Ensuring your business has sufficient bandwidth to run efficiently is vital, but how do you decide how much you need and what technology best meets your requirements? Choosing the right connectivity solution is crucial to keeping your business operations running smoothly, whether that is reducing productivity downtime, accepting customer payments, or having employees frustrated due to IT issues.
When it comes to your business broadband needs, the more employees you have, the more bandwidth your business needs. Remember, if two employees are downloading data at the same time, the download speed is cut in half. So, if you have six people downloading files at the same time, it will take even longer for each person to download each file. That is why larger businesses with more users need a more robust connectivity solution.
The same can be said for businesses that need to upload large amounts of data, for example, businesses that frequently use cloud-based computing applications or require data-heavy backups.
Whether you’re the owner of a small business, an IT Manager who controls the IT budget or the CTO for a large enterprise, choosing the right connectivity solution for your business can be difficult given the number of variables to consider.
Key Connectivity Considerations
- Cost vs. Benefits: Fibre Broadband services are cost-effective but limited in performance. 5G Broadband services are more mobile and flexible but may not guarantee the same reliability and bandwidth as fibre connectivity.
- Mobility: 5G Broadband services stand out for mobile applications and edge computing, making it ideal for businesses that need flexibility or temporary connectivity solutions, whereas fibre solutions typically take longer to deploy.
- Latency and Performance: Fibre offers the best performance for high-bandwidth requirements and where low-latency is needed for cloud services or a large user base.
- Scalability: Symmetrical Fibre Connections offer superior scalability especially at 1Gb to 10Gb or higher for growing enterprises.
- Upload/Download Speed: if your business requires fast upload speeds to cloud applications or off-site data storage then you need a guaranteed upload/download speed to meet that requirement, broadband services simply won’t meet this need.
- Resiliency: Fibre offers the most diverse options for mission-critical applications and integrates with other technologies for failover options
Which Connectivity Option is Best for Your Business?
Set out below is a matrix to help you choose the most suitable option based your business needs:
| Connectivity Type | Fibre Broadband | 5G Broadband | Fibre – 500 Mb | Fibre – 1 Gb | Fibre – 10 Gb |
| Number of Users/Devices | Small to medium (up to ~10) | Small to medium (up to ~10) | Medium (~100 users) | Large (100-1000 users) | Very large (1000+ users, streaming services) |
| What you can do | File downloading, basic Wi-Fi, business communication | Frequent file sharing, numerous POS transactions | Frequent cloud computing, video conferencing, data backups | Frequent cloud computing, video conferencing, data backups | Multiple-server hosting, constant cloud-based computing, heavy online backups |
| Cloud Integration | Adequate for a small workforce | Excellent for edge computing and IoT | Better for hybrid cloud | Excellent for hybrid & multi-cloud | Ideal for mission-critical cloud apps |
| Cost | Low | Medium | Higher | High | Highest |
| Service Level | Best effort SLA | Medium (depends on coverage) | High (dedicated, SLA-backed) | Very high (dedicated) | Very high (best for enterprises) |
| Latency | High (up to 50ms) | Medium (20-100ms) | Low (<20ms) | Very low (<15ms) | Ultra-low (<10ms) |
| Bandwidth Guarantees | Variable depending on traffic | Shared (dynamic spectrum) | Dedicated, SLA-backed | Dedicated, SLA-backed | Dedicated, SLA-backed |
| Scalability | Limited to exchange capacity | Limited to the distance to mobile tower and traffic levels | High | Very high | Very high |
| Security | Basic (limited control) | Basic (limited control) | Customisable based on CPE | Customisable based on CPE | Customisable based on CPE |
| Redundancy & Failover | Failover available | Limited to options at location | Full redundancy available | Full redundancy possible | Full redundancy (best for mission-critical systems) |
| Future Growth | Short-term, limited growth | Short-term, limited growth | Moderate growth (1-3 years) | Long-term growth (3-5 years) | Future-proof (5+ years, large enterprises) |
Contact Us
At Magnet+, we provide the full range of connectivity solutions to meet your specific requirements. Call us today on 1800 819 888 to talk to our expert sales team or email sales@magnetplus.ie to request a callback.
