Understanding the difference between Business Fibre and Home Fibre

Understanding the difference between Business Fibre and Home Fibre


This article is for businesses who are interested in learning about the differences between FTTB and FTTH.

Business Fibre explained:

Fibre to the business (FTTB) provides internet at scale that can manage a high demand on the internet line. Most businesses require video conferencing, streaming, VoIP calls, and cloud software, which are all dependent on a quality internet connection. This type of fibre is more expensive, but is tailored for large numbers of concurrent users with high demands of internet speed, uptime and contention ratio.

Home Fibre explained:

Fibre to the home (FTTH) is ideal for a private residence, which will have a less demanding internet requirement. Home fibre internet is more cost effective and all that is needed is a basic setup, however this type of fibre internet can experience more downtime and higher contention.

Here are some reasons why you should consider FTTB over an FTTH link: 

  1. Reason 1: Better Contention Ratios - 

Contention is when various people are connected and competing for the internet on one line. The ideal contention ratio would be 1:1, the lower the contention the better. When your contention ratio is high, it means a lot of people are connecting to the same fibre line as you and this can potentially drag down your broadband speeds. 

Most Business fibre products have a 10:1 contention ratio which is significantly better than those offered with home fibre of a 30:1 ratio depending on the FNO. This means more bandwidth will be available to your business at any time. 

  1. Reason 2: Better Service Level Agreements - 

SLA's provide certain response and repair time when your fibre is down. FTTH internet products have a best effort SLA resulting in longer turnaround times during unplanned outages.

Business fibre internet products can have a SLA added to it which is called Fibre Plus. Fibre Plus includes removing the FUP, punitive payback for service outages and improved contention ratios. Because of these SLA's business fibre fixes are prioritised over home fibre users, meaning your employees remain online and productive.

Business clients can also opt for a redundancy link, meaning they can choose dual fibre or another connectivity product alongside their business fibre products to ensure automatic failover, should downtime occur. 

  1. Reason 3: 99% Uptime Guaranteed -

Uptime is the percentage of time that you will have broadband service availability in a month. FTTB internet services offer a 99% uptime guarantee and incur a penalty fees if this is not upheld, giving you the peace of mind in terms of service availability.


  1. Reason 4: Symmetrical Speeds -

Fibre to the home is either a GPON or AON technology. These technologies usually offer asynchronous line speeds where the download speed is higher than the upload speed. 


Fibre to the business usually offer a full-duplex connection meaning you will have symmetrical line speeds, the same upload and download speeds. This means your employees can upload as fast as they download, which helps eliminate internet bottlenecks, dropped calls, slow uploads and data getting clogged due to lack of available bandwidth in high traffic periods.


If you would like to speak to a FTTH or FTTB fibre specialist, email sales@dsltelecom.co.za

To view our Vox Business Fibre packages, click here: https://www.uncappedfibre.co.za/businessfibre
To view our Vox Home Fibre packages, click here: https://www.uncappedfibre.co.za/

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