We live in a world built on connectivity. Look around. If you’re at work, school, or coffee shop, chances are everyone around is connected to the internet (probably on multiple devices). The Internet has become fundamental to our culture, indivisible from daily life and as routine as brushing our teeth.
We’re consuming more than ever (304 gigabytes of internet traffic per user per month*). Video content is growing exponentially. The number of connected devices is skyrocketing (up to 50 per household this year)! File sizes are increasing. Apps and games are proliferating. Growth is all around.
Everything we do requires larger amounts of bandwidth, greater capacity and much quicker download and upload speeds. The byproduct of all this consumption? Your local ISP now has to make considerable network investments to keep up with consumer demand.
Delivering for Today, Planning for Tomorrow
From our first day as a company in May 2020, Ziply Fiber has been working to build a new, ultra-fast, 100-percent fiber-optic backbone designed specifically for these higher bandwidth needs of the future. So while we’re focused on delivering the connectivity you need for virtual learning, remote working, or simply sitting on the sofa catching up on a favorite show today, we’re also thinking ahead and building technology (like 5-gig and 2-gig residential fiber and beyond) to ensure you receive the best possible connectivity for years to come.
All ISPs need to be thinking like this. Unless we prepare, our networks will not have the capacity to manage the influx of devices, usage, high-quality content and round-the-clock connectivity that will be increasingly required by society.
Fiber-optics: The fastest internet
This need for network evolution is why Ziply Fiber has prioritized aggressive fiber expansion across the Northwest, bringing the fastest possible internet to millions of people at their homes and businesses and not just in big cities, but in smaller suburbs and rural and frontier communities too, because we believe zip codes shouldn’t determine the quality of someone’s internet.
“To put it simply, fiber-optic internet is the gold standard of internet, offering a far more reliable network than cable or DSL”
To put it simply, fiber-optic internet is the gold standard of internet, offering a far more reliable network than cable or DSL. Fiber is designed for data and offers the unique advantage of symmetrical upload and download speeds combined with super low latency. It delivers speeds and reliability that are far superior to any other connection type, meaning people can process more transactions, upload files faster, and enjoy glitch-free video calls. It also means an entire household can connect multiple devices with less lag even during peak times.
By anticipating consumer needs and social trends, ISPs like Ziply Fiber were able to build new networks with greater capacity, allowing businesses to have high-functioning capabilities, and entire families to simultaneously work, stream, game, order takeout, chat and much more without any lag or congestion. So why stop there?
Building for a more connected tomorrow
We have to keep thinking about content consumption and creation in an increasingly online and connected world. Today, Ziply Fiber customer households are starting to approach one terabit/month of usage already and other ISPs are reporting similar growth. With more and more events and services moving online, it is crucial for ISPs to prepare for these upcoming higher bandwidth needs now or risk congestion in the near future.
Ziply Fiber is doing just that. We’re building a network with more capacity, made for a world where the average person owns more than 15 IoT devices, and the average business operations are 75% online. We’ve built networks capable of terabits per second between our offices and are constantly upgrading our core and aggregation networks to operate at 40% peak load, ensuring that even during peak usage hours our network will support your use at full speed. A consistently fast connection 24/7 is our design goal.
Moreover, our network upgrades feature rigorous route diversity and a redundant core backbone that is operated by us for our customers and is capable of 20+ terabits per second on all major inter-city fiber paths. We utilize fully redundant local aggregation networks and multiple fiber connections so that we can keep your service up even when someone’s errant backhoe digging miles away accidentally tries to slow you down.
This allows us the capacity to support not just at-home 5-gig connections, but much more for both our residential and business customer-base well into the future. It also protects against single-location incidents or disasters that might break a customer’s connection.
The internet is going to continue to evolve and grow, and how people and businesses use it will evolve as well. Networks must evolve with it, and we must choose to innovate today to provide for the needs of consumers and businesses tomorrow.
