How Fast Internet Affects the Bottom Line of Businesses

Fast Internet is essential to conducting business in today’s competitive marketplace. In fact, the speed of a company’s Internet can have a substantial impact on its operations and overall success.

With a fiber-optic Internet connection directly to your business, you can help increase your company’s profit, productivity, collaboration, and customer satisfaction.

Here’s what you need to know about this fast-growing technology – and why you might hire a network services company to deliver fast internet to your business.

Understanding What Real Speed Is:

First, it’s important to understand what speeds are available to you. The typical broadband cable or DSL service usually provides speeds between 10 and 25 megabits per second (Mbps). However, fiber-to-business services can give you speeds in the range of 25-300 Mbps—with some services pushing Internet speeds up to 1,000 Mbps—which only network service companies can provide, like Dobson.

This kind of speed makes for lightning-fast web applications and nearly instantaneous downloading and uploading, while also allowing your company to utilize important resources like video conferencing, IP telephony and software as a service (SaaS) simultaneously – without a drop in performance.

At the same time, fast Internet is key to embracing the movement known as “bring your own device” (BYOD). In fact, mobile consulting firm IGR found that 62 percent of small businesses had a BYOD policy in place as of 2013, representing the trend’s explosive growth. Unfortunately, with more devices popping up across company networks, it can lead to serious network lag. Other applications like ERP and P2P content sharing can make this problem even worse.

Unfortunately, with more devices popping up across company networks, it can lead to serious network lag. Other applications like ERP and P2P content sharing can make this problem even worse.

Fast Internet opens up a world of possibilities and improved collaboration in the workplace. Your employees can speak to each other from anywhere, utilize multiple devices and run data-hungry applications all at the same time. In turn, your company’s productivity and profit can quickly reach the next level.

Just as important is your actual customer. With faster Internet, your website can load data and images from servers faster than ever. After all, page-load times are a key factor in increasing sales. For example, a survey by Radware found that 51 percent of customers would halt a purchase if a website didn’t load fast enough, underlining what’s at stake for companies.

Confronting the Challenge of Slow Internet:

There’s no doubt businesses have more tools than ever before. However, these tools often generate huge amounts of data, which means companies require a certain amount of bandwidth to work effectively.

Storing and protecting this data, especially if you’re working in the cloud, can really slow your business. Fast Internet allows employees to utilize cloud applications quickly, a key area of productivity growth for companies across the world.

Unfortunately, many companies are already suffering due to slow Internet. In fact, a SanDisk study found the average company employee wastes approximately a week’s worth of time each year due to slow computer networks, with slow upload and download speeds one of the main contributing factors.

These problems might be why fiber connections for businesses are rapidly growing. In 2004, just 10 percent of commercial buildings had access to high-speed fiber Internet connections. Since then, the fiber-penetration rate basically quadrupled to 42.5 percent (as of 2014). There’s wide recognition that fast Internet is the future of business, and this penetration rate is only expected to climb.

For Some Industries, Fast Internet is a Must:

To be sure, fast Internet is key to future growth. But for many companies, fast Internet is more than just an option.

Business services like IT firms, website developers, consultants, and computer repair shops all need to quickly access data, share information and meet key deadlines with the tools they have on hand. Meanwhile, advertising agencies are often moving huge amounts of data among Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, InDesign, and other creative tools.

Retail is another industry that simply requires fast Internet. Whether processing a customer’s transaction or using Big Data to measure sales on a day like Black Friday, fast Internet is key to revenue growth for retail companies. Architecture firms use CADD software services to generate large directories of data, printing companies must deal with large graphical files and banking services have to handle thousands of transactions a day.

In essence, fast Internet from network service companies can help ensure these industries can meet deadlines, get customers what they need on time and efficiently process huge amounts of data.

How to Tap into Fast Internet:

In order to realize the benefits of fast Internet for your own organization, it’s important to speak with a professional who can help you install and run a fiber-optic Internet connection directly to your business. From there, you can determine what kind of speeds you require and which areas of your business can benefit directly from faster Internet.

Ultimately, you want Internet speeds that help you dramatically improve your bottom line, rather than serve as a bottleneck to growth. If you are interested in learning what kinds of speeds you are receiving today, check out Dobson’s speed test.  And if you want to understand how it can be improved for the better – contact us today.  We have a 4,000-mile, state-wide network that provides fast, reliable connectivity for businesses throughout the region.