Century Link: Why We Think It’s the Best Internet for WFH
Residential vs. Commercial Internet Services
Conventionally, internet service providers have separate internet plans marketed to residents and businesses. Internet for residences tends to be cheaper with low upload and download speeds. ISPs also throttle residential internet speeds at peak usage times.
Lower reliability is problematic for residential customers too, but it’s not a deal breaker. These plans are a pretty good deal for most people considering how inexpensive they are compared to commercial internet plans.
Internet plans for businesses, on the other hand, have to meet the highest standards. They have to be reliable and businesses are willing to pay top dollar for it. Commercial internet plans have high speeds, consistent bandwidth, and very high network uptime to reduce interruptions.
Today, the line between residential and commercial internet plans is blurring, mostly thanks to the implementation of fiber technology. Fiber-optic cables are more reliable than copper cables and have higher bandwidth. This increases uptime and reduces the need to throttle internet speeds even for residential customers.
WFH and hybrid work arrangements continue to be a part of the strategy for many businesses. So the recent evolution of residential plans is great news for people working from home who need high reliability and speed with their home networks.
CenturyLink has been at the forefront of fiber technology, providing super-fast internet speeds with 99.9% network availability. Right now, CenturyLink is arguably the best internet for working from home. Let’s look at some specific specs and features that make CenturyLink stand out.
CenturyLink Specs and Features for WFH
1. Highly Reliable Network for Uninterrupted Workflow
As mentioned before, CenturyLink Internet has a network availability or uptime of 99.9%, which is as high as it gets for residential plans. Enterprise internet plans can have a network availability of up to 99.999%, but they have servers and data centers that critically need constant connectivity.
A 99.9% network availability is good enough for working from home. This comes to about 86 seconds of downtime per day, which is negligible for most people.
2. Consistently High Speeds for the Most Data-Heavy Tasks
If you’ve run online speed tests for your internet, you may have noticed that you don’t always get the advertised top speed. This is because ISPs cap internet speeds for users when there’s a lot of data going through the network to avoid congestion. This process is called throttling and is standard in the industry. You agree to this when you get a new internet plan and acknowledge that the advertised speed is only the highest possible speed.
Fiber optic cables are far less prone to congestion from today’s data rates than copper cables. Copper cables have a maximum bandwidth of around 10 Gbps, but fiber-optic cables have no known limits. Researchers have developed products that can send up to a hundred petabytes per second (one petabyte is 1024 terabytes).
So ISPs using fiber networks like CenturyLink don’t have to throttle speeds for uses. You get high speeds while working even when there are a lot of people in your network using the internet.
3. Low-Latency for Real-Time Tasks
Some tasks such as streaming analytics, API integration, and data management may require low latency connection to the server. When you’re working from the office, you can connect to it directly via LAN. But from home, you have no choice but to connect via the internet. If you work using third-party servers and online apps, you may need latency with your home internet that is as low as your work internet.
You can reduce latency caused by your home network by connecting directly to the router via Ethernet. But it’s the ISP’s network that accounts for most of the latency and you need fiber internet to reduce that. Fiber uses light to transfer data, which travels faster than electric signals. High bandwidth also provides your data packets with an uninterrupted passage to the server. You can get average latency lower than 20 ms with fiber internet.
4. High Upload Speed for Video Calls
You generally don’t care about upload speeds much as you do about download speeds. People who want high upload speeds have mostly been streamers, YouTubers, and gamers. But remote work is increasing the demand for internet connections with high upload speeds because of video calls.
Upload speeds with CenturyLink Internet Plans reach as high as 940 Mbps. High upload speed means your computer can send high-quality video to the Zoom or Skype server without skipping any frames. Your video feed is high quality and free from lag.
Get CenturyLink Fiber Internet at an Unbeatable Price
If you’re thinking of getting fiber internet for WFH, you probably want it because of its high reliability, low latency, and high upload speed. You don’t need a download speed of 1 Gbps.
CenturyLink brings a new fiber internet plan that costs even less than most cable internet plans.For $30 a month, you get Century Internet powered by fiber with top speeds of up to 200 Mbps. Call an authorized CenturyLink sales agent at 855-349-9310 to learn more.