FASTER BROADBAND, FASTER PROFIT
The demand for bandwidth is growing, with bandwidth-hungry applications taking centre stage and transforming the user experience of the web.
The web is gradually becoming a platform for collaborative computing as discussed in this issue of Between The Lines (
Web 2.0 – hype or reality?)
and upload speeds of 256 Kbit/s are sure to become as outdated as dial-up speeds were at the beginning of the broadband revolution.
It’s a given that plain ADSL is limited in what it can deliver for the many domestic, SoHo and SME users who are more than a short distance from their exchange. ADSL+ and SDSL are good value but also have inherent limitations. At the same time high-speed VPNs are prohibitively expensive for many of those users who need the extra bandwidth. There’s a gap in the market – and bonded broadband has arrived to fill that gap.
MEETING THE NEED FOR SPEEDBonded broadband – adding ADSL lines together – offers cost-conscious small and medium-sized businesses the ability to improve the speed and capacity of their single-line broadband connections. The principle of bonded broadband is startlingly simple: combine up to four ADSL lines into one high-speed connection, giving dramatically improved performance over that of a single line – as much as quadrupling the effective speed. The service is controlled by software on the ISP’s server.
It’s not only simple in concept, but simple to implement as it works with industry standard hardware. End users will need to buy the pre-configured Netgear router from you and the software can be installed on your servers via a straightforward download. And it’s simple to operate, running in the background with no intervention required, either by service providers or by users.
It may be simple, but the impact on end user performance is spectacular. 256 Kbit/s upstream speeds can be transformed into 1 Mbit/s, whilst 8 Mbit/s downstream becomes routine. It’s the perfect solution for small businesses, for satellite offices, for home-workers and for domestic power-users. It brings within the reach of businesses with modest budgets all the benefits of the new generation of internet services, like remote backup and multiple VoIP. Because connections from different providers can be easily combined, the service also offers inexpensive resilience against service outages.
READ BETWEEN THE LINES
BTWholesale is offering a bonded broadband service called Sharedband. "The simplicity of Sharedband is its great strength", says Derek Murphy, who leads the BT Wholesale sales effort behind the product. "Sharedband is a unique product that complements our new Wholesale Broadband Connect portfolio and allows our service provider customers to offer real improvements to a large and important group of users, easily and inexpensively."
Sharedband offers clear competitive differentiation making for more effective customer acquisition and retention. It offers the possibility of incremental revenue and profit from the provision of extra ADSL lines and new services. It offers your customers the twin advantages of increased reliability and better upstream speeds.
BT Wholesale runs a demonstration site for Sharedband at its City Place facility near Gatwick. If you’d like to see the demo, contact Derek Murphy. Or talk to your Account Manager about how BT Wholesale can help you meet the need for speed.