Speed may kill on the highway, but lack of speed caused by a slow Internet connection kills your business productivity resulting in missed opportunities. What was fast a couple of years ago is slow today. More people and more Internet-linked devices in your company soak up limited bandwidth. BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) programs that support workers’ smartphones and tablets incrementally grows the demand for Internet bandwidth and the speed that bandwidth is accessed. Here are five reasons why high-speed Internet is crucial for your business.
1. Leveraging the Cloud
Growth in cloud resources requires a consistently fast connection to keep users focused and productive. The longer the response time from an outside resource, like a hosted CRM (Customer Relationship Management) program, the more users lose focus and waste time. Since applications hosted by cloud providers have jumped a hundredfold in the last five years, companies need to upgrade their Internet connections to maintain quick response times to remain productive.
2. Heavy Weight Emails and Websites
Email has become more visual. Photos and/or logos have become part of almost every message. A picture may replace 1,000 words, but most images require far more bandwidth. Additionally, websites filled with photos, videos, and high-resolution logos require more bandwidth to view to avoid longer load times.
Video streaming takes even more bandwidth. Few will notice the speed loss when an employee or two clicks on the latest video on YouTube. But when you’re talking about streaming music as well as streaming instructional videos or online courses, your bandwidth can disappear in a hurry. One video is OK, but 10 business or educational videos, along with a dozen streaming music players, and real work can very soon slow to a crawl.
3. Introducing VoIP
VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) has become the dominant player as new technology phones replace older landline systems. There are many great reasons to switch to VoIP, but our focus here is Internet speed. Each VoIP conversation takes about 100k of bandwidth per second. If your company has only a handful of employees, this might not be a problem. But if you have 30 employees, and 20 are on the phone at one time, you have more than maxed out your upstream speeds on most business Internet plans. Without the right speed connection, call quality and data traffic will both suffer.
Your High speed Internet connection requires an ample supply of upstream bandwidth to maintain high-quality, real-time VoIP conversations Even better, the best high speed Internet service providers deliver symmetrical bandwidth, meaning your downstream and upstream speeds are the same. For instance, CenturyLink’s fiber optic connections deliver speeds as fast as 1,000Mbps (Mega Bits Per Second) in both directions. These service options include carrier service level agreements to provide high quality voice connections.
4. Video Conferencing increases productivity while lowering cost
As every company looks for ways to increase the pace of their business by reducing travel time and expense, videoconferencing has become more popular. Add in the lower cost videoconferencing products available, and the lure to push a button rather than book a flight for business meetings, and it’s easy to understand why more businesses are moving to videoconferencing every day.
Since images require more bandwidth than text, you can be sure that streaming video demands plenty of Internet bandwidth. Slow Internet providers mean bad meetings, but high speed Internet service means better meetings and increased productivity.
5. Protecting your valuable files
Companies now realize that backing up data sets offsite simplifies business continuity and disaster recovery planning, beyond basic file backup. The amount of data backed up is constantly growing. If you’re like most companies, backing up their data using a slow Internet connection creates lots of problems, even if they schedule the backup to run overnight. High-speed Internet connections make full backups possible, protecting your critical data and ensuring your business can continue even if you suffer a data loss due to equipment failure, disaster, or theft.
The list of ways that high speed Internet is crucial to your business includes far more than these five reasons. Just remember that speed kills on the highway, but slow Internet access kills your business productivity.