By Craig Mulhearn, General Manager of Networks and Connectivity

"Enterprise-grade fibre is only for big corporations with massive IT budgets."

I hear this myth constantly when talking to business owners across Australia. Many believe they need to settle for consumer-grade connections because "real" business connectivity is either unavailable in their location or too expensive.

This outdated thinking is causing unnecessary pain. When businesses attempt to run increasingly cloud-dependent operations on infrastructure designed for streaming entertainment, they're setting themselves up for failure.

Hybrid work changed everything about connectivity needs

Remember when most of your team worked in the same building, sharing the same internet connection? Those days are gone for most businesses.

With staff spread across home offices, customer sites, and headquarters, consistent performance has become critical. A dropped connection during a client presentation can undo months of relationship building.

Many companies learned this lesson during the pandemic. Those with robust connections adapted quickly, while others struggled with dropped calls, laggy video, and frustrated customers.

What Enterprise Grade fibre delivers (beyond just speed)

While bandwidth numbers get the headlines, reliable business connectivity brings far more valuable benefits. It maintains consistent performance during peak hours when consumer connections falter, provides lower latency for seamless video conferencing and voice calls, and delivers symmetrical upload and download speeds crucial for cloud services.

Most importantly, it offers dedicated bandwidth not shared with neighboring businesses or residences, ensuring your operations always receive the priority they deserve.

The reality is that enterprise-grade fibre is now within reach for businesses of all sizes – not just large corporations. With the right infrastructure, you gain more than just fast internet. You get the reliable foundation needed to adopt cloud platforms, support remote work, and ensure the business can continue operating uninterrupted.

Dedicated fibre: now more affordable

One of the biggest obstacles to upgrading connectivity has traditionally been the cost of physically connecting a building to fibre infrastructure. This ‘last mile’ connection often required significant civil works, making it prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses.

Vocus' current On Net building program is changing this equation. An ‘On Net’ building is one that's already connected to our fibre network. For businesses in these buildings, the hard part is already done – the fibre connection is already in place, right to your doorstep.

We're now offering savings on connection costs for businesses in these pre-connected buildings, effectively removing one of the biggest barriers to enterprise-grade connectivity. For more detail on this offer, please feel free to reach out to your Vocus Account Manager or contact us here.

What's the cost of downtime to your business? For most, it's far more than they think – and increasingly preventable.