Whether at home or in the workplace, being able to get online 24/7, 365 days a year is practically non-negotiable nowadays. That means choosing the right fibre optic service provider is an important decision, and one that shouldn’t be taken lightly. When it comes to domestic fibre, it’s about being comfortable in your own home, and being able to rely on all the practicalities the Internet entails. In the workplace, it’s more of a strategic necessity. So what should guide your decision-making? And what factors do you need to consider when choosing a new supplier?

What kind of fibre optic do you need? FTTH

The first step is to make sure you know exactly what type of fibre you need in your specific circumstances. The most common, especially in home environments, is what we call FTTH, or fibre to the home. High-performance networks can offer other, somewhat more complex technical characteristics, but FTTH is generally what’s on the table when it comes to installing and using optical fibre cables that go directly from the service provider to the end-user’s home. That’s why it’s the most common type of fibre used and the easiest to access for most people and use cases.

Opting for FTTH connectivity ensures you can achieve certain data transfer speeds – in some cases over 1GB/sec – without any obstacles to bandwidth or latency. It also generally involves a high degree of reliability, without any signal loss or service interruption being an issue, and also guarantees that network infrastructure will be available in future, even if demand goes up.

How to choose a FTTH supplier

There are several factors to keep in mind, each of them important in their own way. It’s generally recommended that you draw up a list of your exact needs, so that fibre optic suppliers and their offers can be checked against your list of required services.

Sizing up your requirements

You need to assess how extensive and complex your requirements are, how many connections you’ll need and an approximate estimate of the volume of demand.

Existing FTTH infrastructure

Verifying what’s already in place will allow you to assess how complex integrating any new installations within an already operational system might be, or how much more complex it could become, which is usually a more economical and functional consideration.

Cost

You need to realistically project the investment needed for the entire installation, as well as a certain margin of expense for future improvements or possible extensions, either when it comes to hardware or any other types of updates.

Qualified technicians

To a large extent, the quality of your future service depends on a properly performed installation. This all boils down to the quality of the service technicians employed by your provider, both to install your optical fibre cables and to respond to any potential technical defects.

Legislation

Depending on where you’re installing FTTH, national, regional or local regulations may need to be taken into account. An important point to double check is that your supplier is aware of all the latest regulations and can act in compliance with them, in order to avoid any potential legal issues down the line.

Reliability is key to high-quality fibre

Of course, nobody’s interested in the purely technical capabilities of fibre optic technology alone. If a service provider can respond positively to all or most of the elements mentioned above – offering solid FTTH infrastructure – then you’ll be well on your way to choosing the right firm.

But the reliability of your chosen supplier must be supported by other reputational and commercial factors, including the number and quality of options and products available to end users, the flexibility of contracts, the versatility of their services – normally seen in a variety of different packages, based on different needs –, as well as efficient customer service and the ability to respond to unforeseen events.

As mentioned at the beginning, choosing the right fibre supplier is much more of a strategic decision than it might first seem. After all, high-quality connectivity facilitates both productivity in work environments and a wide range of other aspects of our everyday lives, such as leisure, entertainment and communication in a globalised world.