from allowing people to research rates, ShopForT1.com also has a number of other unique features; most notably the ability to track leads referred by online affiliates and direct them to one of many part-time "closer" agents for personal care. This functionality allows ShopForT1.com to improve the shopping experience, opens the door for online affiliates to earn residual commissions by driving traffic, and manages professional part-time sales agents from all over the counrty.

"Many people have asked how exactly we figure out T1 pricing, since it is so sensitive to the geographic location of each customer with relation to the carriers' physical equipment. Our T1 Quote software is able to calculate the distance from any location in the continental United States to any of our providers' Points of Presence (POPs). From there, we use proprietary pricing algorithms to convert the distance into a price" commented Patrick Oborn, CTO of ShopForT1.com.

While Dave Letterman may never read this list on his show, we've created a Top 10 list of California T1 Internet Providers. In our review of service providers we considered realiabiltiy, customer support, provisioning and financial stability. In our opinion a top provider of services will have a high rating in each of the catagories. Unfortunately some of the providers we found were regional providers and may not be near you but two of them are so good you may just want to move closer to be on their network!

The top company in our survey was Telepacific. The only downside to this company is the fact that they only offer service in California and Las Vegas. Telepacific received top marks in all four or our categories and is what we recommend most to customers in California. The second carrier in our list was USLEC. Like our fist pick USLEC is a regional player offering services in the south and on the eastern seaboard. USLEC was founded and is run by engineers. These people have a passion for getting it right and keeping their customers happy. Number three on our list is New Edge Networks. New Edge is a national player found predominantly in metro areas. New Edge is large enough to be a strong player but still small enough to treat customers like a small company.

Our number four position goes to Netifice, formerly Epoch. Again, a small Tier 1 player but excellent service nationwide. Number five position goesto ACC Business. Available everywhere in the continental US, ACC used the ATT network exclusively and provides a high level of service. Positions six through ten when in the following order: Telarus, Sprint, Xspedius, PNG, and Megapath. When looking for a reliable provider you should be comfortable with any of these. Make sure you speak to your broker about the strengths and weaknesses of each carrier. While our rankings were based evenly on the four criteria mentioned at the beginning of the article you may decide that some criteria are more important to you than others. Good luck in your search.