The worst time to find out you need more internet bandwidth is... the moment you need more internet bandwidth.
Your business can’t run optimally—and your employees can’t do their best work—when your office is plagued by failed uploads, sluggish page loading, and VoIP calls with dropped audio. And as we shift toward a hybrid workforce, we’ll only increase our reliance on high bandwidth activities like video calls.
Even if it seems like your internet is “good enough” right now, you probably have plans to expand your business in the future, right? Well, adding more employees will also increase demand on your internet.
The best way to ensure your employees can do what they need to do in the future is to set them up with enough bandwidth now, and a 10 Gbps connection will do just that.
Defining and Measuring Bandwidth
Usually, bandwidth is labeled based on how many bits—or units of data—can be transferred per second. Most internet offerings are measured in megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps).
Although many people describe their internet capabilities in terms of “speed,” it’s really a conversation about bandwidth, or the amount of data that can be processed at one time.
Think of it like the subway’s capacity. Let’s say ridership on a particular line doubled overnight, and the MTA needed to adjust. Just adding another train to the route won’t really help. With just one track, the trains would end up waiting in line behind one another, which would only shift the congestion from the platform to the track.
But what if the MTA could add a few more tracks to that line? (Yeah, we know the Second Avenue Subway took 70 years to build, but humor us here.) All of a sudden, the MTA would be able to move more riders along that route, at the same time: with more tracks, they could run more trains along the same path all at once.
Your bandwidth is sort of like the number of tracks you have. Lower bandwidth means you can’t move as much data at once; one track supporting one train at a time. But with more bandwidth, you’re able to move more data simultaneously; more trains on more tracks.
What Does 10 Gbps Actually Mean?
Every year, the speed at which we can transfer data gets faster. Internet speed has multiplied 100-fold every 10 years, and it’s not slowing down.
Right now, 1 Gbps is the best service that many ISPs offer. This connection, which transmits up to 1 gigabit of data per second, is enough to support multiple users doing video calls
But 10 Gbps internet is, well, 10x better: It allows you to support more employees, with more devices, spread across a larger space, doing even more high-bandwidth activities. In many cases, the very same activities—like transferring a large file—could happen in 1/10th the time that it would on a 1 Gbps network.
Why Your Office Needs 10 Gbps (Or Will Soon)
Sending an email isn’t a high-bandwidth activity, assuming it’s not the next great American novel interspersed with massive image files. But most of our other common work activities are pretty bandwidth-intense.
- Video Calls: Video calls are on the rise—and even as people return to the office, it seems likely that virtual methods of communication are here to stay.
- Cloud Computing: Many offices turned to cloud computing to save on physical storage and enhance remote collaboration. These services—like Google Drive or Salesforce, for example—require more data transfer than work done directly on a device.
- Voice Over Internet Protocol: VOIP has also become increasingly common, which means you're relying on the internet—and, therefore, your bandwidth—to support all of your employees’ phone calls.
- Internet of Things: The Internet of Things grows larger every year, with your business relying on it for everything from your printers to your coffee maker.
- Virtual Desktops: The use of virtual desktops, which can help protect individual users and enhance productivity, but if many employees are using them at once, this could create bandwidth challenges.
- Virtual/Augmented Reality: Even if you’re not using VR or AR yet, you likely will in the future, and these activities require a significant amount of bandwidth.
Then there are the “not exactly work” activities that can eat up bandwidth, too. Many employees stream music while they work, and it’s common to use breaks to catch up on a favorite series or beat a level in your go-to mobile game. (Try not to be too upset: Those short breaks can actually boost overall productivity and make your employees more successful!)
Doing any one of these activities wouldn’t require 10 Gbps internet by itself, but chances are, you aren’t doing just one of these activities, and you’re not taking turns doing it.
You Can't Afford to Have Slow Internet
Most office internet needs to allow all employees to do low-bandwidth activities like sending emails and web browsing, while also allowing many of those same employees to join simultaneous video calls, transfer large files, make VOIP calls, AND access cloud software. Sprinkle a little Spotify in there, and you’re likely beyond the limits of any run-of-the-mill internet service.
Internet that doesn’t support this level of concurrent work will hold your business back.
Productivity will suffer as employees wait for things to load or give up on “slow” tasks altogether. And that’s bound to impact morale: more than 61% of employees report being frustrated by slow Wi-Fi or internet regularly.
If you want to be able to attract more clients and customers then you need to be able to efficiently serve the ones you have now, with room to grow. Now is the time to make sure your business is ready for the future.
Pilot offers 10 Gbps Dedicated Internet Access—the fastest in NYC—to help keep your business running at top speed, today and always. If your office is in the NYC Metro Area, reach out to see how we can help your business join the countless others that are powered by Pilot.
