When is Data fast?
In the confusion over cellular data use, many users forget that fibre and fibre-like services to business are completely differently priced than their cellular counterpart.
‘The figures that we use to depict data are the speed of the line” says Mario Pretorius, CEO of TeleMasters.
“The “20meg” often touted is actually 20MB per second of speed and not 20MB of usage. It is of vital importance to note that cellular users buy size, fixed line users buy speed.”
Asked to explain the difference, he compared usage and speed to water and a straw.
“At TeleMasters we have uncapped and unshaped data. It’s like having a sea of data at your disposal. The speed with which you suck it up is determined by the size of the straw.”
In this way, a 100Mbps sized straw will suck five times faster than a 20Mbps straw.
“But this is only part of the story” says Noreen Delport, head of the Project Team at TeleMasters.
According to her, there are three more crucial factors affecting speed: The contentions at the access fibre and at the the ISP and finally the number of users at the site.
“A 100 Mbps line may sound fast, but if it is contended 10 to 1 at the ISP, another 10:1 of the line (where it may be shared with other users) and finally arrive at the desk of one of 10 employees, the speed may be as slow as 1/10 Mbps or 100kbps. That’s really stone-age crawling.”
The answer is to calculate the offer of a data provider to the speed at the desk.
“For example” Delport continues “our TeleMasters client gets his 100Mbps contended at 5 to 1 at our own ISP, no line contention and the 10 man company gets 2Mbps at the desk at the cost of half a cappuccino per day – ever day with free refills.”
“We cannot overemphasise the importance of data speed in the competitive enterprise,” Pretorius concluded.
“Not only is the user liberated to be productive, but the enterprise gets geared up to reap the benefits of all the cloud-based solution we offer. Fast data is only fast when calculated to the user’s desk, else it’s only a misinterpreted figure.”
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