Telecommunications are at the heart of modern business transactions; the evolution of telecoms has allowed all sizes of business to reach marketplaces which would have been unfeasible generations before. An independent jewellery artist can now produce bespoke pieces of jewellery on a farm in Nantwich, custom ordered and ready to deliver to a skyscraper in Tokyo within a few days. Our world is getting smaller and more accessible every day and businesses are able to reach wider audiences simultaneously. This is mostly thanks to the Internet, but in order to connect to and use the World Wide Web businesses and consumers need to have sufficient capability in their Telecoms. In Aberdeenshire and other remote areas of the UK, reliable, high-speed fixed line telecoms are more difficult to acquire. What options are available?
Fibre Broadband
Fibre Broadband, commonly known as FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet), increases the volume and speed of Internet traffic by joining a national network of exchanges via Fibre optic cables then running copper cable from the exchange to the subscriber’s premises. Fibre offers speeds in excess of 80Mbit/s to some subscribers with a minimum of 2Mbit/s to all. BT Openreach are working to enable as many exchanges across the UK as possible for Fibre broadband, with a focus on getting as many people connected to high-speed Internet as possible. Rural areas are taking much longer than urban environments as Urban environments hold denser populations allowing Openreach to connect more people, faster.
4G/LTE
Wireless communications technology has advanced exponentially from its first commercial uses in mobile phones in the 1980s. 4G is the fourth generation mobile telecommunications technology while LTE falls just short of the requirements for a fourth generation service. The 4G service is provided through radio antennas throughout the country with different network providers focusing in rural areas. 4G-LTE has a peak data rate of 100Mbit/s with the minimum being no active connection. Due to the positioning of masts around the UK 4G is becoming a better option for rural communities suffering from poor fixed-line connectivity. The negative of this is that 4G providers limit the volume of data by charging per gigabyte transferred.
ADSL Broadband
ADSL Broadband, or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, was approved in 1998 as a telecommunications service and uses a complete copper wire connection from premises to exchange and beyond. ADSL services favour download (information IN to the premises) over upload (information OUT of the premises) and is less suitable for companies heavily focused on data sharing, video conferencing and large data uploads. With a current maximum speed of 24Mbit/s when downloading (using ADSL2+) and a minimum speed below 0.5Mbit/s ADSL is considerably slower than a Fibre connection, but is a suitable connection for most businesses no focused on heavy data usage.
Point to Point Data Link
A point to point connection is a direct wireless connection between two endpoints, typically bridging a telecoms gap where fixed-line telecoms are unavailable. Because of this data speeds and quality of service can vary greatly depending on the provider. A maximum speed of 20Mbit/s is the best that can be achieved with this connectivity.
Satellite
Satellite Internet uses communications satellites to allow remote users with no fixed-line or wireless communications to access the Internet and data services. With a theoretical peak speed of 6.25Mbit/s Satellite is the slowest of these providers and suffers from latency (delay between instruction and data transfer) issues causing issues with several web services. In the absence of any other option Satellite Internet access will allow the most remote users to access most on line services.
Conclusion
Each of these technologies provides the user access to the Internet and are currently available technologies on the consumer market. There are alternatives available through specialised vendors but these usually carry an exorbitant price tag to the consumer. If you’d like to know more about getting the best available connectivity please contact us