Is My Business Ready for Fiber? Part 2: Preparing for Business Video Content

Written by Kristi Salmon on August 10, 2017.

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The rise in video popularity isn’t just regulated to mobile channels or devices. Video use within businesses is expected to continue to increase moving into 2019, as the percentages below translate:

  • 93% of marketers use video for online marketing, sales, or communication
  • 65% of viewers watch more than ¾ of a video
  • 74% of all internet traffic in 2017 will be video
  • 75% of overall employees are more likely to watch a video than read documents, emails, or web articles

The anticipated percentages highlight the ongoing and growing importance of video in the marketplace. Web conferencing, virtual/online curriculum in schools and tele-health services are all built upon video served via broadband. This technology has changed the way we effectively communicate with those around us, especially ones that are remote. Businesses of every sector at one point rely on video in order to collaborate with a perspective client, partner, customer, or colleague.

Video, Video, Everywhere

Video isn’t just useful for conducting meetings with internal and remote employees, 66% of higher education institutions also use video for remote students. Hospitals and healthcare facilities are taking the first steps into telemedicine, where physicians and patients are able to connect visually through video for consultations and even diagnosing symptoms; they are also using video to help educate others in their field.

Video allows the user to convey more emotion than an email, text message, or even a phone call, however assuming the current bandwidth solution is capable of supporting quality video will be a business’ first priority.

Video Needs Bandwidth

With all of the growing use cases for video, broadband networks need to be able to handle the amount of video that’s being utilized – and for these cutting-edge applications, the need is heavy. Businesses, especially ones outside the entertainment or consumer based industries, may have a tendency to underestimate the value or real use for video within their organization, and therefore not plan well enough for bandwidth to support this platform and other emerging technologies. Web conferences and video lectures, for example, at standard definition of viewing would need about 36 Gbps a month, while high definition grows to a usage of 156 Gbps a month on a network.

When you factor in multiple employees accessing and watching these lectures, either for training or education, spikes in bandwidth usage will occur. This coupled with day-to-day activities, such as email, web browsing, VoIP, cloud services and the like – can cause the experience of the dreaded bottle necked, slow network, halting productivity and effectively business itself. But this is not to be confused with the quality of your broadband provider; you simply may not have enough bandwidth to support the functions you are using, therefore causing the lag.  The chart below shows the broadband levels needed to support video conferencing or screen sharing which is becoming the preferred method of taking “meetings” with business clients/prospects.

 

Skype cloud bandwidth

 

Time is a precious commodity in business. A downloaded replay would take only seconds to retrieve using Gigabit level fiber internet speeds versus the several minutes to hours it would take to access data with antiquated technology. When that's the case, wait time mounts when multiple employees are trying to access video material on a server at the same time and task completion is delayed.

Why Businesses Should Consider Gigabit+ Fiber Solutions

Gigabit+ Fiber Solutions offer businesses the opportunity to venture into new technologies – often ones that are critical to success.  Using advanced platforms and applications can take your organization to that next level of innovation. But businesses need broadband capacity in order to do so and the fiber “pipe” delivers that space to utilize many different forms of data retrieval without maxing out the connection.  It affords users to be online at the same time, accessing the same data.   Gone is the worry of how many people are utilizing video on a daily basis.  Streaming, downloads, and uploads won’t impede with cloud backups, regardless of the time of day or how many employees are in the office.

Take for example a school district in the Midwest who is a Mediacom Business customer.  One of the district’s elementary school sites loved watching the daily process of a very popular live eagle cam.  With all the classrooms wanting to play the content online at YouTube at the same time, the overload of usage completely disabled the data network. Not only did it block each classroom from viewing the eagle cam, but it prohibited other users from downloading online curriculum. The school's IT Director realized the need for more bandwidth to be split between these levels of usage, realizing even YouTube had its place as an important piece of the student’s learning process.

To find out how Gigabit+ Fiber Solutions from Mediacom Business can deliver the scalable broadband capacity your business needs to support video platforms, click here for a free consultation.

 

Resources:

Video Marketing Trends 2015
50 Facts, Stats, and Trends Someone at Your Company Should Know about Business Video
Top 5 Video Marketing Trends [Infographic]



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