5 Questions to Ask When Investing in WiFi for Your Business

As mobile and wireless devices take over businesses across the globe, your WiFi solution has never been more important. Because of this, it can be overwhelming to choose the right solution for your organisation: What are the must-haves? What speed should you get? How should you set it up? In order to determine the right WiFi solution for you, we’ve rounded up the top “5 Questions to Ask When Investing in WiFi for Your Business.”

1. What Business Activity Will I Be Using the WiFi For?

The bandwidth (the speed of the internet connection) that you decide to purchase should depend on two factors: 1. how many people will be using your WiFi, 2. what they will be using it for. Bandwidth is measured in megabytes per second (Mbps), and it includes download speed and upload speed.

 Depending on your business activity, you and your employees may or may not require a faster bandwidth to stay productive. For example, if you frequently use video conferencing and live streaming, you may need a faster connection than a business that just uses email for communication. Similarly, if your employees regularly create and send video content or large PDFs, you may require a higher upload speed.

No matter what you use your business WiFi for, however, you should still ensure that your broadband has unlimited downloads. Even a generous usage limit will likely be reached within a day if you have multiple people connecting and using your WiFi for Internet searches and cloud applications.
It’s also important that you choose a WiFi solution that is specifically designed for business, even if a home network is cheaper. Your equipment will need to support dozens, or hundreds, of connections for eight or more hours a day. Residential WiFi equipment is only designed to support a few devices in a small space.

2. Do I Want Customers to Have Access?

This question will largely depend on what kind of business you run, and whether or not you have customers on site. If you run something such as a coffee shop, the answer might seem a no brainer. The same goes if you work in an office building and only interact with customers over the phone or online. However, if your business is somewhere in between, such as a retail shop, a restaurant or an information office, you may want to consider the pros and cons of providing your customers with WiFi access.

Pros:

~ WiFi marketing is an effective way to promote and enhance products or services to your customers. By requiring customers to sign in or create an account before accessing your WiFi, you can gather customer information such as location, email and social media. This will help you create more effective promotions, ads and email campaigns.

~ Customer WiFi is also a great way to improve customer experience. According to research by Cisco, 96% of customers prefer to shop at, and return to, stores that have free WiFi. Free WiFi will make customer wait times seems shorter and more enjoyable and will give customers access to your online products. This has been proven to boost engagement and drive sales.

Cons: 

~ With so many people having access to your network, customer WiFi has the potential for serious cyber security threats. This is especially true if you are asking customers to create accounts and provide personal information: You don’t want a hacker to use this data to their advantage.

~ Installing another network, and the security to go along with it, will be more costly. You will require sufficient bandwidth speed to allow multiple customer devices to connect at once, as well as multiple access points so customers can move around and still connect.

3. Can the Wifi Solution Grow as My Business Grows

 While your business may be small or contained now, your WiFi solution shouldn’t be. This is because you want the opportunity to grow and expand, and your WiFi network should continue to accommodate you.

Instead of switching WiFi solutions after you hire more employees or implement new technologies, invest in a scalable option now. A provider that can scale to meet your needs will allow you to add or swap out equipment without reconfiguring your entire network. This means that you will able to add users without compromising the quality of your connection

When choosing a scalable provider, look for these features:

They work with clients that have a larger staff or more complex IT needs. This means that they will have the systems in place to service your expansion.

They are familiar with your industry. This means that they will understand the challenges you face and popular solutions for them, as well as the type of growth you can expect in the coming years.

They can provide case studies from previous clients who scaled their solutions. This will give you an idea of how to expand your WiFi solution, as well as how this particular provider will help.

4. Do I Need a Security or Backup Plan?

Maintaining a cyber security plan is non-negotiable in today’s digital world. In order to help you avoid data breaches that can damage your reputation and result in a complete loss of information, your WiFi solution should be secure.

Create a security policy that has clear protocols in the case of an emergency, and choose your WiFi solution based on how well it meets your security needs. This policy should take into account how many internal and external devices are connecting to your network, as well as the process for new user access.

No matter which provider you choose, keep your business WiFi secure by password-protecting your network and keeping that password safeguarded. This

password should also be changed from the default provided with your router in case the original password is catalogued somewhere online. Additionally, the password for you customer network should be completely different from your main network, but also be complex and customised.

For additional security, consider supplemental equipment or applications, such as firewalls and third party cyber security services.

Your security plan should also include backup procedures in the case of an outage or crash. Request a Service Level Agreement (SLA) from your provider, as this requires them to fix any outages within a specific time frame. You should also implement a disaster recovery plan that allows your business to automatically transition to a backup internet connection in case your main one fails.

5. What Equipment and Support Will I Need?

Business WiFi, like home WiFi, requires a router, a modem or both, depending on the solution you choose. However, you should take extra time choosing your business WiFi equipment to ensure that you have the right support to keep your organisation running smoothly.

Routers either have a broadcast frequency of 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz (gigahertz). If your office has multiple rooms or floors, a 2.4 GHz is the better option because is can broadcast further and through walls. If you only need your WiFi to reach a small storefront or open office space, on the other hand, then a 5 GHz will suffice.

More important than physical equipment, however, is IT and WiFi service support. Many providers offer managed services for an extra fee, which usually include troubleshooting and hardware replacement. However, if your business doesn’t have an active IT team, you may want to receive extra support from an external source. These third party managed service providers can help you choose, install, monitor and troubleshoot your WiFi solution, and they are always within reach when you need a helping hand.

Trying to set up a WiFi solution that boosts your business and keeps your data secure can be intimidating. But with the help of Landmark Technologies, you don’t have to figure everything out on your own.

Our managed WiFi services include a range of business-grade solutions, as well as a team of experts that can help you choose the right one. We are also always around to help you with any support you need-even after we complete your installation. Our IT team will help keep your WiFi connected, your data safe and your business running productively. We even offer a fail-safe, so your data and communications can be quickly rerouted in case your main connection goes down.

Visit our website to learn more about our Managed WiFi services today, and subscribe below to get all of our IT research and tips sent straight to your inbox!

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