Slowly but surely fibre optic cable has become the standard solution when it comes to last mile connectivity which connects your office to your internet service provider. Previously fibre has been very expensive which is why copper wire technology was the standard for many years. Services like ISDN and analogue also make use of copper purely for voice calls over Telkom lines. These technologies are ageing and prone to all kinds of problems.
For a long time, customers and businesses were at the mercy of terrible quality ADSL and expensive symmetrical services such as Telkom’s Diginet. ADSL was very cost-effective, but unfortunately, the service was extremely unreliable. Initiatives like fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) and fibre-to-the-business (FTTB) have really helped new players enter the market and as a result, the cost of fibre is quickly dropping.
Why Choose fibre?
- Fibre is exceptionally reliable. It remains far less affected by the environmental challenges which can greatly affect the performance of copper. Getting wet, being submerged underwater and even the extreme heat of the South African summer is not a problem for fibre.
- Fibre is immune to electromagnetic and radio frequency interference, crosstalk and impedance problems. You can even run fibre next to industrial equipment without affecting the efficiency of the cable.
- Fibre provides very high speed bandwidth and capacity.
- Usually, only a simple configuration change is required in order to increase bandwidth.
- There is also no threat to fibre optic cable being stolen.
- If you opt for a converged solution you can run multiple services like voice (VoIP) and data on the same fibre link and have a single line for all your data services.
- Doing away with antiquated copper technology also saves you money and saves you from having to deal with multiple technologies and multiple vendors.
- Fibre is lightweight, thinner and more durable than copper cable. In order to get higher speeds using copper, you would require a higher grade of cable, which have larger outside diameters, weigh more, and take up more space.
- A fibre optic signal is made of light, so fibre doesn’t have the same distance limitations of copper. Very little signal loss occurs during transmission, allowing the data to move at higher speeds and greater distances.
- Fibre is also very secure. It doesn’t radiate signals, making it difficult to tap into, this ensures additional security for your data. If the cable is tapped it will leak light, causing the entire system to fail.
With the cost of fibre continually falling, there really are no disadvantages to switching over from copper. If you are ready to install lightning fast fibre optic cables for your business, don’t hesitate, contact us now!