Broadband has become crucial to the day-to-day operations of every business; however, most businesses are always looking at ways to become more productive and in turn, more profitable. Business Broadband is one such way.
You can increase your productivity if you are experiencing the following:
- Do your video conferencing facilities keep failing?
- Are you uploading videos or large documents?
- Clicking that send/receive button to update your emails with a little bit of anger?
- Are you waiting for documents to download?
Over a year, Business broadband can save you more than 100 hours of working time.
Home Broadband vs Business Broadband
We like to use a motorway analogy to describe the difference between home and business broadband. For a visual explanation, click on our video.
Home Broadband is like a motorway, you have a speed limit but sometimes with the amount of traffic, you get held up it slows you down, sometimes, stopping. Business Broadband is like a toll road, less likely to be clogged up and you can do your full speed but you pay a little bit extra.
We differentiate between the two for a reason. As technology progresses and as your business grows, the standard home broadband won’t be able to keep up with your needs.
Broadband speed is the main issue people prefer business broadband but there are a few other benefits to consider such as having a Static IP address. An IP address is a unique number that identifies the location of your computer on the internet, which allows it to communicate with other computers.
A static IP address means that you are assigned a fixed, permanent address that is unique to you and will never change. Most importantly of all, this means you will be able to access your computer from anywhere in the world via remote access. Other pros include the ability to host your own website and conduct VoIP calls or other web-based services.
I’m convinced! What type of Business Broadband?
There are several different types of business broadband and it is dependant on your area to what you have available to you. Please do contact us to see what is available to you (this is free!)
These are the most popular types of business broadband:
ADSL connections – traditionally, one of the most common types of broadband connectivity businesses used to connect to the internet however this is starting to be outstripped by Fibre broadband (FTTC/FTTP). We provide both ADSL Max – which offers download speeds of up to 7 Mbps with upload speeds of up to 800K – and ADSL2+, which boasts download speeds of as high as 16 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 1.5MB.
Fibre Broadband (FTTC / FTTP) - one of the main benefits of fibre broadband is that it provides faster download and upload speeds – which could make it ideal for all companies that require a fast and stable connection.
Speeds of up to 76Mbps for downloads and 19Mbps for uploads are provided by an FTTC Fibre Broadband connection and FTTP Fibre Broadband provides bandwidths of up to 1Gbps for downloads and 50Mbps for uploads. Both options make sharing files easier and allow users to connect with remote workers and regional offices via video conferencing.
Fibre Ethernet is an Ethernet Over Fibre service, the connection provides high-speed ethernet bandwidth from 10Mbps to 10Gbps delivered as Ethernet over fibre optic lines. Fibre Ethernet uses bearers. Bearers are the bandwidth size of the available circuit, it’s the maximum speed that the circuit can go up to.
With Fibre Ethernet you can get 100Mbps bearers and add on block of 10Mbps, 1Gbps bearers and add on blocks of 100Mbps up to 500Mbps then after 1Gbps or 10Gbps bearers that you can add on blocks of 1Gbps. With Fibre Ethernet, you are guaranteed uncontended, high bandwidth, uptime and a Service Level Agreement (SLA).
Ethernet Flex 1Gbps
As a City Fibre Champion, we are able to offer the competitive Ethernet Flex 1Gbps solution. It is an extremely affordable solution that even gives you the ability to get bandwidth, on-demand for no extra cost. You are guaranteed 200Mbps both up and down, 1Gbps burst at no extra cost, Unlimited usage.
Single Order Generic Ethernet Access (SoGEA)
SoGEA stands for Single Order Generic Ethernet Access. Usually, you’d install a phone line with broadband but with SOGEA, you have broadband without the need for an underlying voice access product whilst offering speeds up to 80Mbps. SoGEA is offered at the same data rates as FTTC broadband. It delivers the same performance and has the same geographic availability. The only difference is the need for a phone line has been removed.
You can get contended and uncontended services with SOGEA. The bandwidth is asynchronous, however with SOGEA Ethernet you can have an uncontended synchronous 20Mbps / 20Mbps service, but this is dependent on your distance from the street cab.
Converged Ethernet Options
There are several choices when it comes to Ethernet and what you want it to support, you can choose to have Ethernet Data only, Ethernet Voice Only (used in conjunction with SIP Trunks and Hosted Phone Systems), or Converged Ethernet (Voice, Data and using SIP and a Hosted Phone System.)
Converged Ethernet is the fully managed variant of standard Ethernet and combines both Voice and Data on a single high-speed connection prioritising all voice traffic to guarantee the number of concurrent calls required and quality, without degradation of the service during periods when traffic usage on your circuit could be in high utilisation.
With Converged Ethernet you get dedicated, uncontented, guaranteed bandwidth speeds and SLA’s.
The Future of Business Broadband
We recently attended a conference called Comms Vision and the essence of that conference was talking about connectivity, particularly the future of broadband. It seems that FTTP will soon become the new standard of business broadband, therefore if you were able to get FTTP, that is certainly the option we would recommend to you.
Connectivity Checker
Use our connectivity checker to see which of these solutions are available for your business.
Top 5 reasons to invest in Business Broadband
Aside from your static IP address, here are our further Top 5 reasons to invest!
- Support – When you sign up to a business broadband package you are able to receive extra levels of technical support. Should something go wrong, you can get back up and running quickly. With an enhanced care level you will be ahead of anyone else when it comes to getting a problem fixed.
- Contention Ratio – With your standard home broadband you are likely to be sharing the server with lots of other people and at peak times, this is going to slow you down!
- Speed – A lower contention ratio also means a faster connection. We don’t enforce traffic management, unlike other providers and we don’t artificially slow down your connection. Your higher connection speed ratio means pages load faster, emails send quicker and IP phone systems run smoothly.
- Downloads – You will be offered unlimited download and upload allowances. Thanks to your higher connection speed, any uploads and downloads are going to be faster too!
- Security – Your business broadband package will provide enhanced security features, features that the standard broadband will not offer.