How to Decide When to Upgrade Your Business Internet

Free, public WiFi isn’t a perk. Customers expect it, and it is often a deciding factor when picking an airline, hotel, holiday rental, restaurant or bar.

In addition to satisfying your customers, companies can use free WiFi to collect important customer details, such as email addresses or phone numbers. Furthermore, as cookies depreciate, organizations can leverage WiFi to gain valuable first-party data for location-based marketing and promotions.

While guest WiFi is essential, it’s also risky. Sharing business WiFi with your customers makes your data and network vulnerable to cyber breaches.

Organizations should set up a separate WiFi connection for business employees, with a secure password and WPA/WPA2 encryption. Plus, owners can turn off the Service Set Identifier (SSID) — your network’s name — so customers can’t see it.

Older infrastructure prioritizes primary working spaces and often creates these dead zones. If your staff and clients are mobile, your wireless network should work anywhere on your property.

Internet service providers (ISPs) use a heat-mapping tool to locate spaces with spotty connections. Technology infrastructure upgrades eliminate these dead spots so workers and customers can connect from anywhere.

Business owners must regularly update routers and replace older models when firmware updates are no longer available. If you’re unsure about your router’s security, there’s a good chance you’re exposing your company to cyber threats.

Although residential equipment may work for a small startup, once you move to an office or offer customer WiFi, enterprise-grade hardware is necessary. Business equipment is built to support potentially hundreds of connections and large traffic volumes. Consequently, commercial hardware offers:

• Failover or high-availability features to increase resilience
  
• More stability than devices designed for use at home
  
• Compliance with higher security standards
  
• Greater flexibility in placement and configurations
  
• Administration tools for reporting and oversight

Many businesses have hastened their digital transformation, placing more and more processes online. Others are slowly moving workflows to the cloud, as resources allow. Each effort sends more data over your network, leading to bandwidth limitations.

Your current bandwidth may suit your company now, but as you increase reliance on cloud technologies, you’ll need more bandwidth. Internet providers should offer step-up plans that fit your existing needs and budgets while supporting future growth.

Page load errors or slow load times hurt customer and employee experiences. The connectivity issues may stem from outdated hardware, infrastructure gaps or a lack of bandwidth. Regardless of the problem’s source, it’s a vital issue to address immediately.

A latency issue won’t improve over time. Instead, business users should choose ISPs offering Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to ensure optimal experiences regardless of when or where employees and customers use your Internet services.

Switching providers once you’ve outgrown your service is a pain. Avoid this problem by selecting an Internet service provider who offers plans for all business sizes and needs. Doing so helps owners avoid paying more for unused bandwidth and speed during their early years yet doesn’t hamper growth when production increases.

If you can’t recall the last time you reviewed your service offerings and hardware, then there’s no better time than the present.

If demand for your products or services increased, it’s an excellent time to make sure your Internet and equipment can keep up. A slow connection or faulty hardware can tank productivity, or worse, result in lost sales. After all, when you need to process credit cards online or track the status of much-needed supplies, you can’t afford anything to break.

Give your growing business what it needs to thrive — the proper infrastructure, equipment, and bandwidth.

During bad weather or a natural disaster, your customers and employees need you more than ever. Business disruptions hurt your bottom line. Yet, most Internet connections require electricity. The best ISPs offer solutions to keep your business-critical tools connected to the Internet during a short outage.

Backup Internet tools, like Cox Business’ Net Assurance, provide peace of mind to business owners and decrease downtime.

If your teams use various cloud-based tools, they can be affected by slow Internet speeds, especially during peak hours. Slow speeds can cause apps and dashboards to freeze or crash. When this happens while employees are on a call with clients or waiting for an important email, it can seriously impact your business.

Ask your ISP to help you identify high-use periods and come up with affordable solutions to ensure connectivity.

Although companies are moving back to in-person meetings, many appreciate the cost savings and flexibility of video. Yet, video needs a speedy connection and plenty of bandwidth, especially if multiple employees access video conferencing tools simultaneously. Experts expect the popularity of video applications to continue to grow, meaning business owners require stable connections that support a range of voice and video services.

Cybersecurity is an issue that every business owner faces. However, threats have increased substantially over the past few years, leaving no industry untouched.

If your IT team voices cybersecurity concerns or lacks the resources to manage your wireless connection adequately, your Internet service provider can help. ISPs are able to assess existing hardware and networks. Along with offering enterprise-grade equipment, they may provide managed services to lighten your IT workload.

Business owners turn to the Internet of Things (IoT) to reduce operational costs, track assets and secure property. From Internet-connected Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems to security alarms, IoT gives owners access to critical information from anywhere.

However, automated hardware and tools can silently use your bandwidth, leaving less for other business-critical needs. Your ISP can recommend dual-band routers to ensure your devices have enough bandwidth without affecting your employees’ or customers’ usage.

Software as a Service (SaaS), cloud backup and cloud computing usage is rising because it’s often cost-efficient to choose cloud-based services over legacy software. However, adding cloud tools can overload your network. By upgrading wireless infrastructure, business owners avoid getting hit with unexpected costs and downtime when transferring workflows to the cloud.

For business leaders, a drop in productivity may be most noticeable within your IT department. Instead of proactively addressing customer or employee connectivity and security issues, they’re busy reacting to the latest network problem.

Upgrading your Internet services, infrastructure, and equipment helps your employees make better use of their time.

Automated backup services are great except when a spotty Internet connection prevents a files from fully backing up. A lack of bandwidth may cause media-heavy files to not fully backup or may timeout if your Internet isn’t quick enough to get the job done in the required amount of time. Upgrading your Internet services can ease backup concerns and help get your systems up and running.