Remember dial up? Back in the early days of the internet our connection was dialed through our telephones which crawled along at a dismal 56kbps. To put that in perspective, Netflix recommends a 3Mbps connection for one standard-quality stream. 3Mbps is equal to 3000kbps; over 50 times quicker than dial up.
Fortunately, connection speeds have taken off since then. According to ISPreview, the UK currently has an average home broadband download speed of 50.4Mbps and an upload speed of 9.8Mbps. However, business internet needs a bit more juice than that.
A More Digital World
As our world continues to become more digital, so do our businesses. We rely more and more on the online world to ensure we’re able to get our work done. Whether that’s storing data in the cloud, connecting over Microsoft Teams or using the internet to sell our goods and services, we live in a hyper digital time.
That’s why your business internet connection has never been more important.
Why You Need Good Business Connectivity
When we think about our residential internet connection, we tend to mainly focus on the download speed. After all, that’s where most of us see the repercussions of a lackluster connection. Netflix buffering, online games lagging, downloads taking forever. We never think about our upload speed because we’re rarely uploading large enough volumes of data for it to become a concern.
That isn’t the case with your business internet connection.
More than ever before, businesses are using cloud-based applications to streamline their processes. Instead of hosting bloated and space-consuming applications internally, many businesses will host them online. As well as this, VoIP, cloud storage and many business management programs all require a sizable chunk of your bandwidth.
Whilst this eases the burden on your storage space, it means that you’ll need a connection that can handle it. A strong and reliable ethernet connection will be able to guarantee you symmetrical speeds. Your connection is symmetrical when your download and upload speed are equal. This gives you the guarantee that you’re not being shortchanged on your vital upload capability.
Take a moment to think about how much of your IT systems, the core systems that keep your business ticking over, rely on a strong and reliable connection. Businesses should look to increase their speeds as much as possible in order to allow their operations to continue uninterrupted. Even if your current requirements don’t need superfast connectivity just yet, you should be looking ahead to future proof your business.
