Internet connectivity has become essential infrastructure for businesses. However, not all Internet access is the same.
There is a wide range of technologies, providers, performance levels and business continuity solutions that make selecting the right option for your business a challenge.
At Compass Solutions, we specialize in helping you choose the right technologies from the providers that excel in them, and at the best price points in the market.
Common Internet Connectivity Options
Depending on your region, you’ll see a variety of options. We’ll help you choose from what’s available:
- Fiber. Whether straight fiber, dark fiber, or Ethernet service, fiber provides powerful and high-bandwidth connections that allow companies to accommodate even the most data-intensive uses.
- Cable. These connections use copper coaxial cable and provide excellent speeds and steadily-growing bandwidth. There are some important differences between fiber and cable (symmetrical data flow, Service Level Agreements, latency, jitter, etc). Your business needs will determine if cable is an option you should consider.
- T1 / T3. Although the sunset is on the horizon for these services, there is still a large installed base of them at many companies that need servicing, support, and a migration plan for the future. They also fill niche telecommunication needs.
- Wireless. From mobile LTE to point-to-point fixed wireless, wireless allows companies to connect without using fiber, cable, or copper wire. It can be especially helpful for branches located in rural areas or business continuity designs where access diversity is necessary but options are limited.
Why Business-Grade Internet?
- Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Your IT applications and resources require specific criteria be met in order for them to operate as intended (including upstream/downstream bandwidth, latency, jitter, overall throughput, and more). Business-grade internet services give performance guarantees so that your IT environment works as intended. Lesser-quality connections don’t come with SLAs — they are called best effort services, and the stated speeds/performance are not guaranteed. It is critical that your network perform as intended, or the IT resources you rely on to run your business won’t work as you need them to.
- Seamless operations. Everyone has used poor-quality Internet before. Lagging communications, buffering video, loading displays, and chances of downtime are lower with business-grade Internet.
- Workload-ready. Business users have big demand. From video conferencing to VoIP services and cloud-based analytics operations, all of your users need bandwidth.
- Network reliability. Business-grade internet is necessary to [keep networks with multiple branches connected](this will link to the WAN & SD-WAN page], and to ensure maximum productivity.
