How Fast Should My Business nbn™️ Be?

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How Fast Should My Business nbn™️ Be?

This is one of the most common questions that you may be asking yourself when researching which business nbn™️ plan is right for them, and with fair reason. If the business ends up with an Internet connection that isn’t sufficient for its needs, the business will struggle to deliver the kind of online services that customers want, not to mention engaging with partners and clients will become laborious and inefficient.

There are a number of different factors that an enterprise’s management will need to consider in selecting an Internet plan:

Upload is as important as download

For residential Internet uses, download speeds are the priority, because residential Internet users are consumers; whether it’s video streaming, gaming, music or social media, the typical residential user consumes rather than provides content. For this reason most residential Internet plans provide relatively fast download speeds, but much more modest upload speeds.

Businesses tend to be much more balanced, in that they’re constantly uploading video to social media, providing services online, managing customers and using the cloud and video conferencing to collaborate within the organisation. For this reason the upload speed – generally the lower quoted speed – is the one that the typical business will want to consider as the “baseline” for their Internet speed needs. In the most extreme and robust enterprise cases, business Internet plans are offered as synchronous (the same upload and download speeds) in recognition of this need to have a consistency across both download and upload experiences.

Scalability is important

The more users the business has the faster the Internet speeds will be, as the speed will need to be “split” across more users. That being the case, it’s a good idea to look at the business growth plans and account for what shape the business is expected to be in in 2-3 years. If you’re expecting growth, then be sure to go for a slightly larger total speed, so that new hires don’t slow down the overall environment, and you don’t need to continually go back to the ISP to negotiate a new plan.

Think about just how much you’re doing with the nbn™️

The more applications that you have running on the business nbn™️, the more speed you’ll need, because again, each application “splits” and consumes some of the total available speed. Consider this: by 2030 each person will own 15 connected devices, and that’s just your employees. They might not bring all those devices into the working environment, but your environment will also have virtual or hosted PBX and cloud services, as well as the physical security system and many Internet of Things – IoT – devices all connected to the network.

Different businesses have different needs

The kind of Internet speeds that you need also depends on the nature of your business. A small bakery that uses the Internet to host its website and take orders from customers has very different Internet needs than a media and advertising company that needs to deal with large video files and rich media. A consultancy that has clients across the world that it needs to video conference with frequently has different needs again.

They all might have the same number of staff, but the baker’s overall Internet needs are modest, the media agency would be downloading and uploading very large files, and the consultancy would need its real-time collaboration tools to be fast and reliable. Understanding the nature of your business and how it can leverage the Internet can help decide what level of nbn™️ plan is right for the business.

Business nbn™️ plans start at $79/month, which provides a 50Mbps download and 20Mbps upload connection. This is an ideal speed for a micro-business or home office. As businesses get larger in scope, so too do their speed needs. A small business with a few employees might want the $109/month 100/40 or $209/month 250/100Mbps plan that would allow simultaneous downloading and uploading across a few people without loss.

As the business moves into medium-sized and larger, the $319/month 500/200Mbps and $429/month 1000/400Mbps solutions will allow for many video conferencing and cloud-based applications across dozens of users simultaneously. For even larger organisations it then becomes important to consider installing a dedicated fibre link to maximise control over bandwidth and speeds.

The selection of a business nbn™️ plan is a strategic one, as it will help to define how your employees work, and how your customers engage with your brand as your business starts to embrace the Internet. Even those businesses that never thought they would benefit from an Internet presence almost invariably end up finding opportunities that would never have been available to them otherwise, and it’s for that reason that you don’t want to be hamstrung by an Internet connection that isn’t sufficient. Undertake a due diligence process for your business and its Internet needs, and you’ll set yourself up for years of growth, innovation, and success.