Let us get straight to the point here, business fibre is definitely more expensive than residential fibre but for good reasons…
Imagine an internet connection as a garden hosepipe. If you need to move lots of water quickly then you need a wide pipe. Conversely, if you need a small steady supply of water you need a smaller pipe with a steady flow. This is the concept of bandwidth. Then comes the rate at which the water gets moved through the pipe, this can be thought of as your connection speed. Data passes down the fibre as does water through a hosepipe. Now we can start thinking of the differences between home and business needs.
A business generally needs a more consistent connection to allow for many users uploading and downloading items at the same time. A home may well have high demands for either upload or download but in general there is not a large number of people in any given home. A business is also more likely to want a connection that is consistent as business hours can be long, or even 24/7. A home is more likely to have bursts of time when download usage increases. For example, in the evenings when different household members are consuming movies and music.
The other difference is that homes share a connectivity point, sometimes called a “neighborhood gateway”. This means that your home fibre connection is not dedicated as it is shared with other users. One way to think about this is like a chain of connections. Each chain may lead to a performance issue in the next part of the chain and the usage of any one part of the chain may impact the chain either up the line or down the line. A business connection is normally a dedicated gateway, which is why both speed and reliability should be more optimal and hence more costly for a business connection.
Business fibre vs home fibre?
So, in general terms the business fibre requirement is different from the following perspectives:
- More users at any given time
- A need for a consistent service 12 – 24 hours a day
- A more consistent service, no down time to avoid costly operational down time
- A tight service level agreement for when things go down or are not running at optimal speed
Put simply, a business has higher performance considerations and requires better terms of customer service for when things go wrong. This is why business fibre costs more than residential fibre.
Speed of business fibre?
Choosing the right speed of connection for your business is a tricky dilemma. You can read more about business fibre connection speeds in our recent fibre connection speeds for business article.
Business fibre service & scalability
As you have probably seen, you often have a choice of a few or many ISPs (Internet Service Providers). The keyword in this acronym is the word service!
So, if you are going to be paying more for service support and reliability it is key that you ask some hard questions of your service provider.
Here are two key questions or considerations:
Can you see a copy of the service level agreement? This should clearly state what happens when you experience down time and what steps can be taken when you notice a deterioration in either speed or consistency of connection.
How will the chosen package vary based on usage and your business requirements over time? Your business will hopefully be growing and as a result, your needs for both upload and download may vary. Whether this is an upward or temporary downward change, your service provider should be able to flex your commercial agreement to deal with such variances. Just be sure to ask them what happens when you need to change your requirements.
Business fibre from Mytelnet
Fibre is not just fibre, it is the enabler behind your business communication, sales, payment gateways, research and so much more. Mytelnet is equipped to understand what pain points your business has combined with the mission critical elements to build a successful business and from there, we will guide you on what fibre service you require.
Mytelnet can help you with flexible and low-cost access solutions from fibre to microwave or LTE and optimised Wi-Fi and network environments.
Contact Mytelnet and be a part of the communication revolution.