The internet is a reality for today’s businesses. If you’re not on it, you’re not out there. But it’s become more than just an advertising or marketing channel. It’s a routing mechanism for shipping information around the world.
Applications available to businesses in today’s IT world are becoming increasingly sophisticated. What used to be only for specialists, such as video sharing, voice over IP (VoIP) and video conferencing, has become standard fare for many companies.
But with this increasing sophistication comes the requirement for increasingly large data transfer capacity. Way back in the 1980s, when this whole business computing phenomenon was starting out, hard disk capacity was measured in bytes and kilobytes. Nowadays, we’re looking at a million times the capacity (gigabytes), though even that’s not enough and we’re on the threshold of the next step up, at a billion times the capacity of the humble kilobyte (terabytes).
So how do we ship these huge volumes of data out of the door of our business, to Abu Dhabi, Reykjavik and the Coromandel? Basically, we need pipes that can handle the volume, at a reasonable speed.
Richard Hammond advertises super-fast broadband
Mainstream ISPs such as BT and NZ Telecom, bless their cotton socks, are labouring under a hundred and more years of infrastructure. New Zealand’s ex-national carrier has just introduced their super-fast broadband.
Unfortunately, BT in the UK is not quite there, offering somewhat slow business broadband. Today’s businesses need something faster, like leased lines (very expensive) or the various digital subscriber line options (bonded ADSL, SDSL or bonded SDSL).
There are a large number of broadband companies in the market, keeping BT honest and on their toes. There are also many ‘pipe’ options, with a many leased line providers. Leased lines are a good quality option – they are fast, reliable, have huge capacity, but expensive. The good news is that there is increasing business SDSL availability, as this viable alternative becomes more popular.
Best advice: understand what you need now and in the future, and shop around. There are deals to be had out there.
Tags: broadband companies, business broadband, business SDSL, leased lines