What types of Ethernet connectivity are available?

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Your Ethernet Options

Ethernet is enterprise-grade broadband internet technology. The popularity of Ethernet has grown over the last few years since businesses began using business-critical cloud applications in earnest.

The internet is worldwide, switching data packets over the network. Ethernet delivers those data packets as the carrier, within a smaller network; usually across one or a few sites. Unlike Broadband, Ethernet was designed for businesses, not the residential market. Its key advantage lies in its use of dedicated high-capacity fibre optic lines.

Ethernet services are high-speed, dedicated, uncontended broadband services which means they are not shared with any other businesses and have guaranteed bandwidth and uptime, synchronous speeds and SLA’s which make it a solid selection for most businesses.

Signs you need Ethernet

  • The majority of your business applications are cloud-based.
  • You want to use SIP Trunks and/or a Hosted Phone System.
  • You have been experiencing internet downtime.
  • You have been slow download/uploads.
  • Your business has more than one site.
  • Your business in an area of poor connectivity such as a rural location.

What is an Uncontended service?

When a service provider says a broadband circuit is ‘uncontended’, it means is a dedicated internet connection and you don’t have to share bandwidth with others. If you didn’t have an uncontended service, you’d likely lose bandwidth and slow down your productivity at busy times.

What is Synchronous Service?

If you see this next to the Ethernet service, that means you get the same upload and download speeds. Asynchronous is where the service bandwidth is higher weighted on the download compared to the upload.

Ethernet Options 

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.

BT are phasing out the use of copper cables in 2025, so SOGEA will replace FTTC which currently uses copper cables (alongside fibre) to deliver connectivity. SoGEA provides a broadband solution using the existing fibre/copper network, where fibre to the premises (FTTP) is not yet available.

SoGEA is using an established network without the addition of a phone line so the chance of interference or an unstable connection is lower.

It is essential that the porting of any existing phone numbers is completed before the service is switched to SoGEA, or they’ll be lost.

Since you’ll be only paying for your broadband connection, your monthly costs will generally be lower as you don’t have phone line rental costs anymore.

Discover how upgrading from FTTC to Fibre Ethernet helped improved Stressline's buiness operations

View our Case Study

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.

Fibre Ethernet

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).

​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.

​Ethernet Flex 1Gbps

As a City Fibre Champion, we are able to offer the competitive Ethernet Flex 1Gbps solution. It is unique in the sense that you are guaranteed 200Mbps up and down but you can ‘flex’ and get up to 1Gbps burst at no extra cost.

Ethernet flex is synchronous which means you get the same upload and download speed.

It’s also on demand bandwidth which means you don’t need to submit a portal request. Even better, it’s unlimited usage.

Benefits of Ethernet

  • Dedicated, uncontended bandwidth – Ethernet has high availability and low latency connectivity.

  • 24/7 monitoring and helpdesk – Immediate response to any issues and ensure consistency in performance.

  • Maximise productivity – With uncontended bandwidth, you can increase productivity as you can be assured that you always have access to essential business applications and files.

  • High-Bandwidth connectivity – We can deliver up to 10Gbps connection using fibre optic technologies

  • Improve site-to-site connectivity – An ethernet connection is essential if you are looking to improve site-to-site connectivity.

  • Service Level Agreement – We offer competitive SLAs to cover delivery, performance, availability and fix times.

  • Resilient failover – We offer a resilient failover by ensuring there is a failover at your premises and resilient network links via DSL (ADSL and FTTC) /4G / Ethernet (FTTC / EFM /Fibre (R2 link).

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