The title may have you thinking, “why are they so bullish on fiber internet?” The answer is simple: it’s already transforming the way many of our clients operate, and we want you to discover the same benefits for your business.
These are just a few of the ways that fiber internet will benefit your business.
Superior Speed
First, the typical fiber connection is exponentially faster than the typical cable connection: 10x increases aren’t uncommon for businesses that make this switch. Fiber internet providers are offering business fiber connections as fast as 1000Gbps, vastly outperforming coax connections.
More Reliable Technology
We’ll try not to get too deep in the weeds here, but the technology underlying fiber is more reliable and better for data transmission.
Copper and coaxial connections turn data into electricity and send it over wire. This works fine, but there are distance limits to doing this effectively, and electrical wire also has bandwidth limitations.
Fiber optic cable doesn’t transmit electricity. It transmits pulses of light (via LED or laser). Light travels faster, transmits data longer distances more reliably, and enables higher bandwidth.
When we say that fiber optic is “more reliable,” that isn’t just marketing spin: the actual tech underlying the product is literally more reliable than cable.
SLA-Level Reliability
Fiber networks are generally more stable, and they offer users an experience much more in line with advertised speeds than cable does. That’s why you’ll find providers offering fiber with service level agreements (SLAs) in terms of availability and speed. An SLA is a guarantee on that service from the ISP, and something they can’t offer on other types of connections.
Most fiber connections reach an impressive four nines (99.99%) reliability.
Upload and Download Symmetry
Another massive advantage — especially for business users — is fiber internet’s symmetrical upload and download speeds. On cable networks, the main number you see advertised (“1Gbps”) cover only the download speed. Upload speeds are exponentially lower. This isn’t a big deal for the average home consumer — Netflix downloads plenty and uploads next to nothing.
But businesses often need to do both — especially in the era of cloud services and remote work. In addition, if you have a VOIP phone system like many businesses, good upload speeds are critical for superior call quality. Cable can cripple your cloud productivity, while fiber can supercharge it.
Dedicated Connections
With cable, every connection is a shared connection. This means that if the other businesses on your particular node are cranking through the bandwidth, your availability, speed, and latency might all suffer.
Some fiber connections are shared in a similar way, but because the bandwidth capabilities are 10 to 100 times higher, this matters less.
Also, dedicated fiber connections are available through some ISPs. These are more expensive, but even more reliable, consistently delivering blazing-fast speed with no competition.
Failover Systems
In our cloud-connected era, your business can’t afford to go dark. Failover systems — essentially a backup internet connection that your business can shift over to automatically if your primary connection fails —keep your business operational when the inevitable happens. Whether that’s an ISP outage or a backhoe severing a fiber optic cable, having a failover system in place could be the difference between going dark and continuing to serve customers.
Modern fiber connections make it much easier to set up automatic failover systems without sacrificing the other advantages of moving to fiber.
With all these benefits, the switch to fiber is a no-brainer. Reach out to start the process of upgrading your business’s internet.
