Knowledge About Connectivity

8th May 2013

A survey earlier this year of business leaders reveals the damage done by poor broadband and mobile internet connectivity across the UK and also the report highlights the economic benefits of improving business connectivity.

The poll, of 1147 members of the Institute of Directors, explores business satisfaction with fixed line and mobile internet services. Economic Benefits of Faster Internet Speeds: The survey clearly showed the economic benefits brought by faster internet connections: Significantly increasing internet speeds would: Improve productivity within the businesses of 83% of those polled. Encourage 56% of those polled to offer flexible working opportunities. Encourage 31% to invest more in their business. Encourage 13% to hire more staff. So, with this in mind, how do businesses go about choosing the right connectivity? At Knowledge About Telecoms we recommend the following steps when choosing a new connectivity supplier: Step 1: Assess your Needs? There are many factors to consider when choosing connectivity, the main ones typically rest around the number of users the service has to support and the variety of solutions or applications the service has to power, for example Cloud based Solutions or VoIP. This is where the team at Knowledge About Telecoms come into their own. We can help with any fact find, not just on current business requirements but by seeing how technology can help your business plans for the future. Step 2: Research the Market? The danger of approaching the network suppliers direct like BT, Virgin, Vodafone or EE is that the only products they are offer are their own. It can be very confusing if you don't have your own telecoms or IT resource to research the market and compare the different products and pricing on offer. Knowledge About Telecoms approach is to be seen as an extension of our clients business, we therefore can help with the research, explain the technologies and find or build a solution that matches your requirements. Step 3: Can your business function without connectivity? If your connectivity stopped tomorrow what would happen to your business? Full Disaster recovery and backup solutions are available but rarely spoke about as the nature of the telecoms industry is to talk price, price, price. Sometimes paying a few £'s more to get a resilient business solution is better in the long term and can save your business. Step 4: Choose the type of Connection: With so many connectivity solutions, of course all with acronyms such as ADSL, FTTC, EFM, and FTTP what do you choose? Use our Knowledge About telecoms to break down these technologies and look for the best solution both now and for the future of your business. Step 5: Don't Panic Buy Following steps 1-4 should prevent you from panic buying, we recommend to all businesses we speak to, whether they become a customer or not to not sign a too longer term contract, technology and pricing is changing all the time you dont want to be left with an out of date or overpriced technology. Don't rush to take short term fix solutions that are currently filling in the gaps where the fibre superfast networks don't reach. We work with some great fixed wireless companies who use dishes on the building to gain great broadband speeds but we have also come across some companies putting transmitters up to supply connectivity but the transmitters don't have planning permission so businesses connectivity ends up being switched off when the transmitters come down. Should you require any extra information from our Knowledge About Connectivity article then please contact our office on 0844 474 0004 or via enquiries@katcommunications.co.uk