agenda
SMEs stuck in the
broadband slow lane
Broadband availability for SMEs is lagging
behind provision for households, a new
report shows. Ofcom’s
Connected Nations
2015
report reveals that only 68% of SMEs
have access to superfast broadband in the
UK, compared to 85% of all premises.
Almost half of SMEs (around 130,000)
in areas like business parks are unable to
receive speeds above 10Mbit/s. Ofcom
estimates that by 2017, when 95% of all UK
premises will have superfast broadband with
a connection of 30 Mbit/s or more, around
18% of SMEs will still not have access to a
superfast service.
More than a quarter of homes (27% or
7.5 million) now have ‘superfast’ broadband,
up from one in five (21%, or around 6 million
homes) in 2014.
Identify your
broadband needs
The Connecting Cambridge Project Team,
which aims to make Cambridge a significant
hyper-connected city, has created a new tool
to help organisations identify their network
infrastructure needs – a key driver of success in
the digital economy. The Broadband Capacity
Matrix calculates capacity requirements based
on a business’s likely usage and number of
employees. For example, it suggests that a
business with 5-25 users requiring only light
usage (basic email and web browsing) will
need a connectivity capacity of 5-10 megabits
per second (Mbps). The team is now working
on a crowd-sourced initiative to identify
Cambridge’s points of connectivity weakness
(mobile, wireless or fixed) and work with
network operators to eradicate ‘not-spots’.
matrix
Businesses are paying nearly twice as much
for their mobile devices as they realise,
claimsWandera, a provider of mobile data
security and management for enterprises.
Its survey of 500 UK IT decision-makers
shows that the true Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) of mobile devices is £1,272 per device
per annum – double what most UK enterprises
are prepared for.
This figure is made up of carrier charges
(36%) and hardware costs (21%), which is what
organisations usually take into account, plus
other expenses that they tend not to consider,
such as bill shock (14%), IT resource (10%),
additional services (8%) and security (11%).
Eldar Tuvey, CEO of Wandera, said: “For years,
most enterprises have considered TCO to be
simply made up of the cost of the device
plus the carrier charges. But this is frankly
a naive view. In fact, the ‘real’ TCO is twice
as much as commonly expected. In the UK,
approximately £644 per device of annual costs
for services, security and IT are not being taken
into account when calculating the TCO of
enterprise mobility.”
Wandera says that 58% of the TCO is
‘controllable’ and reducible through improved
mobile data management, policy setting and
security threat prevention. It claims that using
these measures typically removes about 28%
of the TCO.
The survey also found that the cost of
remedying a security breach is on average more
than three times what is spent on prevention.
The average spend on mobile security software
per device per annum is £32, compared to an
average of £104 to ‘clean up’ a breach.
Mobile costs higher than expected
PeoplePerHour has calculated that smartphones
and on-demand apps help save 28.7 minutes
per day, or more than seven full days per year.
The top five time-saving benefits of online
platforms and apps are: 1. Not needing to hail
black cabs or pay in cash (cited by 57% of
survey respondents); 2. The ability to find work
on demand (32%); 3. Not having to go grocery
shopping (26%); 4. Not queuing for restaurant
tables (22%); and 5. The ability to hire cleaners
on demand (19%).
Wi-Fi even in tunnels
Chiltern Railways and EE plan to transform the
on-boardWi-Fi experience for train passengers
by providing continuous connectivity even
in tunnels. The addition of extra network
capacity and coverage via a trackside wireless
network will eliminate the not-spots and
phone call drop-outs that so frustrate
commuters. The extra capacity will be
rolled-out in stages, with completion set for
December 2016. Chiltern’s parent company
Arriva plans to use the project as a test
bed for possible roll-out across other Arriva
franchises including Northern Rail.
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