Halloween is drawing near. A time for trick-or-treat, ghouls, ghosts and other scary things! But for a small business, nothing could be scarier than using a cloud phone or video solution over standard broadband. Ahhhhhh!!!!
Recently, I’ve spoken with quite a few small businesses who have been experiencing poor voice and video quality on their cloud solution. For many businesses, it seems like this is a nightmare they can never wake up from and they aren’t sure what to do. Most of my conversations have gone eerily similar, so I thought I would write a blog that might give folks some ideas about what could be causing the issues. The initial reaction for most folks that are having phone or video problems is to point to the cloud solution provider. While this might be the case in some instances, I am finding more and more that internet connectivity is the likely culprit, when it comes to small businesses. The majority of small business owners are cost conscientious and when they initially looked at internet, they came across broadband. Broadband is cheap and providers advertise super-fast download speeds. Businesses have been using broadband for years, with very few issues. But in today’s post-Covid work environment broadband’s inherent drawbacks have “manifested” into a serious issue for businesses. Let’s “dig” in a bit more on what broadband is, and “unearth” these inherent issues that negatively affect real-time communications, such as voice and video.
Broadband is also known as cable, or coax internet, just like we use in our homes. Broadband advertises lightning-fast internet download speeds, “up to” 1 Gigabytes per second (1Gbps); and providers offer bundled discounts on your T.V. or basic phone for $200-$300 bucks a month! When you compare that with a dedicated fiber circuit, it seems like a no-brainer. But notice that the broadband provider uses the words, “up to.” If you look in the fine print, you’ll actually see caveats like, “speeds may vary.” In some cases, you’ll have to go looking for this information. Broadband providers are not guaranteeing their advertised speeds. In fact, it’s probably more likely that speeds are fluctuating significantly throughout the day. This is because broadband bandwidth is shared with all other broadband customers in your area. If the office upstairs is doing a 10-party video call, while the architecture firm downstairs is doing a massive file upload; then your bandwidth availability is likely going to take a hit. When it comes to real-time communications, this is the “nail in the coffin” with broadband. Voice and video require consistent bandwidth in order to function smoothly, and broadband cannot provide reliability that a business needs to ensure smooth connectivity with its clients.
The other issue that needs to be “brought into the light” is that providers are usually only highlighting the fast download speeds, but they try and hide the upload speeds. Historically, upload speeds were not as important to businesses that were only doing basic web browsing or video streaming. The bulk of their data was being downloaded. But in the era of cloud voice and video, these two-way communication solutions rely on both reliable upload and download speeds. At the time of writing this blog, Spectrum was offering a max 1Gbps download speeds, coupled with a max 35Mbps of upload speeds. Now you can see why providers don’t highlight their upload speeds! That’s a huge difference; and I think it is very misleading to keep this information as a side note. For customers that are using voice and video, upload speed must be considered. The fact that we’re not even guaranteed to get the full 35Mbps consistently, makes broadband much less attractive.
You might be saying to yourself right now, “Don’t the cloud phone & internet providers have stringent bandwidth requires to ensure their solutions run smoothly?” Unfortunately, that is not the case. Cloud phone/video providers will usually qualify upfront, with some questions about your internet circuit type and sizing. That’s nice, but unless you’re using your real-time solutions in a vacuum, there is no way to determine whether the cloud solution will function smoothly with the rest of your internet usage. Most of the issues will go unchecked until the solution is in full production mode, during peak broadband usage. Once Intermittent call quality issues pop up, cloud providers will test on their end; usually say everything is fine; and then tell the client to call their internet provider. The internet provider will, of course, let you know that the circuit is up and performing as it should. Broadband just doesn’t cut it, if you are trying to provide a great connection with your clients. It’ll be enough to send anyone to the insane asylum!
If you truly want to be confident that your internet bandwidth is consistent, a dedicated circuit, such as fiber is the way to go. With a dedicated circuit, the provider will guarantee the bandwidth that is purchased, giving you the reliability to communicate with your customers without issue. Yes, dedicated circuits are more expensive; but in this case, you get what you pay for. If your company relies on phone and video to do business with your customers, then a dedicated circuit is a must. If your internet circuit goes down, or doesn’t perform the guaranteed throughput, you have recourse against the provider. You’ll usually see dedicated fiber circuits come in speeds of 10, 20, 35, 50, 100Mbps and on and on. These speeds are usually shown as a single speed because you’ll get the same speeds up and down. Dedicated circuits are also much more efficient in how they carry data; so you usually don’t need to have the higher speeds that broadband advertises. A customer who is using a 1Gbps/35Mpbs may be okay with a 35Mbps, or 50Mbps fiber circuit. This can be estimated after some consultation, or you may be able to pull a bandwidth utilization report.
We’ve discussed what to do to improve our own network and internet connectivity. However, our voice and video still needs to traverse the public internet after it leaves our network. Larger companies used to build out dedicated networks between all of their locations in order to ensure important data and real-time communications would be secure and reliable. This isn’t something that most small businesses can afford, nor has it been necessary in the last couple of years. Internet Optimization solutions such as SD-WAN really changed the game, and they allowed businesses to traverse the public internet and still get the security and reliability they were looking for. SD-WAN stands for Software Defined Wide Area Network. Purchasing SD-WAN devices used to be expensive and very few small businesses could take advantage of these. But in the last couple of years, many providers now provide scalable SD-WAN solutions as a managed, or cloud service, which has made it much more affordable. Essentially, SD-WAN improves the efficiency of your network traffic. It also allows you to make manual configurations to prioritize users and applications that are using the internet. For example, let’s say you have several users that stream YouTube or Netflix, on their lunch break. You notice that during this same time each day, your internet is much slower and your video calls become choppy. The SD-WAN solution gives you the ability to pull granular utilization reports. Now you are able to identify the users, and the applications, that are eating all of the bandwidth. Once the problem has been identified, the SD-WAN solution allows you to adjust the bandwidth prioritization so that Netflix, and YouTube, get the lowest priority; and your voice, and video solution, get the highest. It provides you with the ultimate flexibility to manage their internet to suit your business needs.
If your business is experiencing any of these these issues, or plans on moving to a cloud solution using a broadband circuit, give Cloud Konnex a call. We’ll help clear away the fog; pull back the spider webs; and guide you out of this nightmare. Cloud Konnex is a consulting, and brokerage, agency that specializes in UC, Contact Center, Web-Conferencing, Mobility, Security, Internet Connectivity & Optimization. Our consulting services are free to clients. Once we understand your business, we’ll sift through the vast number of cloud and internet providers on the market, and bring you the top providers that match your requirements. If you select a provider that we recommend, we’ll provide free project management to ensure a successful implementation. We will also provide ongoing account management, and conduct periodic reviews of provider service levels, invoicing, licensing, and bandwidth utilization. Cloud Konnex strives to be a trusted partner and an extension of your business’ team.
Click on the “Get A Quote” button up on the top right, and fill out the form to have a Cloud Concierge give you a call within 4 business hours. Or, call or email David Martinez at 949-444-9149 or dmartinez@cloudkonnex.com.
