What business internet connection options do I have in 2023 overview of what's available to business?
This is an update to our last video on internet connections done in 2018 which is now way out of date as the landscape has changed!
Hi, this is Nick Brandon from tecwork. Today I'm going to talk to you about business internet connections, which also applies somewhat to consumer or residential internet connections and what you can get for your business or your home in 2023. We did do one video on this, but I realized this morning that it was back in 2018 and boy, how the landscape has changed. So I thought I better do an update for people.
So it's reasonably easy to understand because it can get a bit confusing with people mentioning all sorts of technical terms, fiber this, fiber that. So here it goes. I'm going to start with the most basic and probably one of the oldest connections, which is ADSL, which stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line, and that is basically an internet connection. That's the kind that came out first years ago where you have a phone line, a normal phone line, which you might have used at home for your landline calls years ago. Not so much now, but on that service is a broadband digital service.
So you have a phone line and you pay for the phone line and you have a digital broadband service on it. Some people unfortunately can still only get ADSL. They can't get anything else, particularly people in more remote areas or rural areas. The speeds aren't great. The maximum you can get is up to 24 megabits per second download and much slower upload. And if you are in the unfortunate position of only being able to get this, then I feel for you. You probably want to look at alternatives.
Just a note on this, that the lines that come with these services that we've all had for years and years are being switched off in the big switch off in 2025. So everyone will have to move away from this service to what we call a single order generic ethernet access or SOGEA which is the same thing essentially on two copper wires, but you don't have the analog line lying underneath it. You just have the broadband connection.
And for those people that want to keep their landline phone number, for instance people at home, they will be forced to move their number to a VoIP service, which they can then have a phone plugged into their router and use. Whether or not this big switch off happens in 2025, who knows? I think it might be delayed. I can't say. I'm not in charge. There might be special dispensation because this is going to affect a lot of people, particularly elderly people who don't really have the technicalities to sort that out for themselves. People with panic buttons where it works on that kind of analog line service. People with alarm lines, people with lift lines. So yeah, big thing, big problem.
The next one up is what's been more prevalent in the last sort five years, which is what we call fiber broadband. Now that's fiber to the cabinet, which basically means you haven't got fiber running into your house. It's still copper runs into your house, the old copper wiring, but the copper wiring runs down to a green cabinet down in the end of your road somewhere, normally within about 150 yards or 150 meters and it's fiber then back to the exchange. The fact that this is fiber from the cabinet to the exchange although it's still copper to your house, the fact that that part is fiber means that you can get much faster speeds. So typically the maximum will be 18 megabits per second download and 20 megabits per second upload. However, this can be a lot slower, particularly as if your green cabinet is further away.
So not a silver bullet by any means, but it's what people have been using for quite some time and it's probably what a lot of people have still got in their homes and businesses or certainly small businesses. This kind of service is also going to be affected by the big switch off in 2025 because the line that it resides upon is still a phone line and that's going to be taken away. So the same thing applies with porting the old landline number if you need to keep it.
The next one I'm going to talk about is what we call FTTP or fiber to the premises. Now, this is something that the government had been promising is going to be rolled out to everyone in the country, every premises, every house, blah, blah, blah. It's been very slow. For the first few years it was predominantly just down to Openreach, nearly called them BT Openreach, but it's Openreach and they have been quite slow.
But you'll see people up and down the country, up poles putting in fiber connections into telegraph poles, which means that you can get fiber to the premises, which means that if you place an order the engineers will come along and run a fiber cable from the pole where their fiber terminates into your house or into your business.
Watch the video for more
3 окт 2024
