Uniform bounds on the 1-norm of the inverse of lower triangular Toeplitz matrices

A uniform bound on the 1-norm is given for the inverse of a lower triangular Toeplitz matrix with non-negative monotonically decreasing entries whose limit is zero. The new bound is sharp under certain specified constraints. This result is then employed to throw light upon a long standing open problem posed by Brunner concerning the convergence of the one-point collocation method for the Abel equation. In addition, the recent conjecture of Gauthier et al. is proved.