Goodbye Employees, Hello Bandwidth

By: John Shepler

Office employment has been undergoing a major shift since the rise of the Covid Pandemic in 2020 and it’s likely to accelerate rather than return to “normal.” Office buildings nationwide have been emptying out, some being converted to residential units or commercial malls. Even with employees being ordered to return to the office or be replaced, things aren’t really going to go back to mass commutes five days a week, as we’ll soon see. This also has major ramifications for the bandwidth you’ll need and where you’ll need it.

Reluctant Office Workers Offer Opportunities
How do you get ‘em back in the office after they’ve seen work from home?

That might be the title of a song for the 2020’s. The abrupt culture shock from everyone being sent home, with most expected to keep on working, did indeed break the expected paradigm of where you are supposed to be all day. Once appropriate computers and Internet connections got settled, quite a few customer service reps, programmers, and other information workers found they could work just as well from a spare bedroom or dining room table as in the corporate cubicle. Their productivity even improved without the distractions of office chatter or pro-forma meetings.

Employees might have picked up an hour or two of extra personal time not spent commuting and some could drop the expense of outside daycare for children. Meanwhile, companies that continued this arrangement after the pandemic threat had passed found they could reduce office space expense, including real estate and utilities.

One demand that might have increased is the need for fast highly reliable bandwidth to connect now far-flung individuals. Residential Internet connections have improved greatly during this millennium. High speed cable broadband, fiber to the home and 5G fixed wireless access have made most connections nearly transparent. For more demanding applications, SD-WAN and dedicated point to point private lines can reduce latency and congestion.

Not All of Us Are Coming Back to the Office
Remote work may be a boon for some employees and their employers, but many other companies, including some of the largest ones, want the old culture of co-located teams back for camaraderie and supervision. In fact the managers are insisting on it. To some extent this coalescence will occur, but there is another force at work that is going to disrupt it again.

Artificial Intelligence is heralded to be the next dramatic productivity improvement. There is a mad scramble on to build data centers and secure baseload power to support the coming tsunami of AI applications. These promise to be far more sophisticated than the inane chatbots on many sites that can’t seem to answer the simplest questions. Expect these to get a lot smarter. A lot of the coming AI will not be customer facing. It will handle back office paperwork, data entry, report writing, proposal generation, language translation, code generation, graphic arts, network monitoring & troubleshooting, quality control, financial analysis, legal research and medical image diagnosis just to name a few.

In other words, the century long migration from farm to factory to office is about to hit a brick wall of automation. There is already concern that new hires in white collar professions will be facing an increasingly tough job market, followed by job eliminations right up the ladder.

What Network Technology Will You Need?
If office automation is soon taking over, what do you need to plan for to support this transition? In addition to remote worker systems and bandwidth, you’ll need robust connectivity to the AI data centers where many of these applications will reside. Any apps that deal with the customer directly will require substantial Internet connections, likely right from the data center. Your office team will also need solid connections to those same data centers. The Internet may not be adequate for high bandwidth, low latency, jitter, packet loss and general congestion. A dedicated fiber optic private line, also called a cloud on-ramp, can make this connection transparent and help maximize productivity.

A lot of your communications may be in the form of video conferences, including a mobile workforce and well as the office staff. Don’t forget to include enough mobile bandwidth so that the people in the field are as well connected as those in the office.

Finally, you may be looking at whole new systems of computers, phones, pads and other devices that integrate your staff, management, suppliers and customers along with the AI applications that make it all work seamlessly.

Are your business needs in a state of change? Yesterday’s solutions might not support your future. Let an experienced technology advisor help you acquire the networking services you need to stay at the top of your markets.

10000 Mbps Business Internet is Available

By: John Shepler

Growing businesses seem to always be running out of bandwidth. No matter how much you have, it doesn’t take long and you’re starting to push against that upper limit. That’s where the conversation gets a bit difficult. Is there more bandwidth to be had? If so, will it be even remotely affordable?

Good news! Behind the scenes, the infrastructure of Internet access has been moving fast. You are no longer stuck with what copper pair wiring will carry or the jaw dropping cost of telecom oriented fiber optic protocols. There are reasonably priced options available right now for your business that stretch to 10000 Mbps or even higher.

Why Such a Need For Speed?
Today’s bandwidth isn’t yesterday’s bandwidth. Everything has changed and it has happened seemingly overnight. What’s driving changes to the networking industry is the way businesses and consumers have evolved in their use of the Internet. What started out as a simple way to send electronic messages between computer centers has morphed into a life support system for an all-digital environment.

Take your business, for instance. In fact, take any business. Nobody logs onto the Internet anymore. It’s just there, running all the time. It is probably running processes for you in the background even when your screens are dark and everybody goes home. Turn off your PC. It doesn’t matter. The programs aren’t running on your PC. They’re on the network somewhere. That used to mean a server in the back room. Now it’s a server in a colocation facility or a server cluster in a cloud service provider.

Today’s business processes are large and often customized packages from a provider who offers everything you need from sales to inventory to customer service. Your office telephones are probably integrated with the computers and also any mobile devices including smartphones. Communications run the gamut from text messages to traditional email to in-app messaging to video conferences. All of these have a bandwidth demand, with video needing the most and being the most sensitive to interference from other applications.

Oh, and then there are your customers. Do they all just walk in? Sure, some do. Especially in businesses where face to face service is necessary or customary. Other business may derive most of their sales online and not even have a showroom or client conference room. Those online customers need to connect to your business instantly and without glitches. If they have trouble, they’ll go somewhere else. After all, your competitors are just as easy to get to as you are.

Add it all up and you can see that a digitally oriented business environment demands a support structure that is far more robust and seamless than they days when the Internet was just an accessory tool to a legacy bricks and mortar operation.

How Much Bandwidth Is Enough
Every business type has its unique set of demands. Similar size companies in similar industries will likely have more or less similar demands. Large and small companies will have large and small demands. Some applications, like content delivery or medical imaging may have enormous needs. Most all of these can be accommodated with a combination of fiber and wireless bandwidth, and perhaps cable broadband.

Ethernet over Fiber has become the de-facto connectivity for demanding business applications. Copper-based services like T1 and DS3 are on the wane. They probably won’t be with us too much longer as the telecoms are decommissioning the facilities. In most cases it doesn’t matter. The limited bandwidth of these services has been eclipsed by newer technologies.

The older SONET fiber services developed by the telephone industry and adapted to business metropolitan and wide area networks is also going by the waysides. It may still be at the core of many networks, but is less and less offered to businesses directly. Ethernet over Fiber directly connects to business Local Area Networks without the need for any proprietary protocol conversion.

A major advantage of standardized Ethernet over Fiber infrastructure is that it accommodates a wide range of bandwidths using the same protocol. 10 to 100 Mbps is entry level, with 1000 Mbps a typical standard offering. Gigabit Ethernet, also known as GigE, seemed the most anyone would need not so long ago. Nowadays, the need for increased speed goes beyond a gigabit per second.

Bandwidth You Can Afford
If you are nearing the end of a three year contract or have just been paying month to month for years, you owe it to yourself and your company to get fresh quotes for the bandwidth you need right now and into the foreseeable future. As long as you have a port installed that will handle your anticipated growing needs, you don’t need to pay for the maximum bandwidth right now. Most providers will lease you the capacity you need today with the understanding that you can easily upgrade at any time on just a phone call or even through a Web portal.

What’s available? Fiber serves the lion’s share of today’s business locations. It’s been quietly installed without much fanfare. You can likely get any bandwidth you need from 10 Mbps on up to 10 Gbps (that’s 10000 Mbps) quickly and easily… and for less cost than you might think. If your demands are really stringent, 100 gbps or 100000 Mbps is not available in many metropolitan and suburban business districts. Cable and wireless broadband up to 1000 Mbps is also often a reasonable option.

Go ahead. It doesn’t cost anything to simply ask for current pricing. You may be surprised at the business Internet that is available to you.

Today’s Best Business Broadband Options

By: John Shepler

If you are still using a copper wireline service, such as DSL or T1, for your business Internet connection, it’s time to upgrade your service… before you are forced to.

Forced to? Why would that be? Fact is, the major telecom companies are all in the process of decommissioning their copper wire assets. Basically anything that uses century-old twisted pair wiring is on the way out.

Technology marches on. T1 lines were once considered broadband. They don’t even qualify with today’s standard. DSL? Pretty much an obsolete system that was once a good way to re-purpose standard telephone lines for fast Internet access.

AT&T and others have made it clear that they are either pulling up old copper lines or abandoning them to rust in place. The wire centers or central offices that connect to these lines are being repurposed as data centers for the insatiable needs of AI.

So what are better options? Surprisingly, one of the best is also an older technology that has continuously upgraded to keep it competitive with the times.

Cable Broadband Is a Great Deal for Small Business
That coaxial cable that plugs into the back of a set-top box or cable modem has been a familiar tech standard for many decades. Physically, it’s the same. What’s changed is the signal that comes out that center wire.

Cable was originally analog, just like TV signals back in the day. When the Internet came along, some of the unused TV channels were set aside for digital transmission using a standard called DOCSIS or Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, an invention of the industry’s R&D organization CableLabs. The current standard is DOCSIS 3.1 with a migration underway to DOCSIS 4.0.

Today’s cable modems are cable of gigabit speeds, with common service levels of 300 Mbps downstream, 30 Mbps upstream. That’s fast enough for pretty much all web browsing, video streaming and data transfer. What’s hard to beat at those speeds is the price. Cable is easily affordable by both consumers and smaller businesses, often with telephone service included.

Wireless Broadband is Now Both Mobile and Fixed
Like cable, cellular wireless had humble beginnings as a mobile telephone service, but has kept up with the times through multiple technology advancements. The first standard that really supported broadband as well as telephone was called 3G. That’s evolved to the current standards of 4G LTE and 5G. With 300 Mbps or so, an iPhone has all the bandwidth it can really make use of.

That high bandwidth, which can reach a Gigabit per second near some of the 5G towers, is easily competitive with fixed broadband services. The capacity limits have been largely eliminated with 5G buildouts and the extra spectrum acquired from government auctions of unused television bandwidth. Now the wireless companies are in a competitive battle to roll out cellular modems that work like cable modems but without the wires. You can put one at a construction site or a pop-up store in minutes. If you move soon, take it with you and have connectivity at your next location.

Cable broadband is being built into laptop computers and tablets and other devices, called the Internet of Things. Remote data acquisition and control are now possible in remote areas that have cell towers but no other connectivity.

Fiber, The Gold Standard and Secret Backbone
The magic that makes cable and cellular broadband so fast is the fiber optic lines that feed these services. It’s all behind the scenes, of course. Even so, you may want to connect directly to fiber yourself.

What’s the fiber advantage? Nearly unlimited bandwidth for one thing. Today’s service levels run from 10 Mbps to 10 Gbps just about everywhere, with 100 Gbps service available in some metro locations. That’s important for medium and larger enterprises with many employees who need simultaneous Internet access.

Another big advantage is symmetrical bandwidth That means if you have 1 Gbps downstream, you also have 1 Gbps upstream. Contrast that with most cable and wireless services that offer much higher download than upload speeds. If you need to transfer files up and down regularly or have demanding video conferencing requirements, this can be important.

A third advantage is very low latency and jitter with minimal congestion. This is because fiber is usually a dedicated service, not shared like cable and cellular. For even higher performance, consider a dedicated line between your company and your cloud service that bypasses the Internet completely.

Need the ultimate in performance? Dark Fiber that you “light” with your own equipment gives you complete control of protocols and bandwidth allocation. It’s like having your own network extended across town or across the country.

Do you need a replacement Internet connection or are ready for a bandwidth upgrade or perhaps even a cost saving? Check out the Business Broadband Options available right now.

Is Cellular the New ISP?

By: John Shepler

Internet Service Provider technology has evolved dramatically in the last few decades. It stated out as audio modems over classic landline phones. Then came broadband with DSL and Cable. Business broadband started with ADSL, T1 lines & DS3, upgraded to SONET fiber and then Ethernet over Copper and Ethernet over Fiber. Now we may be headed back to telephone technology, as 5G cellular make a move to become an accepted Internet Service Provider.

What’s 5G Got to Offer?
5G is the latest in a long line of technology evolution for wireless mobile phone service. The earliest cellular 0 and 0.5G emerged in the 1970’s, followed by 1G and 2G technologies in the 1980’s. These were voice technologies designed to make the traditional telephone set wireless and mobile. SMS messaging appeared in 2G with e-mail and simple Web browsing added with 2.5G and 2.75G.

The first mobile service that really could be called broadband Internet access was 3G, 3.5G and 3.75G. This is what supported the rise of smartphones. The next generation (G stands for generation level of technology) 4G and 4G LTE (long term evolution) made cellular broadband a real contender as an Internet Service Provider.

The latest phones with 5G are seeing Internet speeds in the dozens to hundreds of Mbps with low latency, jitter and packet loss. The millimeter wave bands support Gigabit per second service and that may be upgraded to 10 Gbps downlink and 1 Gbps uplink with 5G-Advanced upgrades.

5G vs Cable and Fiber
More and more business is being conducted on smartphones and tablets vs desktop computers and even laptops. WiFi is useful indoors to avoid burning cell usage quotas, but while mobile and at customer locations you’ll likely be connecting via 5G from your service provider. Since that applies to all of your mobile devices, the value of an Ethernet connection is limited to desktops and wired phones, with WiFi helpful in moving about in the office or at select locations, such as restaurants.

With so much computing being done via 5G, is it possible to replace everything with a 5G account that supports all your devices?

For an increasing number of consumers and small business users, the answer is yes. Replace your cable modem or fiber termination equipment with a 5G hotspot and continue using the Internet as you always have. You may not even notice a difference in performance. Let’s face it. Once you’ve got all the bandwidth you can reasonably use at one time, doubling or tripling it doesn’t make things go any faster. The limit will likely be the server at the other end that you are connecting to.

Since 5G speeds are often a couple of hundred Mbps or more, the difference between wireless, DOCSIS 3.1 cable and Ethernet over Fiber might not even be noticeable. Where the difference does show up is in your usage limit. That’s only important if you are a heavy user or a corporate operation with dozens or hundreds of users online at the same time. It’s especially true if your business applications are being run from the cloud and accessed via the Internet.

Limitations of 5G Broadband
Yes even with “unlimited” plans, you can’t hog all the bandwidth of the cellular provider all the time. The system isn’t designed for continuous uploads or download from a single customer. Bandwidth is scarce and must be shared with a multitude of users on each tower. Your provider may not drop your connection, but you might find it slowing down severely, especially during busy times, when you are using more that your fair share of capacity.

Another issue to consider is upload vs download performance.Casual web browsing and media streaming is demanding on the download side and not so much for upload. Business applications that transfer large files to and from remote servers or the cloud may well need upload bandwidth that rivals download performance. Video conferencing and telephone call centers also need both upload and download capability about equally. This is where fiber shines. Business fiber is typically symmetrical with upload and download speeds the same. This is also usually provided with no usage restrictions, something you are unlikely to find with cable and 5G.

Selecting a Service
What service works best for your business? It depends on what you are doing and how intensely you are doing it. Some companies will find that only high speed fiber optic service will meet their needs. Others will be fine with cable or 5G wireless service at a lower cost.

Another consideration is ability to connect. While fiber may offer the best performance, there may be no fiber near your rural location or you may be in a dense metro location that hasn’t been “lit” yet. Some companies have found it best to quickly connect with a 5G hotspot and use that service while waiting for fiber to be brought in over a period of weeks or longer.

If you have a need for new or expanded broadband Internet service or are simply curious if you can make a better deal, learn what business broadband options are available and suitable for your business.

Overbuilding Offers Broadband Choices

By: John Shepler

There was a time when you had just a single choice for Internet connectivity. That was the incumbent local phone company. Now you may have many other choices, as competing networks move into your area. Let’s have a look at overbuilding and the opportunities it provides.

In the Beginning…
In the beginning there was only one network and that was the PSTN or public switched telephone network. The phone network is the original telecom network that started with Alexander Graham Bell and expanded to cover the world. It’s a very specific network, designed for voice communications. Computers came later. Any computer that wanted to talk to any other computer had to mimic human telephone users. Hence, the acoustically coupled audio modem.

That had to change fast. First, with ditching the acoustic coupling. Then overcoming the 64 Kbps limits of a standard phone line. Telephone companies developed digital phone lines to multiplex or combine multiple circuits in to one larger capacity circuit. Business quickly adapted the copper DSL and T1 lines, and then SONET fiber optic lines, for computer connectivity.

Still, there was one place to get service and that was the phone company. After all, Ma Bell owned all the wires. Even when “deregulation” was introduced, those competitive carriers were simply rebranding telco lines they got at wholesale rates.

Cable: The First Overbuilder
Each town has a single incumbent local phone company. But each town also can have a community antenna company, later called a cable company, to deliver television. Utility poles might have power, telephone and cable wires running one above the other all over town.

The cable companies made technical upgrades. First, they added modem service to offer Internet access. Then they converted their networks to digital, with fiber optics as the backbone and coaxial copper as the drop to the premises. This, plus regular modem standard upgrades, allows cable to offer broadband Internet service that meets or exceeds what the phone company can provide.

When two different providers install networks to serve the same locations, that’s called overbuilding. It’s one on top of or over the other. It could also mean excessive building, but that hasn’t generally been the case in the almost insatiable demand for broadband.

Fiber Overbuilds in Cable Territory
Cable pretty much overtook landline telephone, including DSL broadband, for residential and small business Internet. So much so, that the telephone companies are decommissioning their copper assets. Twisted pair copper technology just couldn’t keep up.

What the telcos have done is overbuild their own copper networks with fiber optic cables. They actually had a specialized fiber service called SONET before cable came around, but it was too expensive for residential and smaller businesses. They’ve now adopted the more standard Carrier Ethernet over Fiber technology that is directly compatible with most computer networks.

Recently, competing fiber optic network companies have been overbuilding both cable and telco networks with their own fiber. Some cities have contracted with these companies to install fiber that passes every home and business. This is in direct competition with cable broadband that is already serving many if not most of those customers.

Telco Overbuilds with Fixed Wireless Access
The telcos have been busy building out wireless networks to serve mobile phones and computing devices. It this case there may be several competing wireless companies serving each town. The big three in the US are AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. You never had a choice in landline phone service or cable, but you have had this advantage in wireless.

Now wireless is challenging cable and even fiber. As cellular networks upgraded to 4G LTE and 5G, the broadband speeds have increased. In areas where microwave 5G bands are installed, the speeds can easily compete with cable and fiber.

A proliferation of towers, large and small, is expanding the coverage so that a cellular modem, basically a phone that does just broadband, can provide primary broadband service for residential and business users. If the wireless companies have their way, they’ll displace cable in the same way cable displaced landline phone.

What does all this overbuilding mean for you? The competition tends to lower prices and increase service bandwidth. In other words, you wind up getting more value for less cost.

Which broadband option is best for your business? Check pricing and coverage for fiber optic, cable broadband and fixes wireless access now.