Five years ago, few businesses were connected to the Internet. Now, not only are most connected, many are demanding faster connections.
While much has been made of e-commerce and the overnight millionaires it has created (and in some cases, destroyed), most smaller companies are using the Internet for more mundane tasks. Sales are always nice, but a greater focus is usually placed on marketing or competitive research. When the need for the next purchase rolls around, the Internet connection serves as the conduit to finding information about products on the market.
With so much emphasis on business-to-business commerce, speed is becoming the name of the game.
“It’s almost impossible to do business on the Web using a dial-up modem,” says Robert Rosenberg, president of Insight Corp., a telecommunications market research firm. “Most business sites are graphics intensive. It’s simply untenable to use a dial-up account to access a site. And it’s not just small sites, it’s most sites.”
In the early days of the Web, most of the graphics were concentrated on the front page, with a simpler design on the following pages. That is no longer the case, as animation and sound have been added to many sites, increasing download times for standard dial-up modems significantly.
“The fees associated with a DSL are so inexpensive, even in the consumer space, it’s not a difficult decision to make,” says Rosenberg.
The low prices for DSL are, at least in part, credited to competition from cable companies and the equally fast cable modem.
“On one hand, you can say the threat of the other one probably conditioned the initial price rollout,” says Rosenberg. “But in most communities, at this time, the two do not compete head-to-head. There are exceptions, but the vast majority do not have cable and DSL simultaneously.”
Businesses can also expect to see Internet access bundled more as part of special offers that combine services.
“It’s happening in a few cases right now,” says Rosenberg. “There will many many more to come. The telephone companies want the ISP function and represent the 2,000 pound gorillas. Underneath them are the cable companies and the ISPs, who will also continue to offer services.”
All these players are vying for voice and Internet access and other parts of the communication bundle. In the business environment, DSL currently holds an edge.
“Reliability is still a great concern,” says Rosenberg. “Cable still has to prove it can deliver five nines of reliability, (.99999 reliability, that of regular phone service) that’s the typical yard stick to measure performance. Cable will need to demonstrate that it has highly reliable networks.
“Cable, in a lot of cases, doesn’t provide services to small or medium-sized businesses.” Todd Shryock ([email protected]) is SBN’s special reports editor.
