Is it really true that there is no high speed Internet in your area?
Working for a cloud computing company that offers high speed Internet, I am often out with friends or meeting with customers when I hear the sentence, “Oh, we can’t get high speed Internet in our area!”. And it’s not just them, the media and government are constantly going on about how it’s affecting businesses in rural areas.
But is it really as big an issue as everyone makes out?
Then again, there was a popular British-based car manufacturer on TV recently, who said they were unable to get sufficient speeds with their broadband for their rural HQ, which made it difficult to compete on a global scale.
So there are two questions here to evaluate – Do UK business require high speed Internet? And, is there really no high speed Internet in their area?
Let’s start with the first question. As businesses are increasingly communicating digitally, and often need to share or send files of substantial sizes, there IS an urgent need for high speed Internet across the whole of the UK. Modern technology has made the marketplace truly global and accessible, and cloud solutions are allowing staff to work remotely from any location.
Businesses without these capabilities are now clearly working at a disadvantage to competitors that have higher speed Internet. Once again a sentence I’ve heard numerous times springs to mind, “My Internet went down and I lost £XXXX of business”. So does that suggest the businesses with fast internet have already set a value in business terms for their service? Most likely, yes.
OK, so we need high speed Internet. But what if it’s not available in your area?
Actually, this is not always the whole truth. Broadband is just one type of Internet service, when in fact there are many different types available to businesses and the public. These range from 4G services – available through aerials using the cellular network – to leased lines, which are dedicated lines in the road. What traditionally would have been really expensive is now a lot less than you may think.
As an example: A customer of ours required fast Internet access to support their business of about forty people. Their existing broadband speed was poor (c. 1 to 2 Mbps) and so we evaluated all the options available to them. This confirmed there was no viable ADSL broadband coverage and so we considered an Ethernet leased line as an alternative. The results were positively surprising. A 100 Mbps fibre connection using 20 Mbps of bandwidth was available for just over £300 per month.
Now, don’t get me wrong, that is a sizeable chunk of money when you consider “fiber to cabinet” broadband typically costs close to £50pm. However, you can increase the leased line speed far beyond that of standard broadband which is great for growing businesses. Most importantly, the lines have a 4 hour Service Level Agreement (SLA) which means if it’s not working at 9am, it will be up by lunch or you start getting your money back. In comparison, standard broadband can take up to a week to recover, which is a long time to wait for business critical connections!
So my advice to you is: if your business needs high-performing Internet to remain competitive and you require speeds which can cope with your business growth, spending that little bit more money may offer you long term rewards, security against downtime and will allow you to operate better in your marketplace.
Don’t just look at broadband – look at all your options. If you have any questions or want advice, feel free to contact us online or call 01225 776 555.
