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Discover the Ultimate Business Connectivity for Your Growing Company

Business IT Solutions | VoIP & Connectivity
Contact Us

Discover the Ultimate Business Connectivity for Your Growing Company

Business IT Solutions | VoIP & Connectivity
Contact Us

Exploring your business connectivity options

When starting a new company, moving offices or increasing number of staff, your business connectivity needs to be carefully considered. Most businesses will have the following services using the internet:

  • VoIP Phone System
  • Email
  • LoB (Line of Business Applications)
  • Endpoint Protection
  • File Sharing & Communication (Teams, Slack, OneDrive)
  • Web browsing
  • Remote Monitoring & Management (IT Support tool)
The required speed of your connection is dependent on the connections you require. It’s imperative to list all devices, including mobiles, to identify the required speed for the connection to be stable. As a result, this will allow your team to be productive.

We find a lot of companies don’t know what connection speed or type to get. Therefore, many companies rely 100% on small business IT support or the first ISP on Google. Our advice to business owners, or whoever is responsible, is to ensure they do their research. Technology can impact the business’s performance which in turn will impact the profit margin at some stage. This could be from voice quality issues on the phone to simply not being able to provide the customer experience you want to deliver.

Technology affects customer service in both positive and negative ways. The right technology is crucial to building and sustaining a business. If you are not improving your customers’ experience then one of your competitors will be.

Let’s start off with some key terms:

Business Broadband

This term can mean a connectivity type using Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) like ADSL or VDSL and even Fibre. The DSL lines use the existing telephone infrastructure to send/receive data which is then split using a DSL splitter. We have seen this term used a lot with fibre packages. However, many of the packages are fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) which can be the green box locally in your area and then copper directly to the business.

FTTC provides a slower overall speed than FTTP but it does come at a reduced price.

FTTP can do speeds up to 1Gbps, but does come at a premium. Only certain areas provide it and installation can take some time.

Broadband is not a dedicated connection. Multiple companies can be using the same connection in the area as contention could decrease the download/upload speed.

Leased Line

Dedicated connectivity between the local exchange, fixed speed for download and upload without anyone else sharing your connection. If you are a business which can afford a leased line, we would always suggest it. This way you know that you have guaranteed speed without other businesses interfering. Furthermore, this can help when using VOIP with a lot of concurrent calls. Our team here at Hero IT Support will always be able to tell you what your options are on this topic.

Ethernet Over FTTC

Similar to FTTC the last mile from the local exchange (green box) uses the existing copper cabling to the business and the fibre backbone. It provides uncontested bandwidth, so you don’t have to worry about other users in your area.

The benefit of this over a leased line is the cost. It can be up to 4x cheaper than a leased line but the maximum speed can be significantly lower.

Mobile

We use mobile internet on a daily basis via our mobile phones. 3G, 4G and now 5G use a wireless type of internet connectivity. There are still quite a lot of areas in the UK where fibre is still unavailable. Therefore, 3G, 4G and 5G can be used as failover options if your main hard-wired connection were to go down.

If you require a cost-effective failover on a pay-as-you-go basis, mobile is a great cost-effective solution. In addition, if your office is in an area where you can only get ADSL/VDSL, we recommend checking to see what coverage you have with each network.

Business Connectivity Recommendation

We would always recommend a leased line solution for a business. Being online during working hours can be crucial for a business but realistically there are restraints. Depending on your requirements, if you’re a business with <20 staff using VOIP and emails only then you could get away with EoFTTC. However, we would strongly advise against any business broadband package because of the contested and random download/upload speeds.

Mobile should really be considered as a failover when choosing on your business connectivity options. If your business package does not come with a failover provided then we would recommend a SIM only package.

There are many different types which we haven’t covered. So if you would like to learn more or discuss your business connectivity, please get in touch today.

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