If you’ve ever been stuck swishing coffee at work, waiting while someone tries to fix the internet so you can do your job; you have seen first-hand how the people, software, and devices running a business can only run as smoothly as their internet connection will allow.

The amount of people using the internet has doubled

Today, this is truer than ever, and we at PogoZone Internet Solutions see the effects every day. The advent of social media, along with the vastly improved capabilities of the devices and digital media platforms we use, has propelled us to an unprecedented level of symbiosis with our technology. More people are using improvements in tech to add to their lives or business than ever before. Internet World Stats studies show that since the beginning of 2010, the amount of people using the internet has more than doubled to a staggering 56.1% of the global population. Somewhat surprisingly, however, in the U.S., many American businesses still have very few, very expensive, or simply no options for high-speed services at all. As of June 2018, only 9.4 percent of Americans are shown to have access to connections with speeds of 100mbps or more.

Head for the high-speed hills

This growing need for high-speed internet, combined with the lack of access most Americans deal with has led to some companies packing up and leaving for towns like Mount Vernon and Burlington. These are towns where local governments have invested in fiber networks and partnered with local providers, like us, to provide the high speeds and low pricing that businesses are looking for. One city fiber customer Eric Blank, said in an article for The New York Times, that he moved his 20-employee, Seattle based information security firm, Blank Law and Technology, 61 miles north to Mount Vernon prompted by the option for city fiber. He told them he pays $250 a month for the connection, versus the $985 a month he paid in Seattle for “vastly slower service”.

Fiber internet, the best friend to business

Fiber optics are generally considered the fastest and highest quality method available for providing internet. Most often just called “fiber” internet, it allows for upload and download speeds about 100 times faster than what is often offered throughout much of the United States. Speeds this much faster would not just make your videos stop buffering, they could enormously impact businesses in nearly every industry.

It may not be easy to imagine just how much of a difference in speed or capability we are talking about without an example. Consider the average speed of internet services in the U.S. during Q1 of 2017 reported in Akamai’s State of the Internet Report, which is 18.7Mbps. Downloading a 1 terabyte file at these speeds would take almost 5 ½ days. By comparison, the standard speed that fiber optic service usually tops out at is 1Gbps, which is 1000Mbps and often referred to as “gig.” Downloading the same 1 terabyte file at that rate it would take less than 2 ½ hours.

Over the last number of years, large fiber internet infrastructure upgrades have been rare, but in a few select countries, they have been implemented, and are often helped along by government regulations aimed to increase market competition. These regulations seem to be doing their job if you judge by the measurable targets to monitor broadband progress that has been announced in their wake.

For example, according to the FCC’s International Broadband Data Report (Sixth), the EU’s Digital Single Market strategy calls on EU Member States to provide download speeds of 30 Mbps for all citizens and ensure that 50 percent of households have subscriptions of greater than 100 Mbps by 2020. Moreover, by 2025, all schools, transport hubs, and main providers of public services should have access to Internet connections with download speeds of 1 Gbps, and all European households should have access to networks offering download speeds of at least 100 Mbps.

With results like this shown to be possible, it’s unfortunate that the implementation of regulations like this is rare in the United States, and the construction of high-speed broadband networks has been left to cable and telecom companies who are unwilling to pay for it themselves. This leaves the cost of installing fiber internet services (if it’s even available) far too high for the average business owner to afford, almost always to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Mount Vernon gets it

Luckily, in certain places like the aforementioned city of Mount Vernon, local governments understand that businesses today are redefining internet bandwidth as a need and not as a value-added service. They understand that for businesses to be effective in the information-intensive economy, they need internet delivered on a redundant fiber-optic infrastructure, providing the speed and, even more important, the reliability of constant service. Mount Vernon and Burlington, in particular, have gone above and beyond to show their support on this with the implementation of the Mount Vernon Fiber Network, designed specifically to stimulate local businesses and economic growth.

The Fiber Network will provide the foundation for high-speed Internet access, VoIP phone services, IPTV, medical imaging, security systems, and more. These services will be offered in partnership with local providers like PogoZone at extremely affordable rates due to the network’s advanced architecture, and the availability of flexible, low cost managed bandwidth services.

Bringing high-speed internet to you

We at Pogozone Internet Solutions (local internet provider helping the city provide services via the fiber network) are proud to be partnering with a city government investing back into their local businesses. Bringing much needed state-of-the-art services to people in our community at affordable rates is our #1 priority as a company, and it is great to see our local leadership making it a priority as well.

For more Information on the Mount Vernon or Burlington City Fiber Network, or to check if fiber service is available at your business, please give us a call at 360-676-8772 ext 3, or send an email to sales@pogozone.com and we would be happy to help!