Dedicated Connection: An Essential Business Tool
A dedicated connection has now become a essential tool for many businesses. Here's why:
Dedicated connections can deliver lots of bandwidth downstream
They offer up to 10000 Mbit/s downstream. That's a lot more than ADSL can deliver.
ADSL is often billed as 'up to 20Mb' but it's really '20Mb, in one direction, if your business is next door to the local telephone exchange, and few people are using their broadband connection at the same time.'
Most businesses don't get anything like 20Mb via ADSL. Research by UK telecoms regulator OFCOM found that in May 2013, the average download speed of ADSL connections was a mere 5.9Mbit/s downstream. For many businesses, that's just not enough bandwidth.
A dedicated connection offers fast upload speeds
It's worth remembering that connections don't just download data. They also send data upstream too.
Dedicated connections can provide up to 10,000Mbps (10 Gbit/s) of bandwidth upstream. Contrast that with the pathetic 0.8Mbps that the average ADSL connection provides.
For many businesses the upstream bandwidth they could get via ADSL is insufficient to meet the needs of their business.
Superior reliability
A dedicated connection is likely to come with a 'Service Level Agreement.' This provides guarantees regarding the availability of the service, and the speed at which problems will be fixed. ADSL connections come with no such guarantees. It's not unusual for serious ADSL faults to take DAYS to fix. Similar faults on a dedicated circuit are likely to be fixed within one business day.
Most dedicated connections are actively monitored for problems. If a fault is detected, an alert will be sent out to the support team automatically, allowing troubleshooting to begin immediately.
By getting a dedicated connection, you greatly reduce the risk that your business will be stuck without connectivity for a material length of time.
Dedicated bandwidth means connections don't slow down at peak times
A dedicated connection provides a private fixed bandwidth point-to-point data connection, i.e. one that's reserved exclusively for the use of one company. There's no sharing of bandwidth with other customers. As a consequence, data transfer speeds won't be affected when other customers of the same ISP try to use their connections at the same time.
A modern alternative to costly ISDN30 circuits
A dedicated connection - a service that allows lots of 1's and 0's to be transmitted simultaneously over circuits that are reserved for the use of one subscriber.
Telephone calls can be carried over dedicated connections, thanks to a technology called 'SIP Trunking.' This is usually more cost-effective than sending the same call over an ISDN30 circuit.
By switching to SIP, businesses are able to reduce the number of ISDN circuits they rent. Calls made via SIP trunks are also likely to be cheaper than calls made via ISDN.
Dedicated connections can cut phone bills in another way too: they allow internal calls to travel over a company's WAN, for free.
One pipe. Many business uses.
A dedicated connection can carry many different types of traffic simultaneously, including web pages, emails, video conference streams, files, phone calls, VPN traffic, CCTV images, intranet traffic and data feeds.
It can provide the bandwidth required to replicate servers that are hosted at different sites, and sufficient bandwidth to support offsite data backup.
Some dedicated connections offer the ability to apply different 'Class of Service' options to different types of traffic. This ensures that the connection can be used to the full, without VoIP calls and video-conferencing streams being adversely affected.
Dedicated lines are getting cheaper
The prices of dedicated connections are dropping thanks to major advances in optical networking, and the growing use of Ethernet First Mile for low bandwidth connections. As a result, most companies can afford to get a dedicated connection at each of their offices. These will often be joined together to form a wide area network.
To find out how much an uncontended circuit would cost in your location, visit our dedicated connection pricing tool. It compares wholesale quotes from a wide range of leased line carriers to find the best option available at your postcode.
