Jola Cloud Solutions' Blog

Fibre broadband is faster than copper broadband but is that the only benefit for your customers?

Access to hosted apps - work remotely as if in the office

Remote workers upgrading to fibre broadband can access useful business applications hosted in the cloud, such as Microsoft Office 365, JolaPhone cloud voice and Xero online accountancy packages. The benefit here is that they can work from home as if they were in the office, making and receiving calls and accessing, editing and saving corporate documents. Team members in the office can even see if their colleagues working from home are online or on the phone before making contact.

1. Why upgrade your customers' connectivity?

You are trusted advisers - your customers prefer to buy from you. If you also manage their connectivity you can keep your competitors out and use the faster, more reliable connection to move applications and data into the cloud. You can also increase your recurring revenues, helping you to fund business growth.

IT and telecommunications suppliers

A recent survey by SIR suggested that half of SMEs would talk to their local IT supplier when considering communications purchases however very few of them sell and support the products their customers are interested in. The rest turn to their telecommunications providers who are ahead of the game in many ways already supplying internet connectivity and traditional and hosted telephony.

IT Support companies spend a lot of their time talking to their customers about something that isn't working properly. They work to ensure things don't break and then fix them if they do. The time they spend on site and the importance of IT to their customers means that they are usually trusted more than any other supplier. Surveys have shown that SMEs favour buying cloud-based solutions from suppliers with an IT/data background, however few IT Support companies sell cloud voice or the quality connectivity required to enable it. 

So why should you consider broadening your IP portfolio to include connectivity and VoIP?

Are your customers being held back by poor performance or poor reliability of their broadband?

Low bandwidth, high latency and packet loss can cause many applications such as voice over IP (VOIP) and video conferencing to be unusable. Customers that have checked only with BT often feel that there is nothing to be done.

Few people realise that BT Openreach don’t supply a broadband or leased line service directly to end users. Their customers are service providers that use them for the ‘last mile’ of connectivity services they sell.  

1 - Your customers want faster broadband - why not get it from you?

The first company to deliver internet connectivity into a business will often retain that customer as they upgrade their connectivity and move into hosted applications. If you are a business supporting SMEs, internet connectivity is a great first product and a good platform to upsell additional services from.

As the amount of voice traffic carried over the Internet increases, we are seeing both pros and cons to moving to a converged data network in the SME market, but will this affect SME suppliers such as IT support services and business telecommunications providers?

In the mid-1980s the government broke British Telecomm's monopoly and suddenly anyone could sell telephone systems to businesses.

Although some companies started up specifically to sell telecommunications most of the new suppliers of phone systems already sold office equipment (fax, copiers, furniture) and had decided to diversify. To a lesser extent IT Support companies also added telecommunications to their portfolios but they were more service-orientated than equipment and early set-backs with these products often put them off. When the market for telephone calls liberalised later in the decade the channel was really born and thousands of small local companies started supplying calls and lines as well as telephone systems. Some of the large indepedent telecommunications companies we see today e.g. Daisy, Alternative, Kcom were only made possible by the actions of the government.

Increased competition

As more companies enter the market IT support for the SME market is becoming increasingly competitive. It is hard to win new business so there is a focus on providing excellent service to existing customers. One way to win new business especially with local start-ups is internet connectivity. The first company to sell connectivity into a business will retain that customer as they upgrade their connectivity and move into hosted applications. If you are a business selling to SMEs, connectivity is a great first product and a good platform to upsell additional support services from.

Textile manufacturers in rural areas are upgrading their internet connections to leased lines for faster speeds and increased security. Those with ERP software found leased circuits met their requirements.

Reason 1 - Faster speeds

Copper broadband is limited to 24Mb/s, fibre broadband offers up to 80Mb/s and Ethernet circuits offer up to 100Gb/s. The more manufacturers use their internet connection the more important speed becomes. 

Reason 2 - Cost reduction

The cost of leased lines has reduced in recent years due to increased competition in the market and the introduction of lower cost technologies such as fibre Ethernet. In addition many SMEs have taken advantage of the government's BDUK voucher scheme which is funding internet upgrades in many UK cities.