The advent of high speed broadband services has always been a hot topic amongst our partners, customers and the media at large. ADSL Max and ADSL2+ are great technologies which BT has rolled out to most of the UK. But, having recently moved to a fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) connection myself, it dawned on me that some of the features it offers are a real game changer for organisations wanting to enable or further improve connectivity to remote home office users. Interestingly this has nothing to do with the part of the service everyone seems so focused on: the download speed.
The game changer for remote workers is actually the upload. Upload speed has always been restricted due to the nature of the technology used. Historically there has been more emphasis on faster downloads, while services such as ADSL 2+ only offered a limited upload, which decreased significantly if you lived a long distance from the exchange. While a quick upload speed was never essential for small files, moving a large amount of data could never be described as a painless experience.
Having FTTC in a home office environment improves the upload speed significantly, enabling users to upload large files and backup data to the corporate LAN as an example. With around 20Mb upstream currently available, the user experience and consequently user productivity is dramatically improved.
Fibre based broadband services really change the game for organisations looking to ensure their home office users get a great experience working remotely. There are many reports discussing the business benefits of working from home such as higher productivity, improving staff retention, and reducing overheads, so it certainly pays to make sure this experience is as good as possible.
Ultimately I believe that as we move towards full fibre to the premises (FTTP) and organisations move more systems to cloud based solutions such as hosted applications, voice and desktop, we will see an increase in organisations making the strategic decision to enable more employees to benefit from the flexibility of working from home.
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Written by Paul Rourke - Channel Partner Manager
Paul has a wealth of experience in the IT and Telecommunications sector. His experience spans over 12 years, 8 of which have been spent working on assisting Claranet's channel partners grow their business by providing expert advice on managed networking, hosting and managed application services. Paul is passionate about technology and how it can benefit the businesses of our partners. You can follow Paul on @paul_rourke_
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