3 Telltale Signs It's Time to Upgrade Your Business Internet

Your business may have experienced significant change in recent months—whether you had to “pivot” your operations or pursue new growth opportunities. Your internet connection is likely supporting much of this change, allowing your business to easily adopt new digital tools and your employees to work faster and more efficiently.

It’s important to make sure your business internet continues to provide the bandwidth and speed your business needs, so it’s not hurting your employees’ productivity or disrupting your customer experience.

So, how do you know when it’s time to upgrade your business internet? Here are three telltale signs:

1. Your technologies are experiencing regular slowdowns and interruptions.

Probably the most obvious sign—yet one you shouldn’t wait around for—is the slow loading and processing of tools and websites over your connection. While a slowdown of one particular connected device or tool may be caused by something else, such as a device-based problem, consider whether your connection is still adequate for your needs if you’re experiencing ongoing issues across multiple devices.

“We can tell that it is time to upgrade once the internet can no longer load websites and other essential things quickly,” says William Cannon, CEO of UpLead, a Calabasas, California-based company that developed a sales intelligence tool. “We don’t want to waste time waiting for the links to load properly. Time is important, and we all want to make the most of it every day.”

If your internet bandwidth and speed are no longer adequate, your employees might start to experience patchy video calls or video “freezing” issues—and that can hurt your customer and employee experience.

2. Your staff is growing.

Adding one new employee may not require you to upgrade your business internet, depending on your plan’s current bandwidth and speed. But if you’re adding more, you should certainly evaluate how the additional headcount will affect your internet usage. Remember that employees today often use multiple connected devices and software programs simultaneously. They might be using their laptop and smartphone for various business tasks—all while streaming music while they work.

And certain types of employees can consume huge amounts of bandwidth. A graphic designer or another employee who regularly works with video or downloads or uploads large image or data files is probably using significant bandwidth on their own

One very general guideline: A 200 megabits-per-second (Mbps) plan is adequate for a company with fewer than five employees, while a 600 Mbps plan can support up to 20 employees. But how those employees are using the internet is just as important as the number you have.

3. Your operations are being digitally transformed

Many businesses have adopted and embraced new connected tools to help propel themselves into the future. While these tools can be transformative to both your operations and your customer experience, they also can consume a lot of internet bandwidth.

Video conferencing—especially when used by multiple people over the same connection—can be bandwidth intensive. Moreover, you probably now have connected tools that are “always on” and  working in the background, such as a cloud-based data storage and document management tool such as Google Drive or Dropbox or an internal messaging or project-management platform. And don’t forget: If you or your employees stream music online while you’re working, that’s using bandwidth, too.

As you add more people and adopt more tech tools at your company, it only makes sense to consider whether your business internet plan can easily support all of them. The last thing you want is to experience internet slowdowns at a time when your business needs to be working faster and more effectively.

Spectrum Business Internet offers plans starting at 200 Mbps and up through gig-speed (1000 Mbps). We can help you determine the right speed your business needs based on various factors. Contact us at 855-299-9353.