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Should businesses really be relying upon ADSL?
In our opinion, most definitely not (but we would say that!). We realise it’s important to keep your business costs as low as possible, but sometimes paying for a cheap service might not actually be that cheap at all.
Lets start by looking at some of the issues you may be experiencing.
You’re a small/medium company that’s growing and you’ve always relied upon a £30-£50 per month ADSL service, but now you’re noticing issues:
1) The service isn’t running fast enough and it’s costing you time & money
2) You’ve had down time and the service wasn’t fixed quickly enough – costing you time & money
3) Performance fluctuates depending on the time of day, causing systems to intermittently freeze or even stop working – costing you time & money
Anything sound familiar? Maybe it’s time to make the jump to an actual business service, but what is an “actual business service”?
I’ve been consulting on business data services for over 6 years, and the most obvious difference is guarantees!
Ethernet, whether its Ethernet First Mile, or National Ethernet, falls under the same Fusion SLA (our service guarantee) and is what I would consider an “actual business service” because it:
1) Guarantees symmetric upload and download performance 24*7
2) Guarantees a maximum of 24hour fix on any issue
3) Operates on an uncontended network with lower latency
4) Suitable for business applications (such as VoIP, Video Conferencing, VPN’s, plus many more applications)
Doesn’t ADSL guarantee this? NO! ADSL services guarantee very little, if anything at all! ADSL is about price and the familiar phrase “Stack ‘em high sell ‘em cheap” springs to mind. Take a look at the graph below which helps to identity the main differences.
If you’re used to paying £50 a month its going to be a big jump in costs, but is this offset by the difference in performance and guarantees? Personally, I think you’ve done well to get ADSL working for your business for as long as it has.
Can you place a financial cost on the issues you experience using ADSL? Maybe your business could work more efficiently and collaborate easier without having to wait for files to transfer. Maybe you simply can’t afford to have downtime of mission critical or client facing services. Would the company reputation withstand prolonged periods of downtime, and would your clients buy from you again? Or is the business simply expanding, taking on more staff or utilising new technology that demands performance?
If your business relies upon the connection is it really worth risking your business to save £50 per week? Breaking the cost down to cost per user, per day you’d be surprised how cheap Ethernet services are:
Surely you should at least consider it?
Talk to us about EFM and Ethernet for your business. |
