CONNECTIVITY & GETTING ACCESS RIGHT – Is ‘Superfast’ Broadband Superfast?
We all recognize the pace of change in technology is relentless and accelerating.
The basic building block of access to technology is a data connection, the collective term being ‘broadband’.
Broadband is a confusing marketplace with many different products and services and it becomes difficult to get the right advice. Making the right decision regarding the type of connectivity that is required for your business can have far reaching repercussions.
There have been big changes in the connectivity market with more in the offing the popularity of cloud services means we need higher and higher speeds.
So as our demand for data grows expotentially our perception of what is an acceptable bandwidth had changed radically in the last few years.
A significant issue that we suffer from in the UK is the method Openreach elected to use to roll out ‘superfast’ broadband. They method chosen was Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC).
This method left the legacy copper cabling in place to premises and replaced the main feed to the local cabinet with fibre optic. This had the benefit of being installed relatively quickly throughout the country. The downsides have been that the further you are away from the cabinet the poorer the bandwidth you’re able get. Even when you can get a full strength 80/20Mb this is now being seen as a limitation as our need for bandwidth grows. The other factor that has proven to be an issue is that reusing legacy copper cabling results in reliability issues due to the age and state of the infrastructure.
As a result of the decision to roll out FTTC as the ‘solution’ in the UK we’ve fallen behind many other parts of Europe. Spain now has 79% full fibre connectivity and Portugal at 85% a 100Mb is now seen as commonplace. Full fibre also means greater reliability and of course opens the door for increased possibilities as to how these higher speeds can be utilized. So the decision to utilize FTTC could potentially hold the UK back as other nations steam ahead on full fibre and exploit digital technology that we’re unable to.
The UK lags behind at just 4% full fibre connectivity and time will tell if the decision to roll out FTTC will be seen to have been shortsighted.
The government has set a target of 2030 for full fibre connectivity in the UK, but with only 4% currently connected this is a significant shortfall.
In order to combat this shortfall of full fibre the government has launched a voucher scheme aimed at encouraging organisations to consider investing in the installation of full fibre. The grant that is available will provide up to £3000.00 towards the operational costs of installing full fibre. This can on top of the grant already in place from core network providers that will contribute up to £2,800 towards installation charges for full fibre.
So potentially this means up to £5,800 ex VAT towards installing full fibre connectivity for your organisation.
So what would installing full fibre mean for your organization?
Higher Speeds
Full fibre has the potential to provide up to 1Gb connectivity.
It’s all yours
Full fibre is all yours, a 100mb/100mb connection is just that, no contention issues, no traffic shaping
A full 100Mb up and down.
Scalability
Full fibre can be upscaled to cope with increased demand unlike FTTC.
Reliability
Being part of the UK fibre optic network removes the weak link of copper connectivity
and means 5 9’s reliability 99.999% up times
Multiple Services on the Same Connection
Run both HD quality voice as well as high speed data on the same fibre
Utilise Cloud Services
Full fibre means instant access to cloud services for data access.
Futureproof
Futureproof your business and operate a fixed cost model for data and telephony services.
Disaster Recovery
Be in control when disaster strikes enabling you to divert services
The Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme can be accessed via government approved providers.
Eastern Voice & Data are part of this scheme and are able to offer commonsense, no jargon advice to help you decide if applying for the installation of full fibre is right for your business.
www.easternvoicedata.co.uk/fibreoptic
01603 743388
Russell Marriott
