A Third of UK Businesses to Invest in Ethernet and Broadband in 2018
A new survey of 514 British firms by Opinium, which was commissioned by broadband ISP Beaming, has found that 39% of respondents intend to invest in new digital connectivity solutions during 2018 and 17% plan to meet their growing bandwidth demands by using fibre optic leased lines (Ethernet).
The survey found that “superfast fibre broadband“, which connects businesses to Openreach’s national fibre network using hybrid copper telephone lines (e.g. FTTC), is the preferred connectivity investment of smaller organisations. Some 18% of organisations employing 10 to 49 people and one in ten (11%) firms with 9 or fewer employees plan to invest in this kind of connectivity during 2018.
Meanwhile 27% of medium and 31% of large companies plan to invest in fibre Ethernet technology, which can offer multi-Gigabit speeds and that can allow potentially hundreds of users to share a single connection with almost no loss of speed or quality (assuming the IT admin has the budget they need to pick the right solution). On top of that 6% plan to connect all or parts of their businesses via the 4G mobile phone network.
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Sonia Blizzard, MD of Beaming, told ISPreview.co.uk:
“The growing number of cyber attacks and high profile data breaches have not deterred companies from doing more and more business online, but they have become more cautious. Businesses today rely on the internet, they want to maximise the cost, convenience and productivity gains it enables, and have recognised that they need rock solid systems and connectivity to do so with confidence.”
However it’s interesting to note that 7% of businesses still intend to buy slower ADSL based copper line broadband services in 2018. In fairness, different businesses can have very different requirements and some (e.g. your local fish a chip shop) may simply not have any particular need to invest in faster or more expensive connections. The full results can be found below and these cover a lot of additional areas.
Percentage of British Companies Planning to Invest During 2018
| Area | All | Micro (1-9 people) | Small (10-49) | Medium (50-249) | Large (250+) |
| Cybersecurity | 49% | 25% | 46% | 72% | 74% |
| Antivirus / anti-malware software | 23% | 13% | 22% | 42% | 24% |
| Network perimeter firewall | 15% | 4% | 14% | 25% | 25% |
| Network access control | 14% | 5% | 13% | 22% | 22% |
| Cloud | 46% | 18% | 43% | 75% | 72% |
| Private / enterprise cloud | 23% | 4% | 23% | 50% | 33% |
| Public cloud | 21% | 10% | 20% | 29% | 33% |
| Colocation | 10% | 5% | 6% | 11% | 18% |
| Connectivity | 39% | 22% | 32% | 53% | 62% |
| Fibre optic / ethernet leased lines | 17% | 7% | 10% | 27% | 31% |
| Superfast fibre broadband | 17% | 11% | 18% | 18% | 24% |
| Standard ADSL broadband | 7% | 4% | 5% | 9% | 11% |
| Productivity | 36% | 17% | 33% | 51% | 59% |
| Video conferencing | 11% | 3% | 8% | 17% | 20% |
| Remote office applications | 10% | 4% | 6% | 13% | 20% |
| Data analytics | 10% | 4% | 5% | 17% | 17% |
| Networking | 28% | 9% | 24% | 41% | 52% |
| Virtual Private Networks | 18% | 4% | 14% | 24% | 38% |
| Private dedicated networks | 11% | 2% | 4% | 29% | 16% |
| Managed & monitored networks | 5% | 3% | 9% | 7% | 6% |
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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