Business Internet Leased Lines
Thinking about a business internet leased line?
Every day we are having discussions with new and existing customers about their business internet and the impact that slow broadband speed is having on their business. The reality is that as every business carries out more work online (e.g. online sales and marketing, cloud CRM and database use and accounts to name a few) than the finite amount of bandwidth that is available and is becoming squeezed further. Using your current business internet with more cloud and internet based functions at work with the same capacity. It just doesn’t add up.
Many businesses are waiting to BT to provide fibre broadband (‘FTTC’, or ‘Infinity’ as they market it). Unfortunately, BT’s priority is not for business internet. BT are focusing on residential areas where they are able to achieve a high penetration. Waiting for fibre broadband to arrive is crippling industry at the moment. Very few commercial areas have fibre broadband available now, and although it is much faster than standard ADSL broadband, it is still a shared service. ADSL business internet has a ‘contention ratio’ of 20:1 so it is not surprising that your business internet connection will seem slower than ever at certain times.
More and more businesses are realising that there is no alternative than to consider a Dedicated Service. Even a 5Mbps or 10Mbps 1:1 service will give a far higher actual speed than a service advertised as ‘up to 24Mbps’ service shared with 20 other users. The other advantage of Dedicated Services is that you receive the same upload and download speeds. Contended services have a download speed ten times faster than uploads and this will seriously hamper services such as Voice-Over-Internet or sharing data between remote users.
Going back ten to fifteen years, our customers accepted that a phone bill of £500 per month was an essential business expense. A reduction in call costs have resulted in these coming down to less than half now. However, the amount people are willing to spend on their business internet connection has not increased with business demands. We know many £1M+ business owners who spend as much on their home broadband as they do for their business, where ten to fifteen staff are struggling to be online at the same time.
Standard copper ADSL broadband costs in the region of about £30 per month and this is what 90% of businesses have. A lucky few have fibre broadband and are paying approximately £50 per month. A dedicated ‘EFM’ service, giving non-contended, guaranteed service, will cost from about £250 per month, and this is an option businesses have to consider as an essential business tool. The ultimate connection is a fibre optic leased line, which starts as 10Mbps and can be geared up to 100Mbps or even more if necessary. Fibre leased lines start at around £300 pm but costs can vary. You can find out more about these options here.
AT LG Networks we help businesses with telecommunications – internet, data cabling, phone systems and mobiles. We simplify technology using plain English, with one point of contact for all services.
If you would like to know more about the business internet options that are available, get in touch with us.
