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Connectivity is more important than ever and high-quality connections are becoming more accessible. Yet it’s not always easy for businesses large and small to know what connection they
Connectivity is more important than ever and high-quality connections are becoming more accessible. Yet it’s not always easy for businesses large and small to know what connection they need, let alone what the difference is between two seemingly similar options.
“Belgium is lagging behind in the area of fiber optics,” says Gilles Verschueren, Business Development Manager at Eurofiber. During the round table on networks and connectivity organized by ITdaily, he made no secret of this. “Compared to other countries, we were well connected for a long time, but now we are catching up.”
Kristof Spriet, connectivity expert at Proximus NXT, agrees. “The Belgian network has met the needs of consumers and businesses for years. But now we are approaching a turning point. That is why we are currently investing heavily in fiber.”
Various parties are investing in fiber today with enthusiasm, others have been doing so for years. Sitting around the table are Marc Vandeputte, CTO of Arcadiz, which has been providing high-performance connectivity between data centers for many years, Mirko Montorro, Sales Director and Partner at Easi, who translates customers’ connectivity needs into solutions, and Freek Pauwels, General Manager Citymesh Integrator and expert in combining connectivity solutions into a whole. Almost everyone present is each other’s customer and competitor.
This means that they agree on many things. There is consensus on the need for high-quality connections for large and small companies, and everyone notices that customers in the market generally lack the necessary knowledge to make the right decision completely independently. All participants are aware of their role as guides and supporters on a customer’s path to the right solution.
Opinions are somewhat more divided on what exactly this solution would look like. Vandeputte and Arcadiz work mainly with large customers with very high requirements. He criticizes the way connectivity is marketed. “Often only price and speed are advertised,” he notes. “And this speed is incorrectly expressed in gigabits per second, which in reality corresponds to capacity.”
For example, companies see two fiber optic connections with a capacity of 10 Gbps, with one being more expensive than the other, and they don’t always understand the difference. “We have to continue to look for other parameters,” notes Vandeputte. “For example, in many cases the actual speed or latency is more important. If you connect two servers in two separate data centers to one high availabilityClusters perform all write operations simultaneously. Latency must therefore be added directly to the disk runtime and is far more important than capacity.”
In many cases, the actual speed or latency is more important.
Marc Vandeputte, CTO Arcadiz
Availability is another important factor. “Everyone offers SLAs (Service Level Agreements) with an availability of 99.99 percent,” says Vandeputte. “But then you notice in the small print that this 99.99 percent always applies to really professional connections and for other fiber optic solutions only during office hours.”
Verschueren agrees with this distinction, but notes that it is not always easy to explain to the customer. “We install fiber and offer customers their own fiber. They can choose what capacity they need and that is guaranteed to them because they are not sharing their line with anyone else.”
With Proximus NXT, Spriet is responding precisely to the needs of its customers. “Our guaranteed fiber optic connections available nationwide are now being expanded by offering GPON fiber optics over our own fiber optic network,” he says. These solutions are also marketed as professional and suitable for businesses, but there is an important difference in the connections that the experts at Eurofiber and Arcadiz are talking about.
“We already reach 38 percent of buildings with our GPON fiber optic network,” says Spriet. GPON stands for Gigabit Passive Optical Network and uses the same fiber optic cables as other solutions, with the important difference that the connections are shared.
Today we already reach 38 percent of buildings with our GPON fiber optic network.
Kristof Spriet, connectivity expert Proximus NXT
This has advantages and disadvantages. Verschieten believes that such connections resemble glorified consumer solutions, and although Spriet does not deny that the GPON network has disadvantages in terms of redundancy and latency, it does have an advantage. “GPON is being rolled out very systematically. The investment is high, but the costs are lower than with a dedicated fiber optic line.”
According to Pauwels, the discussion is sometimes irrelevant. “The question is not always which connection is most suitable, but which provider can offer what at a certain address.” In the past, the range was limited, but now there are many solutions with advantages and disadvantages. The starting point in Belgium is more: “Who can offer me something?”
Pauwels and Citymesh approach connectivity in different ways. “We try to bring all levels of connectivity together,” he says. “This ranges from IoT networks like Sigfox, public and private 4G, 5G and WiFi to wired connections. We bring them together in a tunnel to serve the customer. The customer knows that they are relying on different connections, but doesn’t really notice it when using it.”
The customer knows that he is relying on different connections, but does not really notice it when using it.
General Manager Citymesh Integrator
According to Easi’s Montorro, this is more in line with the way customers experience connectivity. “In the past, customers actually had two dedicated fiber lines coming in at different points. Now they have two SD-WAN devices in one location and are wondering out loud what the SLA is worth for a particular line.”
Montorro offers some pushback on the importance of purely professional connectivity for everyone. “What end user today can’t cope with the speed and capacity of coax, GPON or other shared lines, except for their headquarters, data center or very large sites? I see the idea emerging here and there that so many expensive lines are not always necessary.”
What end user today cannot handle the speed and capacity of a coax, GPON or other shared line?
Mirko Montorro, Sales Manager and Partner Easi
When Montorro looks at the needs of his customers, he notices that they are increasingly content with so-called upgrade consumer solutions when combined, for example, via an SD-WAN solution.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to everyone: Those who connect data centers or build high-availability clusters, as Vandeputte describes, see connectivity differently. Moreover, Montorro notes that sometimes the clapper swings too far to the other side. “I see customers choosing provider A over provider B because they think one offers a better solution or more bandwidth than the other, while both providers use exactly the same cable and therefore deliver exactly the same quality.”
In any case, connectivity is a complex topic today. The right solution may be different for each organization. Some companies may be able to do without the Internet for a while in the event of an outage and be content with the low risk of a shared fiber optic line with, for example, coax as a backup, or they may consider a 5G connection as a redundant solution.
Others see the euros disappearing as soon as the connection is lost for a few seconds and want physical redundancy, with fiber optic connections going out on both sides of the building and never running through the same street. One requires the speed and capacity of a coaxial cable, the other requires latency as close to 0 ms as possible.
Leadership is necessary and Arcadiz, Citymesh, Easi, Eurofiber and Proximus NXT are happy to take on this challenge. However, for a good, in-depth conversation, some basic qualities are important:
With this knowledge, it is much easier to have the right conversation and implement the most suitable solution for your company. However, most suitable does not mean cheapest.
This is still a bit difficult in Belgium, concludes Verschueren: “Belgians find it difficult to pay a professional price for a professional connection. The Dutch find it much more logical to make this distinction for their company.” A Dutchman who opens his wallet more quickly than a Belgian: the round table has something to think about afterwards.
This article is part of a series following the roundtable on connectivity organized by ITdaily. Read more here.
Source: IT Daily
As an experienced journalist and author, Mary has been reporting on the latest news and trends for over 5 years. With a passion for uncovering the stories behind the headlines, Mary has earned a reputation as a trusted voice in the world of journalism. Her writing style is insightful, engaging and thought-provoking, as she takes a deep dive into the most pressing issues of our time.
