10Feb, 2015

This question does not necessarily have an easy answer. It requires you to take a look at the several key factors that impact your speed and bandwidth requirements and assess your current usage levels for each.

File Sharing

Thanks to advancements in modern technology, collaboration is easier than ever. You can now e-mail that project to a team member to get feedback, upload a document to cloud storage for safe keeping or download the latest set of revisions from the company FTP server before client approval. All of this comes with a cost, however, in the form of bandwidth.

Every time a file is uploaded or downloaded, your bandwidth requirements go up as a result.

Data Center Transfers

Customer relationship management services have become the norm in a broad range of different industries. Likewise, many companies are turning to innovative cloud solutions like Microsoft Office 365 for collaboration, and cloud hosted services for backup and archival purposes and more. Every time you interact with the cloud, however, information is being uploaded and downloaded. Your bandwidth requirements are only increasing as these services become more and more prominent.

High Definition Streaming

By far, one of the most bandwidth-intensive activities that most businesses engage in involves the streaming of high definition video and audio content. Uncompressed, HD video has an average file size of 10 megabytes per second. By the time you finish watching a one-minute video from a prospective client, you have used up nearly 600 megabytes of bandwidth.