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The government has committed to making internet connections faster across the UK. Their vision involves a full fibre roll-out, and to help get this going they’ve set up the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme. This lets small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) claim a voucher worth up to £2,500 which they can use towards the cost of installing a gigabit internet connection.

We’re a supplier of the Scheme and we’re going to tell you how the voucher works, the benefits of having a gigabit connection and why you should apply for a voucher with us.

What is the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme?

The Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme was announced by the government in March 2018. It’s part of the Local Full Fibre Networks programme which launched in late 2017. The Scheme lets businesses apply for a voucher which grants them up to £2,500 towards the cost of installing a gigabit broadband connection.

How Does the Voucher Work?

We’re a registered supplier of the Scheme which means you can apply for a voucher with us. We’ll contact the government and request a voucher for you. The government will then get in touch with you to confirm you’re happy to go ahead with your application.

Next, we’ll begin installing your connection and let the government know when we’re done. Finally, they’ll ask you to confirm everything’s working and may make some final background checks before they pay.

What is a Gigabit Connection?

Right now, the UK has 95% coverage for broadband with speeds of 24 megabits per second or higher. But many of these connections depend on a copper telephone wire which can only support a limited speed.

One gigabit is equal to 1,000 megabits. To get those speeds, you’ll need a full fibre connection. Full fibre also supports symmetrical connections, giving you matching upload and download speeds.

Why Apply with Optimity?

There are lots of reasons why we’re the right supplier for you. With us, you get:

• Matching upload and download speeds – no slowdowns or buffering
• Your own dedicated, uncontended full fibre connection
• Flexibility with a range of speeds from 100Mbps up to 10Gbps+
• 24/7 UK support
• A dedicated account manager

Am I Eligible for a Voucher?

Before you apply, you need to check you’re eligible for a voucher. The Scheme is only open to small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs). The government defines SMBs as companies with under 250 employees and an annual turnover of less than €50 million.

You can’t have had more than the allowed amount of de minimis aid in the last three years. Also, if you already have an internet connection that’s capable of 1Gbps, you can’t apply. You can read the full terms and conditions.

How Do I Apply?

Applying for a voucher with us is simple. Just go to this page and tell us a bit about yourself.

We provide London businesses with pioneering connectivity and IT products. From internet services and security, to hosting and support, businesses in the capital have become more collaborative, productive and efficient by using our solutions.

wibre™, our signature wireless internet service, is powered by 330 antennas on rooftops throughout London. It can give you the speed of a fibre connection in as little as 7 working days; whereas most fibre connections take anywhere between 60 - 90 days to install.

We can also review your building and internet usage, and determine which kind of connection will help you be more productive and efficient.

Become a PartnerAlong with our products, we’ll be talking about our IT partner program. We have two partner options: reseller and referral. While there are some differences in these, both give you a great opportunity to increase your reach and win new business by adding wibre™ to your portfolio.

Book a Meeting

Our team will be at the Expo across both days on stand K21. They’ll be happy to speak to you about all of our products and partner program. You’ll get the opportunity to use our connectivity checker, which can show you what type of connection is best for your business. You’ll also see our wibre™ antennas on display, which we’ll be glad to show you in more detail.

Registration for the Expo is free before 2nd October, and you can sign up here. Once you’ve done that, book a meeting with one of the team at our stand. Whether you want more information about our products or partner plans, we’ll be glad to speak to you.

See you in a couple of weeks’ time.

Your business needs an internet connection. There is a choice between a wireless or a fibre leased line. But what exactly are they? How will they benefit your company? And how do you choose one over the other?

Fibre and wireless are two ways of delivering the same thing: a high-speed internet connection. The installation methods may differ but they share the same benefits. These include dedicated bandwidth that is not affected by other internet users outside of your business, flexible options and, as we just said, high speeds.

We will be covering what makes a wireless leased line, what makes a fibre leased line and what are the similarities and differences between them. Then we will help you to choose the one that can provide you with the most reliable and cost-effective business internet connection.

Let’s begin with fibre.

What is Fibre?

A fibre leased line is also known as fibre to the premises (FTTP). A fibre optic cable connects your office to your internet service provider’s (ISP) supply point via an underground cable. The fibre optic cables themselves are about the size of human hair and reflect light, which makes for a fast internet connection.

For fibre to be installed, you would contact an ISP who would in turn check which fibre suppliers are in the local area. The ISP then asks this supplier for the cables to get your office connected to the internet. Roads are dug up so your cable can be installed to your premises. If you wanted something about your connection changed, this may require additional external works.

Read more: leased line comparison - what you need to know

With fibre covered, let’s look at wireless.

What is Wireless?

Wireless leased lines use rooftop antenna to provide your building with an internet connection.

Instead of reaching out to the local internet supplier and asking them to provide a cable, your ISP installs the antenna directly. They do this by attaching it to the roof of your premises.

After it has been fitted, your antenna is lined up with others in the area so a point-to-point internet connection can be directed to your business. This is also known as ensuring your antenna is within the line of sight (LOS) of the connection route. Your ISP will make changes to your connection by visiting your premises and replacing your antenna.

Now that we have explored what is meant by fibre and wireless, it is time to move onto the similarities and differences between them.

The Similarities Between Fibre and Wireless

The methods of installing fibre and wireless may be different, but the benefits to your business are the same. No matter which one you select, you will always end up with:

• Superfast speeds
• Uncontended bandwidth
• Low latency
• Scalability
• Symmetrical uploads and downloads

What does all this mean? Let’s look at each benefit in more detail.

Superfast speeds

Fibre and wireless can provide you with speeds ranging anywhere from 100 megabits per second (Mbps) to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps). How fast is that? In a word, very. You could download a 2-hour Hollywood blockbuster in a matter of seconds. Well, maybe not in the office. But you get the idea.

Uncontended bandwidth

Fibre leased lines and wireless leased lines use uncontended bandwidth. What this means is that you are not sharing the line with anyone else, so your internet speed will remain the same at any time of the day. So you can get on with the things you need to do without delay.

Low latency

Latency is the term used to describe the time it takes for a web page to respond after you have clicked on it. The higher the latency, the longer it takes to respond. The lower, the less time it takes. Wireless and fibre have low latency as standard.

Scalability

As your needs change, you might consider getting more or less bandwidth for your internet. Many ISPs offer scalability as part of their fibre and wireless packages. So notifying them of any changes you want to make is easy.

Symmetrical uploads and downloads

Ever noticed how sometimes, it takes longer to upload a file than it does to download it? That doesn’t happen with fibre and wireless leased lines. You can upload and download files at equal speeds, or symmetrically.

The Differences Between Fibre and Wireless

Installation times

Wireless leased lines can be installed in as little as 7 working days. This is because all it takes to get connected is having an antenna attached to your roof. Assuming you are in the LOS, which is something your ISP will tell you before the installation goes ahead, there is nothing else to it. Upgrades would take around the same amount of time.

Fibre can take anywhere between 30 and 90 days to install. Digging up roads and laying down the cable is a long and disruptive process on its own. But before that can happen, your ISP may need to get permission from the local authority. For upgrades, this process may have to be repeated.

Costs

Generally speaking, it is cheaper to install a wireless leased line than a fibre one. Provided the LOS is there, the only costs you will incur for wireless are the quick installation and your monthly bill afterwards.

Everything that goes into a fibre installation is expensive, from getting sign-off to laying down the cables. And extra costs can crop up later in the form of excess construction charges, if the supplier thinks your cable has been laid a long way away from your building. These can range anywhere from £2,500 to £100,000.

Despite this, there are times when wireless can become more of a financial burden than it needs to be. If there is no LOS in your area and you want it, you will have to pay to get this technology installed. Chances are you will not be able to afford this on your own and will end up needing a community sign-up. Which could take weeks or even months to secure. In this scenario, fibre may end up being the easier and cheaper choice.

Another time this can happen is if you move into a new building where there is already fibre. All your ISP has to do is connect your line to the rest of the network. However, it is not always that simple. If you want to change ISP, you may find the current one making it a difficult and expensive process for you. The fibre may be linked up to the wrong part of the network entirely and costly to get redirected.

Capacity

Fibre can offer you up to hundreds of gigabytes per cable, whereas each wireless antenna is limited to around 20Gbps. While it is possible to get more capacity on wireless by fitting more antennas, you will find yourself paying each time you need an additional one. In this situation, it is easier to go with fibre and get more capacity with less hardware.

After all that, you may be starting to think that we recommend wireless over fibre. But there are some occasions where fibre is the better choice.

Why Choose Fibre?

If your business is in an area where there is no LOS for an antenna, or in a rural location, fibre is the easier option. Not that getting LOS is impossible in these scenarios, but you risk spending a lot of time trying to get community support for purchasing the necessary technology.

We do, however, think wireless makes for a great alternative to fibre.

Why Choose Wireless?

If you are in a LOS, a wireless leased line is the better way to go. It will be cheaper and faster to set up and easier to upgrade. All of this work can be carried out within the space of a week.

There are times when you can combine your wireless with a fibre leased line, for maximum uptime and backup.

Combining Fibre and Wireless

Here is one such situation in which you would consider this. You are about to move into a new office. Before that happens, you get wireless installed a week ahead of time, so the connection is there and ready to use when you move in. The fibre line can be installed later. This gives you a working internet connection right away, and a backup in the weeks to come.

Read more: before moving office, plan your internet connection

Location, Timing and Budget

Fibre and wireless use varying installation methods to provide your business with:

• Superfast speeds
• Uncontended bandwidth
• Low latency
• Scalability

Symmetrical uploads and downloads

When it comes to choosing one for your business, you have to consider the availability in your area, your budget and timing. In a LOS, wireless is the cheaper and faster option. When there is no LOS or in rural areas, fibre can offer you an easier and less costly connection. When both fibre and wireless are available to you, you can combine them for maximum uptime and backup.

For more advice on choosing between fibre and wireless, contact us for a leased line quote. We will show you which one can offer you a fast, reliable and cost-effective business leased line.

The older telephone models, known as PBXs (which we will explain below), are an expensive way of communicating. There was a time when they were at the peak of cost-effectiveness, but developments in technology now mean this time has passed. And business telephone systems have reached a new level of affordability and productiveness.

Hosted telephony allows small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to be agile with enterprise-grade communications at a cost within their reach. It uses the internet to streamline the calling process for customers and employees, and many packages come with lots of flexibility for the businesses that are using them. This blog covers how hosted telephony came to be, how it is used today, and how it benefits SMBs.

A Brief History of Business Communications

Before the 1960s, business telephone systems had to be accessed through public switchboards. If somebody wanted to call in and reach someone within the business, an operator would have to patch them through. Inter-business calls worked this way too. As the 20th century progressed, the demand for calls went up. Businesses used multiple lines to keep up and they had to buy separate lines for each of their departments. It was an expensive way of communicating.

But this gave way to the earliest form of the private branch exchange (PBX) system. Companies were now able to buy or rent their own switchboards and hire their own operators to handle calls. Automated switchboards shortly followed, but businesses did not feel comfortable using these until the 1970s when superconductors were added to them. And when they were, private operators were no longer needed, making PBX even more affordable.

Sometime later and with the development of computers, an upgrade for PBXs appeared. This was called Time Division Multiplexing (TDM). Similar to a computer, it housed a hard drive, a central processing unit (CPU) and random access memory (RAM). All of this made it easy for businesses to add hold music and more capacity for extra phone numbers. But it was expensive. Boards held 16 phone numbers by default, which companies did not often need but were forced to spend money on.

Luckily the internet was incoming and with it came a cheaper way of connecting PBX and TDM. Internet Protocol (IP) PBX systems came next in the 1990s, which converted analogue phone signals into digital signals. These were then converted back into phone signals, and were able to be received on a telephone. As the years went by and technology advanced, things were starting to give way to hosted telephony as we now know it.

How Hosted Telephony Works

By the 2000s, hosted telephony, or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) had emerged. It uses the internet to exchange communications from one place to another. When someone receives a call, the internet directs it to their device so they can answer this. But unlike in the 90s, we now have a bigger range of technology that calls can be directed to.

Calls can be accessed on desktop PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphones. For privacy, you can use headsets when taking calls on the first three of those options. Several people can make and receive calls simultaneously. Packages tend to come with a control interface which can typically be reached through a software or web page. This is usually maintained and managed by your service provider.

At its core, hosted telephony is a pay-monthly, pay-per-user subscription. For a recurring price each month you get a digital telephone system that allows you to call for a set number of minutes. On top of that, there is usually a selection of extra features you will be able to choose from. You may want access to international phone numbers to make it seem like you are calling from abroad. Or you may want your VoIP system to enable easy switching between a desktop and a mobile phone. Many providers out there will offer bundles like this.

5 Ways Hosted Telephony Drives ROI

1. Cuts spending on hardware maintenance and management

With PBX systems, you have to pay for the telephone service every month. Additionally, there are maintenance and management costs for the hardware. Hosted telephony works as a digital subscription, making the hardware costs disappear. All you have to pay is the monthly subscription fee.

2. Helps you retain staff

Today’s employees do not expect to work in the office every day. In fact, 77% of UK workers say workplace flexibility is very important to them, whether that is for balancing time with families, to help ease long commutes or because they want a change of scenery every so often. Using PBX means they have to stay at their desks. Hosted telephony empowers them to work flexibly. By providing them with flexibility, they will stay loyal to you.

3. Makes better customer experiences

In an ideal world, it would only take one phone call for a customer to have all their problems resolved. This does not happen all the time but that is not always the point. Sometimes, what matters most to customers using the phone is having a good experience. For 58% of people, calling is their preferred method of communication. After having a positive experience, 70% would be more loyal to the company and 65% would recommend the company to others. When set-up properly, hosted telephony can help customers speak to who they want to quickly and with better sound quality than that found on PBX.

4. Room for growth and opportunities

Modern-day business environments need to be fast and agile in order to seize new opportunities. Collaboration, with other companies and individuals, is an essential factor in this current state of play. PBX was not built for that. It was built for fixed locations and closed networks. With 80% of employee time in SMBs spent collaborating and 68% of UK SMBs collaborating with each other, cloud-based technology is needed to support this appetite. Use hosted telephony and you can capture opportunities and grow.

5. Helps IT teams work more efficiently

Maintaining the phone system is a waste of IT’s time and expertise. When you choose a hosted telephony system, your provider will take care of the maintenance for you. And they will have the necessary skills to do so. So your IT team can get back to doing what they do best: ensuring your IT network is performing securely.

Don’t Be Held Back by Your Phone System

Hosted telephony has come a long way. It has gone from a being a money-draining, space-consuming resource that was not ideal for businesses, to a cost-saving, cloud-powered tool that takes up no space in the office at all. Using the internet, the business telephone systems of today come with a range of options and cost a fraction of what they once did.

Not only that but hosted telephony helps businesses drive ROI. With it, you can reduce spending on maintenance and management, retain staff by meeting their expectations, make better customer experiences, jump on chances to grow your business and help your IT team to work more efficiently and productively.

There could not be a better time to use hosted telephony. No one should be held back by their telephone system as it is costly in more ways than one. Our forthcoming eBook will go into this in more detail once it is published in January 2019. But in the meantime, send us any questions you have on upgrading to hosted telephony. We would be happy to help.

You might be surprised just how scalable, secure and efficient it is, but the military and financial banking industry aren’t. They were one of the first industries to use fixed wireless access technology because of its reliability, speed and resilience to threat. Shocked? Then I have a few more revelations in store for you.

There are a few myths about the technology that just aren’t true so I’ve written this blog to put the story straight.

In the same way that some people think the earth is flat, some people think that fixed wireless access technology is less secure than fibre. We think that’s simply because they can’t see or touch it, but that’s one of the reasons it is so secure. With solutions like Wibre, your data travels in tiny pencil beams on millimetre waves with encryption, rather than on cables under the ground.

Due to the ever-growing infrastructure changes that are happening in London it’s not surprising if accidents happen to fibre cables and therefore a wireless solution could be less vulnerable to downtime.

Wibre is also built on our large resilient wireless network which has multiple nodes spanning the capital, so if something unforeseen should happen to interrupt the transmission, we can get it up and running again quickly by simply re-routing.

When you choose the bandwidth you want for fibre, typically a lot of digging commences so that you can get exactly what you ask for… But what about when your business grows, and you want more? Unfortunately, you’ll probably have to wait while your provider digs again. Ouch! With Wibre, if you need more, we just do a software upgrade or give you a larger antenna. Can it really be that quick and simple? Yes!

It’s also more flexible. If you move, Wibre can go with you to your next location if the new building is still in our line of sight. Our Wibre network covers most black spots so the likelihood is that you can get Wibre or our fibre to power your business connectivity whatever your location.

But the major benefit that most people know about is that Wibre is so quick and easy to deploy. From first contact, to up and working, can take just seven to ten working days. You can see why it’s been such a blessing for businesses who’ve been moving offices and forgotten to provision for connectivity – without which, let’s face it, most would have a real problem.