With more and more employers being open to letting their employees work from home, the need for a robust home office, including suitable home phone plans has never been greater. To be effective in ensuring a similar level of productivity as conventional office spaces, your home environment must meet certain standards.
A distraction-free space, access to fast computers or laptops, ergonomic furniture, proper lighting, and storage space for files and documents are all essential. However, underlying all of these is a requirement that simply cannot be overlooked—a fast and reliable internet connection.
When talking about reliable internet connections, you should stick with fiber internet. However, there are two common fiber options you would need to choose from: FTTH (Fiber to the home) or FTTN (Fiber to the node).
In today’s article, we will look at these two options and understand which one you should choose for your home office needs.
Why Choose Fiber Internet Over the Alternatives?
While close to half of America still uses cable internet, fiber internet is picking up steam. It offers several advantages over cable and other alternatives like DSL and satellite connections.
For one, fiber allows for symmetric upload and download speeds, which can be essential if your work involves large file uploads, such as in the case of video editors and designers.
Secondly, fiber internet is more reliable than other alternatives. It is less likely to face outages and downtimes that affect your productivity.
Thirdly, fiber internet has excellent security compared to cable and DSL connections, so if you are in a field that deals with sensitive information, fiber can make it less likely that your information will be intercepted or tapped.
1. FTTH or Fiber to the Home
If you’re interested in getting fiber internet, this is the fastest type of internet that you can possibly get for your home office right now. Fiber internet typically offers blazing-fast speeds when compared to traditional internet connection types. The speeds with this sort of connection can go up to Gigabit levels, which is insanely fast.
To put that in perspective, a DSL connection (Digital Subscriber Line), a slower type of internet still commonly used in the U.S., would take about 45 minutes to 1 hour to download a 2-hour HD movie. A 1 Gigabit FTTH connection would download that same file in about 25 seconds.
While it is easy to be tempted by such high speeds, it is good to remember that for a home office, you would rarely require such fast speeds. The most demanding internet task in a home office would be video calls which can be comfortably done without Gigabit speeds.
However, having such a connection can still be helpful since you would, of course, also be able to use it when you aren’t working. You may have kids that download computer games which are often 60 – 80 Gigabytes these days.
You may also have multiple family members who want to stream 4K content on different devices. FTTH becomes very handy in such situations.
The one downside to FTTH internet is, of course, the price. They are significantly more expensive when compared to cable and FTTN options and also overkill for home office needs.
2. FTTN or Fiber to the Node and Coaxial Options
If you want a more practical option, FTTN and Hybrid Coaxial Cable/Fibe-Optic internet are great alternatives. These types of connections are perfect for home office use because they are more affordable than FTTH plans while also providing slightly lower but comparable speeds.
These connections use the same super-fast optical cables to transfer data, but instead of said cables coming right to your home, they stop about a mile or so away from your home and reach a node, where regular coaxial cables are used to send and receive data, the rest of the way to you.
One of the benefits of this type is that you also get a lot of extras bundled into your internet plans, such as cable TV and other entertainment services.
ISPs like WOW! or Wide Open Internet, for instance, offer a robust range of plans that are surprisingly fast and efficient. The best part about their plans is even the cheapest option is more than sufficient for a home office (100 Mbps and a monthly data cap of 1.5 terabytes).
This should be sufficient for most home office use scenarios, but if your work demands more incredible speeds, you can spend a bit more and find plans ranging from 200 Mbps, 500 Mbps, and even a couple of 1 Gbps and 1.2 Gbps plans.
WOW keeps growing its coverage area and recently expanded into new areas of South Carolina and Florida. The company is known for its affordable plans compared to industry giants like Verizon and AT&T, and this fact was highlighted and noted by CNET’s review of the company.
FTTN / Hybrid Coaxial Cable / Fibe-Optic connections are much more reliable and stable when compared to cable internet while also offering many of the same advantages that FTTH provides. This makes it an ideal home office internet option that is fast and doesn’t break the bank.
Conclusion
The internet provider you choose is ultimately up to you. Many users are limited in their internet options due to geographic location. Still, suppose you live in an area where FTTH or Hybrid Fibre options exist. In that case, you should definitely be looking at them instead of going for a Cable or DSL connection.
The reliability, speed, and security you get with them are leagues ahead of the alternatives and make it the only sensible option if you want to ensure that your workflow remains smooth and unaffected.
