Adapting to technological change is part of running any business. The innovations that start out as tech nerds tinkering with circuits and project boxes become foundational parts of tomorrow’s tech. If your business isn’t keeping up with the most important technological advances, there’s a good chance you’ll lose out to a competitor who is.
That’s why getting a fiber broadband connection has become a newly urgent priority for many businesses. A fiber connection provides more reliability, more bandwidth, more speed, and many other big improvements that can give businesses an edge. Consider these five upsides of fiber internet for your business.
1. Your business’s internet connection will be more reliable.
Fiber internet may be new to most people, but it’s far from unproven or unreliable. In fact, fiber is generally more dependable than traditional coax cable internet. Fiber is resistant to electromagnetic interference, superior in harsh weather, and doesn’t slow down during peak demand hours.
Why is this so important for a business? Because just about every business needs a consistent and reliable internet connection. Businesses like coffee shops, where customers expect to have Wi-Fi, are an obvious example. Functions like credit card processing also typically run through the internet, so an outage can result in unhappy customers who can’t check out.
But no matter your business’s size or industry, internet service is key for everything from payroll processing to vendor communication, and downtime can be incredibly costly. That’s why the reliability of business fiber optic internet is so significant as it builds you a more resilient network so that you can keep the constant data exchange of modern commerce.
2. You’ll get the benefits of a lower latency connection.
Many of today’s most important cloud-based business technologies require low latency connections. Video conferencing is a prime example, and it’s one that anyone who has stumbled through a jittering, buffering Google Hangout can attest to. But any app that provides real-time collaboration through the cloud can experience poor performance on a high latency connection.
For modern businesses that use cloud services like SaaS applications and VoIP phone service, the vastly improved upload speeds of fiber broadband are crucial for keeping latency low. Latency can have significant costs in terms of lost productivity and unhappy clients. And, again, look to the future—even industries that don’t use SaaS much today could be one technological breakthrough away from a sudden shift toward the cloud.
Broadband is the most popular form of internet connection, and it provides a high-speed internet connection. Broadband deals in my area are not hard to find. All you need to do is search for them on the internet.
Fiber broadband is a game-changer because it offers a benefit known as symmetric speeds. Whereas cable internet still provides reasonably fast download speeds for most users, cable upload speeds are often just a fraction of the download speed. Fiber provides equally fast speeds in both directions, which makes it essential for robust remote productivity.
3. Fiber optic connections will be simpler to upgrade in the future.
As your business grows, your internet bandwidth and speed needs likely will, too. Fiber broadband will make it easy to upgrade if and when your business requires a boost in bandwidth. That’s because most fiber cables currently only use a small percentage of their capacity. Right now, most businesses simply don’t need the highest speeds that fiber can offer.
However, as technology advances and businesses grow, you’ll need internet service that can accommodate an increased amount of traffic and range of applications. Fiber networks, with their almost unlimited capacity, will offer big advantages. In fact, so-called dark fiber networks are already widely built out in some places, with huge amounts of unused capacity existing on the network, ready to serve future demand.
4. Fiber internet is more secure than cable internet.
The constant stream of data breach headlines should be a reminder to every business that data security is paramount. A data breach can be incredibly costly even for a successful business. For a fledgling one, it can be ruinous. This is another area in which fiber broadband offers performance improvements over cable.
Many of the traditional techniques that cybercriminals use to access coax cable internet simply don’t work with fiber technology. A fiber line can’t be electronically tapped the same way that a cable internet connection can, which means your data (and your customers’ data) are safer and more secure on a fiber line.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that your business can abandon precautions in other areas, like securing your Wi-Fi networks and using a VPN. Data security best practices are still just that. But fiber does seriously reduce some common threats, and that’s something that any responsible business owner can get behind.
5. Getting fiber broadband installed is a relatively quick and simple process.
So long as fiber is available in your area, getting it installed is fairly painless. Installation time varies by the size of your facility, but a small building usually takes less than a day. Your downtime should be relatively minimal, as long as you’ve taken appropriate steps like purchasing a fiber-compatible router.
An ISP technician or team will come to your business and install one of the several types of fiber connection. They’ll outfit your building with one or more optical network terminals (ONTs) that will translate fiber optic signals into electrical ones that your devices can read. In areas prone to harsh weather, the technician might use an outdoor box, such as a NEMA 6P enclosure, to protect your ONT from extreme conditions that could damage it.
Depending on how your neighborhood’s fiber infrastructure is set up, your connection might be fiber to the premises (FTTP), fiber to the curb (FTTC), or fiber to the node (FTTN). While fiber to the premises is the fastest and most desirable, all of these options can provide a significant boost in speed and performance.
Fiber optic internet is a smart investment in the future of your business. A slightly higher investment now will almost certainly pay off in the future in the form of faster, more reliable, more secure internet.