Fibre optic internet, or Ethernet, is not like ordinary broadband. It is a high end, business grade service that comes with guarantees. Guaranteed speeds, guaranteed uptime and guaranteed service levels. It means the difference between your staff being able to access and share data through business applications and the web quickly – or frustration and wasted time due to slow connection speeds and not being able to access current information as it’s needed.

Ethernet delivers upload speeds equal to the download speeds and the bandwidth is uncontended. This means the bandwidth is completely dedicated to your business, not shared with other line subscribers.

Ethernet can be delivered by three circuit options;

• Ethernet (end to end fibre)
• Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC)
• Ethernet First Mile (EFM)

Which option you should go with will depend on your budget and location. A local cabinet with a fibre connection is necessary to get either Ethernet or FTTC services. EFM is different in that it is delivered over more pairs of copper wire than a normal broadband service, providing more bandwidth and speeds for areas which can’t access a fibre circuit via their local cabinet.

For a summary of Ethernet, FTTC and EFM and comparison with other broadband services, see this table.

Ethernet service characteristics make them ideal for businesses heavily dependent on internet, branch connectivity or hosted (cloud) services. As they can carry both voice and data services, legacy ISDN and broadband circuits can be displaced with their introduction. This often saves businesses more than the cost of Ethernet introduction, making the exercise a cash positive investment in many cases.

What you get with fibre services that you don’t with ordinary broadband:

• Speed Guarantee

The speed and bandwidth of the circuit does not fluctuate

• Zero Contention

The bandwidth is not shared, all of it belongs to you

• Symmetrical

The upload speed is equivalent to the download speed

• Business Grade Service Levels

Rapid response and fix times in the event of trouble, with 1hr response and 6hr fix

• No Fair Usage Policy

Absolutely no limit on traffic throughput

• Scalable

Bandwidth can be increased as demand necessitates

• Cost savings

As Ethernet bandwidth is guaranteed and symmetrical, it is suitable for carrying combined voice and data services like SIP Trunks. This saves you money on line rental as well as call charges. Some bundles provide internet calls for free. You could also be saving money by using Cloud services.

Cloud (or hosting) is a big buzz word at the moment, and for good reason. It allows your business to outsource your hardware requirements, reducing IT capital costs, operational costs and time taken by internal IT teams to manage servers. It can save your business a significant amount of money, assuming you have ample internet connectivity in place to access your cloud services.

At Mother, all our Ethernet circuits route via our data centres before ‘breaking out’ to the internet by design. This allows you to utilise our data centres, or subscribe to hosted voice and data services when desired, without bearing additional costs for connectivity. You benefit from private access to the data centre and public access to the internet via a single circuit at no extra connectivity cost.

Circuits provided by Mother are fully managed, meaning the terminating equipment can be provided and managed by us. When running multiple services across a circuit, you need to set precedence on specific types of traffic, voice being one such example. Mother will configure these QOS (Quality of Service) policies as part of the service.

Mother delivers internet connectivity services to across the UK. For more information please contacts us.