Business ownership is all about balance - you’ve got to conserve money where you can, and spend money when it will help your business grow. The Internet package you choose for your business is a good reflection of this - spend too little and you’ll create bottlenecks, spend too much and you’re wasting money.
Usage and Users
There are, broadly, two factors that should dictate how much bandwidth (the amount of information that can be sent over a connection in a given amount of time) you need: usage and users.
Usage describes how you’re using the Internet in your business’s day-to-day operations. Internet usage can be further divided into two categories:
Downloading (the transfer of data from the Internet to your computer)
and
Uploading (the transfer of data from your computer to the Internet)
Anytime you’re doing almost anything on the Internet, from scrolling through social media to reading this very site, you’re downloading data. Small-scale downloads like web surfing happen quickly even with fairly little bandwidth, while downloading large video or image files requires much more bandwidth (if you don’t want to have to wait around for hours).
Uploading follows the same logic, but in reverse: if you’re just sending short text emails, slow upload bandwidth is fine, but if you’re constantly uploading or sending dense legal documents, schematics, videos, or other large files, you’ll want a much higher bandwidth.
As well, you’ll want to think about how many people are using your connection simultaneously. Surfing the web generally takes about a 1 Mbps connection; 25 people surfing the web, on the other hand, takes a 25 Mbps connection (1 Mbps x 25 people). If some of those users start to download or upload large files, however, you’d need a much better connection.
Types of Connection
A lot of the packages for business Internet you’ll see online have what are known as asymmetrical connections. These connections have higher download speeds than upload speeds - a cable connection, for example, might have a 50 Mbps download rate but a 5 Mbps upload rate.
Symmetrical connections, which are often found in fibre Internet packages, have the same upload and download rate. These connections are preferable if your business has to post a lot of content online or send large files to clients on a regular basis
Internet Service Providers in Winnipeg
When most of us think of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Winnipeg, we think of the big companies - Bell MTS and Shaw. There are, however, other ISPs in Winnipeg if the main two don’t suit your needs. The highest price point packages from those two companies in Winnipeg have a maximum upload speed of 150 Mbps and 125 Mbps, respectively. Conversely, companies in downtown Winnipeg can get Fastnet, which offers upload speeds of up to 1 Gbps (1000 Mbps).
Of course, there is a trade off here - the faster your connection is, the more money you’re going to have to spend. We offer technical support services in Winnipeg, and these services can include an audit of your network. We can evaluate whether or not you need a faster connection, what ways you might improve connectivity through physical design changes, and help you with the cost-benefit analysis of changing your Internet connection.
