10 reasons to switch to fiber internet
About 2,000 years ago, the Romans were probably pretty pleased with themselves when they invented lead pipes to carry water from one place to another, immediately ending the dominance of the incumbent technology, buckets and casks.
You can think of fiber internet in a very similar way; fiber optic cables are, to all intents and purposes, ‘pipes’ that convey phone calls, emails, video, sound and other forms of data around the world in seconds.
Fiber internet carries information by sending coded beams of light through extremely fine glass or plastic fibers that are typically less than a tenth of the thickness of a human hair. Each fiber can carry as many as 25,000 phone calls, so a fiber optic cable containing a hundred or more fibers can carry several millions of phone calls.
Fiber optics were first applied practically in the 1950s, when they were used in endoscopes, medical instruments used to look deep inside the body without having to open it up. By the 1960s, fiber optics were being used to transmit telephone calls at the speed of light - 299,792,458 meters per second, to be precise.
Fiber optic cables are now the chief means of conveying information because they possess three major advantages over the copper wires previously used:
- Less ‘attenuation’ or signal loss:With fiber optic cables, data travels approximately ten times further before it needs to be amplified, making it simpler and cheaper to operate and maintain.
- Zero interference: Copper cables suffer from ‘crosstalk’ - electromagnetic interference - but fiber optic cables don’t ‘leak’, and therefore don’t suffer from interference; information is transmitted with much better signal quality and much more reliably.
- Greater bandwidth: Fiber optic cables can carry much more data than copper cables of the same diameter.
Most home fiber internet is fiber-to-the-node (FTTN), which is when fiber optic cables are laid up to the nearest street cabinet, and then copper wire is used for what is known as the ‘last mile’ - the distance from the cabinet to the customer’s home, which means it loses speed and capacity over this distance.
However, some home fiber internet and most business fiber internet is fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP), or ‘pure fiber’ which is when fiber optic cables are laid all the way to the building in question, meaning there is no loss of speed or capacity over the last mile. This type of fiber internet is referred to as being ‘futureproof’ because it’s data rate is limited by other equipment, meaning speed improvements are anticipated as that equipment is upgraded.
While you won’t see fiber optic cables anywhere, due to them being laid under roads and fields, and even in oceans, they now account for over 99 percent of all international communications traffic, and 99 percent of the total mileage of the internet.
Many businesses in our now connected world simply couldn’t function without fiber internet, but the question is, is it worth your business making the switch? Here are ten reasons why it is.
1. Reliability
As mentioned previously, the problem of electromagnetic interference that copper wire cables suffer from has been eradicated by fiber optic cables; there is no crosstalk between individual fibers or cables, which means information passes from one point to another with no distortion - and much, much faster too.
Primus Dedicated Internet uses fiber optic cables to offer your business guaranteed symmetrical bandwidth, which means the upload speeds you get will be as fast as the download speeds of 10Gbps.
2. Scalability
If your business is facing the happy predicament of needing to expand rapidly, you may find that expansion takes your business beyond the capabilities of its existing data connection. This need not be the case with fiber internet, which can be upgraded accordingly.
You can avoid any such headaches with Primus Business Internet, as you can upgrade your DSL Internet plan from 6Mbps to 50MBps or your Cable Internet plan from 15 Mbps to 60Mbps as your business expands.
3. Stability
Fiber internet is significantly more resistant to dropping out than its copper predecessor. Primus monitors and manages its fiber infrastructure to ensure superior network stability and virtually zero signal degradation.
4. Expert support
With Primus Business Internet and Dedicated Internet, not only do you get cutting-edge business technology, you also get round-the-clock business support from a dedicated team of experts. With its industry leading service level agreement, you need not worries about downtime or security issues impeding productivity.
5. Increased speed means increased productivity
The sheer speed of fiber internet means employees will never be left twiddling their thumbs waiting for video to upload or for large files to download. Fast internet means a productive workforce, with a recent poll finding that businesses lose 38 hours-worth of productivity per employee every year as a direct result of slow and unreliable internet.
6. Futureproofing
With bandwidth demands predicted to triple between 2014 and 2018, and the number of networked devices and connections globally expected to increase by almost three-quarters between 2014 and 2019, the case for high-speed internet that futureproofs your company by offering scalability makes itself.
7. The competition will switch to fiber internet
Businesses are switching to fiber internet on a massive scale. The question for the modern business owner is no longer ‘can I afford to switch to fiber internet?’, it’s ‘can I afford not to switch?’.
8. Potential of fiber internet to increase value of property
Because it is futureproofed, meaning it’ll improve further in future, properties with FTTP, whether homes or business premises, tend to be valued higher than those without.
9. Certain applications and services need fiber internet
If you find your team isn’t working as effectively as you’d like, bear this in mind: if they haven’t got the means to do so, they can’t. Fiber internet will provide them with the capacity, reliability and speed to use data-heavy applications and HD video conferencing.
With fiber internet, there won’t be any of the fuss associated with older data applications, such as applications freezing or file transfers dropping out. Your employees will be able to work together online in real time, enabling them to share ideas and complete projects no matter where they are.
10. Modernization of processes and services
Whether you’re looking to replace your expensive and dated traditional telephone system with the cost-efficient, feature-laden voice over internet protocol (VoIP), or move more business processes to the cloud for increased flexibility and peace of mind, the speed fiber internet offers will allow you to do just that.
