In this day and age, running a business without using the internet is virtually impossible. Without secure, fast, and reliable connections, companies are doomed to anonymity and practices so obsolete and clunky we can just as well call them pre-historic.

The other thing we can all agree on is that things in the tech landscape are moving very fast — so much so that, sometimes, it’s hard to keep track of the latest technologies. With more and more services moving to a virtual environment and increasing the number of users soaking the available bandwidth, the questions how fast do we need to go and what we can accomplish with this infrastructure are becoming very muddled.

Let us try to make some sense of this mess and see what benefits your business can reap by moving to high-speed fiber-optic internet that ramps up the bandwidth to 1Gbps and currently represents the fastest internet option on the market.

Higher loading and downloading speeds for multiple users

This mention is pretty obvious but it’s worth elaborating nevertheless. So, the webspace has become an entirely different beast compared to only a couple of years ago. The websites have become image-based communication tools. And a single image can occupy the space equivalent to as much as 1000 words. As a result, the bandwidth necessary for loading these pages has gone up significantly.

But, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. We need to open up dozens of documents to get through a workday. And don’t get us started about multitasking. Just take a look at how many tabs you currently have open. Doing all these things on slow internet speed can cause your business one week of lost productivity per employee on an annual basis.

Setting up your business in the cloud

There are already tons of articles published about how cloud-based services can benefit businesses of all sizes and from all industries. To avoid straying too far from our topic, we will sum up only the most important ones:

• Cloud services are subscription-based and scalable
• Moving the documents to the cloud saves you money on office material and tools
• In the cloud, sharing and collaboration are as easy as it gets

Although finding a unified methodology to calculate the money your company can save by implementing this type of service is hard (the final numbers depend on a wide variety of factors), by looking at these three main benefits, it is easy to see that cloud increases productivity and cuts the operational costs.

On the other hand, the fact remains that cloud services entail a constant transfer of data and enormous bandwidth in order to run efficiently. That is why high-speed internet remains one of the main prerequisites for keeping your company competitive.

Remote working and outsourcing

Both things we have mentioned above have one thing in common — they are heavily based on VoIP, video conferencing, cloud computing, and other web-based means of communication. High-speed internet makes the foundation for this multi-channel collaborative system. Relying on obsolete technologies and even some up-to-date alternatives like cable internet can throw a huge hurdle in this process.

The other prerequisite for remote working and outsourcing is that all parties involved in the project need to use the same bandwidth. Taking into account the global nature of such projects, that is not always easy to accomplish but the progress is being made. Take for instance Jordan — the local optic fiber internet providers like Orange Jordan are completely changing the outsourcing potential of this country. Similar examples can be found all across the globe.

Improved cybersecurity

In terms of online security, considerations concerning internet speed are very simple — much like all other web-based apps, various cybersecurity resources require a constant transfer of data to be fully functional. High bandwidth and speed of optic fiber internet make this possible.

However, optic fiber internet has, in this case, one distinct advantage over its direct competitors — the fiber-optic cables are not radiating electromagnetic signals. That makes wireless interception of data virtually impossible.

The criminals could try to tap the wire but that would most likely cause the glass fibers to break and alarm security professionals.

Improved on-site security

Things are not that different even when we take into consideration the safety of your premises. High-speed internet sets the foundation for seamless interaction of the various smart security tools and systems around your premises (surveillance systems, alarms, motion detectors, etc.). These smart, cordless systems are, at the same time, much safer since they can’t be easily disabled by burglars.

Another benefit of fiber optic internet in this regard is the high bandwidth that allows simultaneous access by multiple users. That means, all the surveillance systems can be easily monitored from several different devices at the same time.

Faster backup and response from online tools

Although these two things are not directly tied together, they have one thing in common — in both these cases, slow internet can have devastating effects. Take for instance platforms like Salesforce, ClickMeeting, Brightidea, and Google Apps which all require instant reactions by your employees. The inability to act promptly results in lost customers.

Things are not that different when we talk about backup. Imagine a company where hundreds of users are editing dozens of extensive documents at the same time. If internet infrastructure is not cable to allow instant saves of all edits, consequences can range anywhere from lost productivity to lost work in the case of technical failure.

Stress-free work environment and higher employee satisfaction

Throughout this article, we have talked a lot about technical specs and requirements but we have forgotten to mention one factor crucial for the success of your company — arguably the most important one. Of course, we are talking about your employees.

Just try going through all the benefits of high-speed internet we have listed above. The result you get when you put them together is a safe and stress-free workplace where your employees are allowed to work at optimal efficiency and engage in seamless collaboration with their colleagues. All these things play a huge role in ramping up company-wide workplace satisfaction. And if you take a look at this recent research, you can see that workplace satisfaction can lead to up to 37% increase in productivity.

We hope that these few arguments gave you a general idea about the importance of high-speed internet for your company. We are living in an increasingly web-based world. Failing to use the fastest option currently on the market immediately sets you behind some more prudent competitors. And since fiber-optic internet still represents the fastest currently available option, we say there is no doubt which route you should take.

Originally posted at RuhaniRabin.com
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