So you’ve made the decision to go fibre. But why is that an important step for your business, and what now?
Fibre broadband is the transference of data over thin glass fibres, using light.The preferred standard before fibre used copper cables and electrical current. The reasons fibre is superior are quite technical, but suffice it to say: fibre broadband is the internet on steroids – faster, securer and more reliable.
A boon to every business
Fibre ultimately unlocks the door to a whole new way of doing business.
“The biggest benefit of fibre is a much higher bandwidth, and that’s important for several reasons,” says Rob Lith, director of Connection Telecom. “For one, fibre is pretty much a pre-requisite for cloud computing. Cloud’s great; it keeps you connected to operational resources as well as your colleagues from anywhere, at any time.”
Cloud is also vital for backing up data crucial to business continuity, especially because fibre offers upload speeds that are equivalent to download speeds. Whereas with copper, uploading data is significantly slower in comparison to download speeds, making uploading large quantities of data speedily just about impossible.
“And let’s not forget about technologies like cloud PBX, VoIP and others, which allow for much more flexible, affordable and scalable ways of communicating with colleagues, clients and customers,” points out Lith. And creating a unified customer experience over all touchpoints is a lot easier when voice traffic can be integrated into your CRM or ERP software.
“What’s important is to identify what matters to you as a business – customer experience, security, productivity, and so on – and to look for technologies that can enhance those aspects,” says Connection Telecom’s marketing director, Sacha Matulovich. “I’m willing to bet they’re technologies enabled by the cloud and, in turn, fibre broadband.”
It doesn’t make much sense not to use it
Some of the technologies all businesses can benefit from are cloud collaboration tools. They empower people to join conferences or meetings from the comfort of their home, or to work on documents with others from around the world simultaneously, as well as work more flexible hours and save businesses money. That’s a real boon to work-life balance – increasingly the most important bargaining chip for any business looking to hire new talent.
It’s also the ideal way to boost productivity and reduce downtime, not just because a happier employee is a harder working one, less likely to burn out or be frazzled by pressure, but they’re always available. “Speaking of downtime; fibre is impervious to environmental conditions like poor weather, so you don’t have to worry about downtime nearly as often,” notes Matulovich. “It’s also worth mentioning that faster bandwidth means when someone attempts to join a web conference or tries to stream a video, the internet doesn’t come to a standstill for everyone else in the office.”
Think of fibre broadband as an enabler, a way of doing things better, quicker and cheaper. It’s not that much more expensive than copper internet connections, and is cheaper in many situations. So, why wouldn’t you move over to fibre?