Computers in Business :: Ireland's Leading Business IT Magazine

Shopping for a business broadband service is a very different experience today compared to a few years ago. For a start, there has been a giant leap in what you get for your money. Before, about €40 a month could have bought you a 2Mbs connection, for that you can now get 24Mbs.
There has also been a consolidation of vendors and their offerings, with a fresh impetus around’ one stop shops’ that sell fixed and mobile services that include broadband.

Higher up the value chain is the proposition that the connecting ‘pipe’ is pretty much commoditised and the real value is in IT services providers can deliver over it. The endgame with this particular line of argument is that everything starts moving to the cloud, with broadband as the transport mechanism.

Old assumptions about the best technologies are also being challenged.

When fibre to the door is not an option, the discussion had mostly been about which flavour of DSL was best for your business, but UPC Business has moved the goalposts in some parts of the country, bringing its brand of cable to premises – 20Mps download, 1.5Mbps upload, including two phone lines – for €69 a month.

More recently, Imagine Communications has brought further disruption to the market with the promise of a nationwide WiMax service covering 90 per cent of the population by 2012, delivering speeds of 7Mbps over wireless. Price details are still to be confirmed.

The quality of service will determine whether it is a viable alternative to copper wire broadband. This is already a debate around mobile broadband services from Vodafone, O2, 3 and Meteor. Although they have theoretical speeds of 7.2Mbps, contention over cellular networks is even more of an issue than with fixed broadband and users rarely hit those heights.

As cellular networks evolve, speeds will soon rise to 14Mbps, but mobile operators who increasingly have fixed-line interests are reluctant to suggest that it will be the only broadband service a business customer needs. Even 3, which has no vested interests in fixed, is reluctant to make that claim.

“At the moment, mobile broadband is probably best used as a complement to fixed-line broadband for businesses,” said Ian Blake, national sales manager with 3.”Businesses in Ireland are increasingly relying on mobile broadband to keep them in touch with customers and the office when out and about.”

For 3, this may change as its service evolves. Speeds of 28Mbps are scheduled for the end of next year. The next leap after that will be the migration to a long term evolution (LTE) mobile network, which has the potential to hit 50Mbps.

Paddy Collins, head of the SME sector at Vodafone, also talks about mobile broadband as a complementary service and doesn’t expect that to change.

“Fixed broadband will always have a role,” he said. “Mobile broadband is primarily there to support people who are away from the office, giving them access to the internet. That said, we have customers who take mobile broadband as a back-up to the fixed service.”

For Vodafone, the big pitch is to assume the role of one-stop provider to the consumer and the SME community. The company claims to be the number one total telecoms company in Ireland, based on mobile and fixed revenues.

The company had already bought its way into the fixed market with the acquisition of Perlico, but it was the recent announcement of a joint venture with BT that signalled its intentions.

BT will provide the wholesale connectivity, leaving Vodafone to sell services into the SME sector. It now has a three-way pitch – broadband, fixed voice and mobile – in direct competition to the Eircom/Meteor offerings. Packages include ADSL2+ services with broadband speeds of up to 24Mbps run out of the 22 exchanges that BT has unbundled.

“One of the biggest challenges in the SMEs market is that there hasn’t been a credible supplier,” said Collins.” With the BT partnership, we have a suite of competitively-priced fixed voice and broadband offerings. We can now bring out differentiated products to Eircom, quicker and faster, and compete far more effectively.”

Vodafone believes it has a portfolio that will lure customers, something that other providers have failed to do. The heavily-advertised incentive is a 20 per cent saving, but the proposition to businesses is about more than cutting costs, according to Collins.

“SMEs are under pressure and the last thing they need is disruption in their business,” he said.” They need confidence that, if they moved their fixed business, the supplier can not only offer competitive pricing but quality of service and quality of care.

There has been a fear about moving in the past, but we are giving them the confidence to do it.”

Service quality

At Eircom, the director of small and medium business markets, Niall Feely, is not phased by the new contender and believes Eircom’s strengths are still clear to businesses in the broadband battleground.

“At the most fundamental level, the differentiation is around helpdesk support and the deep technical expertise we have when someone has a problem,” he said.” We have a lot of expertise in remote monitoring tools and configuration, and lot of expertise in mail, browsing and security.”

In tandem with this, Eircom has been keeping up in the speed race, migrating customers to ADSL2+ services, supplying them with new modems and the option of a 24Mbs service. Interestingly, Feely said a lot of customers chose to stick with 3Mbs or 7Mbs services, which they find more than adequate for basic e-mail and internet requirements.

Other businesses, however, will always push the limits.” They are tech-savvy companies that are inclined to do more things,” he said.” They may have interactive websites or they might be shifting big graphic files over the connection and use every bit of bandwidth they can get their hands on.”

The growing demand for faster speeds has prompted service providers to upgrade their networks and Eircom is no exception. Its next generation core is increasing its capacity at an exponential rate, according to Feely. This has already impacted on contention ratios, which have dropped from 24:1 to 12:1 – which means 12 users are trying to access the bandwidth at the same time. Feely said entirely uncontended services were not out of the question.

Eircom is also growing its fixed-mobile combination, using the Meteor network that it bought in 2005. Feely said convergence was a global phenomenon that regulators were struggling to keep up with.

“In all markets there is much more competition with mobile, fixed line and cable companies moving into each other’s space,” he said.” The market has moved and you can’t regulate it in the same way.” Magnet Business is very much part of this new landscape, providing broadband connectivity and internet services to all sizes of company.

Chief executive officer MarkKel let believes his company is perfectly positioned to meet the demand for more sophisticated services through a combination of 40 unbundled exchanges and its own fibre network.

“The market moved from dial-up to faster speeds,” he said.” Now it’s about the quality of the connection and what you can do for it. We are now at a tipping point, where people are moving away from what I call ‘fraudband’ to understanding what they can do with high quality bandwidth.”

Magnet doesn’t have a mobile play, but it has found other ways to differentiate in a crowded market. Better quality connections are a key selling point, while uncontended lines are opening the door for added services.

“We have 6,000 business customers, about 80 per cent of which are SMEs,” he said.” We looked at what other services that we could layer on top of the broadband service to add value to the customer.”

The product portfolio now encompasses managed services, hosted applications and cloud computing.” Many of our customers are taking our voice application, which is hosted in the cloud,” said Kellet.

The service is targeted at ten to 25-person businesses that have end-of-life telephone systems and are wondering what to do next. Rather than invest in a traditional onsite PBX system that has to be managed and maintained, Magnet will host the hardware and deliver the phone service out of the cloud.

“With a high-quality com/Meteor offerings. Packages include ADSL2+ services with broadband speeds of up to 24Mbps run out of the 22 exchanges that BT has unbundled.

“One of the biggest challenges in the SMEs market is that there hasn’t been a credible supplier,” said Collins.” With the BT partnership, we have a suite of competitively-priced fixed voice and broadband offerings. We can now bring out differentiated products to Eircom, quicker and faster, and compete far more effectively.”

Vodafone believes it has a portfolio that will lure customers, something that other providers have failed to do. The heavily-advertised incentive is a 20 per cent saving, but the proposition to businesses is about more than cutting costs, according to Collins.

“SMEs are under pressure and the last thing they need is disruption in their business,” he said.” They need confidence that, if they moved their fixed business, the supplier can not only offer competitive pricing but quality of service and quality of care. There has been a fear about moving in the past, but we are giving them the confidence to do it.”

Service quality

At Eircom, the director of small and medium business markets, Niall Feely, is not phased by the new contender and believes Eircom’s strengths are still clear to businesses in the broadband battleground.

“At the most fundamental level, the differentiation is around helpdesk support and the deep technical expertise we have when someone has a problem,” he said.” We have a lot of expertise in remote monitoring tools and configuration, and lot of expertise in mail, browsing and security.”

In tandem with this, Eircom has been keeping up in the speed race, migrating customers to ADSL2+ services, supplying them with new modems and the option of a 24Mbs service. Interestingly, Feely said a lot of customers chose to stick with 3Mbs or 7Mbs services, which they find more than adequate for basic e-mail and internet requirements.

Other businesses, however, will always push the limits.” They are tech-savvy companies that are inclined to do more things,” he said.” They may have interactive websites or they might be shifting big graphic files over the connection and use every bit of bandwidth they can get their hands on.”

The growing demand for faster speeds has prompted service providers to upgrade their networks and Eircom is no exception.

Its next generation core is increasing its capacity at an exponential rate, according to Feely. This has already impacted on contention ratios, which have dropped from 24:1 to 12:1 – which means 12 users are trying to access the bandwidth at the same time. Feely said entirely uncontended services were not out of the question.

Eircom is also growing its fixed-mobile combination, using the Meteor network that it bought in 2005. Feely said convergence was a global phenomenon that regulators were struggling to keep up with.

“In all markets there is much more competition with mobile, fixed line and cable companies moving into each other’s space,” he said.” The market has moved and you can’t regulate it in the same way.”

Magnet Business is very much part of this new landscape, providing broadband connectivity and internet services to all sizes of company. Chief executive officer MarkKel let believes his company is perfectly positioned to meet the demand for more sophisticated services through a combination of 40 unbundled exchanges and its own fibre network.

“The market moved from dial-up to faster speeds,” he said.” Now it’s about the quality of the connection and what you can do for it. We are now at a tipping point, where people are moving away from what I call ‘fraudband’ to understanding what they can do with high quality bandwidth.”

Magnet doesn’t have a mobile play, but it has found other ways to differentiate in a crowded market. Better quality connections are a key selling point, while uncontended lines are opening the door for added services.

“We have 6,000 business customers, about 80 per cent of which are SMEs,” he said.” We looked at what other services that we could layer on top of the broadband service to add value to the customer.”

The product portfolio now encompasses managed services, hosted applications and cloud computing.” Many of our customers are taking our voice application, which is hosted in the cloud,” said Kellet.

The service is targeted at ten to 25-person businesses that have end-of-life telephone systems and are wondering what to do next. Rather than invest in a traditional onsite PBX system that has to be managed and maintained, Magnet will host the hardware and deliver the phone service out of the cloud.