ADSL2+ New year, new business broadband

Very soon businesses will see the arrival of ADSL2+ for businesses in the UK. For the first time, business users will be able to take advantage of the new bandwidth improvements on their current ADSL broadband offering, with all the productivity and efficiency improvements that it will bring. Using the web, video conferencing, voice and TV on demand will soon become a much faster and user-friendly experience.

What is ADSL2+? It is an upgrade on the current ADSL standard, enabling far greater downloading speeds. This bigger bandwidth means that as a business you will be able to take advantage of up to 24Mbps bandwidth - up to twice as fast as current maximum speeds.

What will be the real benefits of such fast broadband for businesses? The mix of bandwidth-hungry web-based business applications, multimedia business communications and large file transferring are all eating into traditional ADSL's ability to deliver for the average business in the UK. The more we become reliant on the business web, the greater the benefits of faster broadband to the organisation.

Increasingly business software packages such as CRM, HR, financial or databases are being run online as web services. The need to upload, download and share information online when previously only using the internal company hard drives is creating new efficiencies, networked UK-wide businesses and global connectivity. But their reliance on broadband can limit their efficiency. Faster broadband will super-charge these business-critical business applications making more efficient working environments.

Internet telephony, video conferencing and IP TV are transforming the way businesses communicate. ADSL2+ will mean smooth, seamless communications that will give business users new capabilities in the connected business environment.

Hand in hand with the improved communication and productivity gains enabled by faster broadband speeds, the added benefits lie in reducing the amount of downtime hitting businesses. With increased reliance on broadband, we come to expect constant access to systems, availability on the phone or online, and therefore minimising the detrimental impact of a downed network. The service has been engineered to meet the requirements of a customer site with a large end-user base, which in the past could only be addressed via Leased Lines or Ethernet technology in the WAN. Faster broadband is a step in the right direction of giving UK businesses the bandwidth they need to run their web-enabled business.

So as we move towards a business world of hyper-connectivity, so we expect innovations in the provision of broadband to our businesses. With ADSL2+ UK businesses will see greatly improved access to the kind of applications that will help them be more competitive, productive and efficient.

Back to the newsletter