If you own a business or property, then 2017 is the perfect time to start considering upgrading your internet connection to fiber… that is if you haven’t already. While it is still more expensive than traditional broadband, your businesses will operate much more efficiently or you can use this as a differentiator to find a tenant for your property. The key is using it as a tool to improve your return on investment. But how does fiber internet have a superior advantage over other methods of connection?

Speed

As you’d expect, upgrading to a fiber connection will offer you a significant improvement in speed. This is because the signal is sent though small fibers of glass, which the message can move through far quicker than connections using traditional copper cables. If your business relies on obtaining transferring information quickly, then the faster your internet the more efficient your operation, which positively affects your bottom line.

Bandwidth

If speed is the quality of your connection, then think of bandwidth as the quantity. Other connections may feel fast with only one device connected to it, but once all your employees jump on it’ll soon slow down. With fiber, it is influenced much less by the amount of people on the connection, which should mean that everyone would be able to benefit from super-fast internet. This is important when you consider things like video conferencing are getting far more important in this inter-connected world. What’s the point of setting up a conference call if your internet is only fast enough to allow one person to stream video?

Cloud Access

Huge tech giants like Microsoft, Apple and Amazon are investing huge amounts of money into developing sophisticated cloud solutions, which is a clear sign that they believe it’s the future. By installing fiber, you’re preparing your business for future growth. It’s important that your business can share information irrespective of locations and with fiber you’ll be able to access all your organization’s data and applications wherever you are in the world, without any delay.

Better reliability

The last thing you need is for your internet to go down and prevent your employees from carrying out their roles. As mentioned, fiber uses glass and this material is far less temperamental than copper cable. For example, copper is known to be easily affected by adverse weather conditions whereas glass is immune to these affects. This means that there’s less risk of dropped connections with fiber and a far less chance that your business is going to miss out on opportunities! Spend a moment to imagine the cables that rest on the ocean bed, connecting the countries of the world together; these cables are fiber optic. It’s all slowly becoming a reality, and one day soon, we will have unprecedented connection reliability.

Security

If hackers want to gain access to your data, they can do so by tapping into your cables if they are made of copper and steal your information. However, this is not possible with fiber as the cable leaks light and the signal instantly disappears if the cable is tampered with. In an age where information leaks are high profile news and large organizations are paying significant fines for losing their customer’s data, it really pays to install fiber. If you forget about the increase in speed, it’s almost worth it solely on increase the security of your businesses data. Think about it as an investment, the last thing you want is for someone to steal all your commercial data and your customers to leave, putting the future of your organization at risk.

Cost

If your compare broadband and fiber solely on face value, then fiber is clearly more expensive. However, if you compare the improvements in speed and security, among others, then it’s clear which offers you a better return on your investment. Although it’s a higher initial capital outlay, you’re paying that premium to future proof your business and increase of your chances of succeeding in an ever-changing environment where your internet speed is almost guaranteed to have significant impact on your competitive advantage.