Many businesses opt for Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) instead of Fibre-to-the-Business (FTTB) because it seems to be more cost-effective – but you get what you pay for.
Business fibre (FTTB) has several advantages over FFTH (fibre to the home), including wider coverage, better contention ratios, complex security, and clearly-defined service level agreements (SLAs). There are two ways to look at this when comparing business fibre (FTTB) vs fibre to the home (FTTH) – one from the ISP point of view and the second from the business’ point of view.
Technology Differences
FTTH technology is generally done over GPON – Gigabit Passive Optical Networks – eg: Openserve or AON – Active Optical Networks eg: Vumatel. These technologies usually offer Asycronous line speed where the download speed is higher than the upload speed.
Business Fibre, on the other hand, is usually connected with a full-duplex type technology over two fibres. This means that they are usually synchronous giving equal download and upload rates. They also give a better quality of service and are dedicated to the business instead of being contended.
The bottom-line for businesses
A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is also a big thing. Most FTTH circuits are “best-effort” service which means that the service has no guarantees on either when the data will be delivered or the quality of the data being delivered. Consider a business with 50 users that need to be working on the internet at the same time – what value could be placed on 50 people not being able to work? Having an SLA on a business fibre line means if there is a problem, there are defined timelines to get to a resolution.
Most Businesses and Business office parks have been built by a fibre provider called DFA. The line rentals are far higher than FTTH line rentals. This is due to the SLA arrangements. Business lines also have static IP addresses along with them.
