FTTC or EFM Connection?

At first sight, FTTC and EFM might seem to have similar benefits, but with vastly different prices.

However, let’s look a little deeper and offer insight into which may be best for your business.

Vote FTTC

FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) connections have been tagged with the label “superfast” for a reason. The speeds available are unrivalled by traditional broadband connections. By using Fibre optic infrastructure, FTTC is able to provide much higher upload and download speeds. With speeds of up to 80Mbps down and 20Mbps up, FTTC is able to increase business productivity, reduce costs and unlock the potential of cloud computing, along with other bandwidth-hungry services.

The standout feature has to be the download speeds, with speeds regularly reaching up to 80Mbps, and sometimes even higher. It’s truly a next generation service, but at a current generation price, offering value and features combined.

Vote EFM

EFM (Ethernet in the First Mile) is a dedicated connection that gives you the speed and availability of a leased line, without the commitment or cost involved in installing one. EFM provides the symmetrical upload and download speeds expected by businesses, making it ideal for VoIP, hosted solutions, video conferencing and streaming or sending/uploading large files to the Internet.

One of the main advantages of EFM is its security and reliability. EFM is offered with an SLA (Service Level Agreement). The SLA guarantees that if you have an issue with your Internet, then it will be fixed within a agreed time. This is essential for businesses that rely heavily on their Internet connection. If your business could not cope with your Internet going down for a long time, then a service like EFM may be your only option.

Whereas FTTC services are asymmetrical, meaning that it has faster download speeds than upload speeds, EFM is symmetrical, guaranteeing you the same speeds in both directions. This is particularly useful is you’re looking to upload and host large amounts of data on a regular basis.

Conclusion

As ambiguous as it sounds, whether you go for EFM or FTTC should be handled on an individual basis. It’s a good idea to first work out what your business expects from an Internet service, detailing the key priorities. Lead dates should be factored in too, with FTTC being delivered in days, whereas EFM can take weeks to install.

If you’re looking for superfast speeds at a lower price, then it makes sense to go for FTTC, however, if Internet is critical to your business operations, then you may want to select the more secure EFM option.

These are two different services for two different types of business meaning that either way, you can rest easy knowing that there is a solution for you.