Your Digital Business
or more lines together to provide extra bandwidth. It proved to be the answer for Cameras Underwater, a specialist retailer of underwater still and video cameras, based in rural Ottery St Mary in Devon.
Bonding their existing lines together to create a single, virtual broadband connection allowed them to use all of the available bandwidth and balance the traffic across both connections, while upload speeds have more than doubled.
Portway said: “When sending out emails to our customer base, I’ve sometimes had to
manually stop
the queue to let something else go through and then restart the emails. With bonded DSL this hasn’t been a problem, as the connection can handle the traffic at the same time. An added benefit is that if one of the lines fail, the connection continues with the remaining line and we don’t have to manually switch it over.”
Satellite Broadband This can be an effective way of getting your business online and doesn’t rely on access to DSL or cable networks, but whether it is the best option depends on how you use the internet.
Connection speeds can be slow, which shouldn’t be a problem if your online activity consists of emailing and web browsing. For real time applications,
such as video conferencing, or sending very large data files, satellite broadband may be too slow.
The proximity of your business to large buildings or other structures can affect the quality of the signal received by the orbiting satellite, while heavy rain and snow can also cause interference that slows transmission.
There are set up costs; including the installation of a satellite dish and transmitter, and monthly broadband charges to your service provider.
Mobile Broadband
This is another alternative to DSL and cable broadband and is delivered via the airwaves. Like satellite broadband, its
effectiveness depends on your
business usage and location. There are advantages, including pay as you go options, access on the move, and no landline to pay for, but there are drawbacks, too.
In theory, fast 3G mobile broadband can reach speeds of 14.4Mb, but in practice tend to be much lower. Tests carried out a year ago by Ofcom found the average speed achieved by mobile broadband consumers was around 1.5Mb, slower than standard connections.
Although national coverage has been steadily improving, mobile signals can be unreliable, and in some parts of the UK, still quite poor. The eagerly ant ic ipat ed 4G mobile broadband promises to deliver speeds that can match the fastest cable connections, but the service may not be widely commercially available until 2014.
White Space An emerging technology, this is the space that exists between analogue TV channels, vacated by the digital TV switch over, and which technology firms are now able to harness, using signals that can travel large distances and pass through solid barriers such as walls and dense trees. This makes it potentially suitable for a range of applications, including the provision of broadband services to rural locations. It has a greater range than other wireless broadband technologies, and in theory, developing a network of white space transmitters could connect the more remote properties to towns that are already connected to the internet.
White space will also have more capacity than the crowded mobile networks, and according to industry experts, it costs less to produce and use, but like the much-hyped 4G mobile broadband, it’s a technology that rural firms will have to wait a little longer for. Following trials in Scotland, Ofcom’s
roll out of white space technology is due to begin in 2013.
DIY Digital Broadband If your business location is beyond the reach of DSL and cable networks, in a place where satellite and mobile broadband technologies are unreliable or too expensive, you might want to think about collaborating with others in the same position and going the DIY route. That’s exactly what Broadband for the Rural North (B4RN) www.b4rn.
org.uk has done, and through the combined efforts of local technology experts, businesses and homeowners, they are establishing a community fibre network, connecting almost 1,500 homes and businesses in rural northern Lancashire to superfast FTTH (fibre-to-the-home) services offering speeds of 1Gbps, for £30 per month. Funding is coming from B4RN’s share scheme, launched last December, and digging is about to commence, in an innovative move that rural businesses in other remote locations will be watching with great interest.
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