Internet connections are often disappointing, no matter how many Mbps you thought you were signing up for. The reasons for this are complex, but is often the result of having the wrong service, poor configuration, a high noise floor, latency, jitter and packet loss on the line.
While this can be mildly annoying at home, it can deal a significant blow to productivity, availability and customer experience in an organisation that depends on high-speed always-on connectivity. The solution to a poor connectivity experience is a dedicated, enterprise-grade licensed spectrum connection.
It seems not everyone understands why it is worth investing in licensed spectrum when unlicensed spectrum is so widely promoted and readily available.
Speeding up data in motion
One could liken connectivity to an experience on the open road: you may have invested in a high-end supercar, but if you go cheap on the wheels and tyres, it won’t perform as it should. The wheels are your last mile connection.
Taking this analogy further, if you put a supercar on a single lane road with a 120km an hour speed limit, but it’s stuck in that lane with 100 other cars, it won’t perform as it could, and it will never be able to reach speeds of 120km an hour because of delays, slow-moving traffic and potholes.
In contrast, if your car is on a 100-lane freeway in which each car has a dedicated lane, you’ll achieve higher speeds and a better experience – even if the speed limit was only 100km an hour.
Licensed and unlicensed spectrum are not the same. Unlicensed spectrum, which most home users and many companies use, is a best effort connection and can seldom deliver the expected speeds because of its large numbers of users. Noise, latency, packet loss and jitter on these connections negatively affect overall performance.
In contrast, an enterprise-grade private connection in licensed spectrum gives customers their own high quality ‘lane’, resulting in faster speeds and a superior experience. Comsol’s offering harnesses its licensed 28GHz spectrum to power connections with speeds from 10Mbps to 100Mbps and beyond, and I’m confident that a 20Mbps Comsol dedicated high-speed connection will perform better than an unlicensed 100Mbps link or, in many cases, a best effort fibre link.
Rightsizing connections
Selecting the right service provider and connection depends on what the customer or organisation needs to achieve. Home users may find unlicensed spectrum serves all their needs, whereas digital businesses dependent on the cloud will likely need faster speeds and better performance.
Some organisations may still be enduring an inferior experience because they don’t understand the alternatives or they believe licensed spectrum is priced beyond their reach.
Five years ago, there was a massive gap between the costs of non-licensed and enterprise grade carrier equipment, but that gap has narrowed over time. Now, the difference may be just a few hundred rand a month, which is nothing when you’re looking at high-speed, reliable access to cloud services and quality.
When mission-critical applications are running in the cloud, your business processes and even health and safety depend on a top quality last mile connection that you can trust. You need to look at the performance characteristics of the last mile.
Many service providers just talk connectivity with SLAs that have no punitive metrics, so consumers aren’t really aware of the options. Many don’t realise that for just 20% – 25% more, they would have a quality service that improves employee and customer experience. The licensed quality is all around your spectrum holding. Having enough spectrum is important, and Comsol has a phenomenal value proposition in the 28GHz band.
An unlicensed spectrum connection may suffice in remote and rural areas, where there is less noise and interference. Where you’re in rural areas where you haven’t oversold a sector or infrastructure beyond its capabilities, and noise levels stay below a certain threshold, you can achieve a decent quality of service.
However, Comsol has even found that in one of South Africa’s primary national parks, numerous users and networks can impact quality. They asked us to do a spectrum sweep and we were surprised at the interference coming from two-way radios, vehicle trackers and ISM networks between game lodges. The solution was to build a robust licensed network in the reserve.
With more and more mission-critical systems and applications in the cloud across all sectors and all areas, it has become increasingly important for organisations to look carefully at their connectivity and right-size their connections to ensure they get the service levels they need.
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