The Need For Speed – Fiber Internet

It’s not all about the employee count, it’s about selecting the best internet speed and quality needed to support your business operations. So as your business continues to grow – it’s important to understand what speed and internet option is best for you to keep your business moving forward. 

What You Need -- Type of speeds

When you consider the right speed for your company, it’s not so much about what other businesses are doing – it’s about how your business conducts business. 

The best speed for your company depends on your specific business, such as the number of employees you have, your bandwidth needs, and the number of cloud-based applications you need to access, as well as your plans to grow.

Fiber internet can achieve speeds that are hundreds of times faster than traditional internet service, i.e. copper internet, with options that range from 5 Mbps to 100 Gbps. 

Symmetrical Speeds

A key advantage of fiber internet is that it’s symmetrical -- you get the same high speed for download and uploads, while other internet connection types have upload speeds that are typically about one-tenth of the download speed.

Fiber optic symmetrical speeds can be a beneficial piece as you consider speeds and growing your business. Your upload speed -- the rate that data is transferred from your computer to the internet -- means employees can work more productively, with ease of access to cloud-based services, large files uploads and video conferencing. 

Speed Tiers

Internet speed, sometimes referred to as “bandwidth,” is essentially how much data can be uploaded or downloaded in a second.

Basically if two people are downloading files at the same time on your network, the download speed is halved for each of them. That’s one reason why providers will assess your speed needs based on the number of employees you have and how much data is being processed and managed daily.

There are a variety of fiber internet speed tiers to accommodate business needs and sizes, and providers can work with your current needs and a plan to expand bandwidth as you grow.

If you have 10 or more employees, a recommended speed is between 150–500 Mbps. This range would accommodate website hosting and heavy WiFi traffic, says a blog posted on business.org.

But as you grow and add more employees, increase the number of large file transfers, etc., you’ll want to upgrade and shoot for speed tiers between 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps.

“For example, if you operate a call center with more than 30 employees on the phone and internet simultaneously, you’ll need to pull out the big guns and opt for a 1 Gbps, or 1,000 Mbps, plan,” writes Brooke Hayes on business.org.

Your internet is being shared among desktops, laptops, VoIP phone systems and more, and employees are also connecting their smartphones, tablets, etc. So there is a constant demand for more bandwidth. 

“Businesses need to make sure they have enough bandwidth to support all of these devices. A fiber connection delivers this support,” the business.org blog says. 

The Importance of Scalability

Your growth timetable will help dictate your future needs. But it’s important to have enough bandwidth now to support the increments of growth along the way.

The good news is that fiber internet makes it easy to increase your capacity because of its ease of “scalability.”  

Fiber cables are much smaller and lighter than copper, so it makes for fast upgrades when you’re ready to add speed -- you don’t have to lay new fiber to expand an existing network.

And that gives you the opportunity to decide on a fiber internet speed that works now, with the knowledge you can easily increase your capacity as your business grows.