Internet "Speed:" What Your Business Needs

I’m always amused at the advertising for Internet service.  In the early phases of the Internet, it seems all anyone could advertise was “no busy signals”, or “fastest connection”.  Of course, most businesses have moved away from dial up service to higher speed offerings either by some type of DSL connection or Cable modem access.  Others use even higher speeds offered by T1s , or some  type of fiber optic based connection speed.  The city of Chattanooga recently passed legislation to let the local Government controlled EPB Telecom Issue bonds (meaning eventually higher taxes) to build a city-wide fiber optic network for Internet connection of 100mbps to the home!  I love a fast Internet connection; but I also know from running an ISP for the past 12 years, that 100mpbs an absurd overbuild.  In fact, while I acknowledge that bandwidth consumption is growing yearly, our total consumption of all of our customers at PEAK is not nearly 100mbps, much less that much capacity needed by an individual customer.

 
I’d like to offer some money saving advice to business owners.  Don’t buy what you don’t use!  At VOLstate we carefully monitor each of our business customer’s Internet connection.  We look for problems with the speed of the connection and advise our customers when it is time to buy a faster connection.  We don’t want a business to buy service that they don’t need and we also want to make sure that when they DO need faster service we are ready to deliver it at an affordable price.

 
As in voice communications, you need to carefully manage your Internet usage and expense.  No business would willingly buy more telephone lines than they need just because they were told that it was more capacity!  They would first analyze their current usage, and make a decision to buy what they need.  If they buy too much capacity they are wasting money and if they don’t buy enough capacity they will lose productivity.  Some businesses are buying high capacity Internet connections without any idea how much capacity they use now or how much they will use in the future.  Politicians are especially gullible when it comes to spending tax money on Internet connections.  They believe the vendors that profit from selling unused capacity that it is a necessary and public expense and are far too willing to spend public dollars for unused capacity.

 
So, the next time your business is tempted to buy more capacity just because it is available, first ask yourself if you would buy more phone lines, just because they are available, even if you know you will never use them.  That is how you should approach your Internet bandwidth costs.

For a free analysis of your business Internet needs, contact us at VOLstate.  We will be happy to help.

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