Guest opinion: Fiber Internet is the key to a brighter online future

Editor’s note: Adam Eisner is vice president for Networks at Ting Internet.

Our online future isn’t just about streaming TV and music. It’s about competing economically on a global scale, developing efficient healthcare systems and creating accessible education for communities across the US.

The Internet changed everything. True gigabit fiber access will change the way we think about the Internet.

Ting

Consider everything that has happened since the Internet entered the mass conscience.

In the last ten years alone, the number of Americans telecommuting to work has increased by 115 percent. Anyone who’s worked from home even once will tell you, the telecommuting experience is only as good and reliable as your Internet connection.

Healthcare providers rely on sending and receiving internal and external communications over the Internet. This is true from large hospitals to clinics and doctors offices, and even homecare for an aging population.

Education has moved online too. Learning modules and courses are more accessible than ever. All you need to expand the classroom’s reach beyond its four walls is a fast, reliable connection to the Internet.

American entrepreneurs and businesses of all shapes and sizes run their business on the Internet, and we’re not just talking about tech companies here. The applications that businesses big and small rely on are increasingly cloud-based, that is to say, services that run on a web server as opposed to being installed like software on a single computer, phone or tablet.

The Internet has changed a lot, and a lot has changed on the Internet. For most of the US population, one thing about the Internet hasn’t changed and that is how they access it. That needs to change if we want to keep up or better yet, lead.

The Future is Fiber

Most Americans still rely on old phone or cable TV networks to get online. That was OK five years ago. It’s a struggle today when we accept that after dinner is going to be a “slow time” for Internet access. It’s a serious problem and puts us at a real disadvantage as we look even a little further into the future.

Fiber isn’t new technology. It’s the solution for lightning-fast communications over long distances. Fiber is what zips massive volumes of Internet communications across nations and between continents today.

So why is Ting Internet bringing fiber to Holly Springs, NC, Fuquay-Varina, NC and now Wake Forest, NC a big deal? Because we’re talking about true fiber to the premises. That’s something few major cities and fewer towns have. Fiber to the premises moves us beyond the old copper phone and cable TV networks that struggle to keep up with even today’s demand, let alone demands a year, two years, a decade into the future.

Incumbent ISPs aren’t interested in building true fiber to the premises networks. They’d rather connect homes and businesses with existing, old, bottlenecked networks that were built for phone and cable TV, not for the higher demand and lower latency that Internet applications require.

With fiber to the home, there’s no more waiting for an uncongested time to upload or download a big file. There are no more conflicts in the home or workplace around who’s hogging all the bandwidth. Everyone can do everything they need and want to do online without getting in each other’s way. The benefits of fiber are immediately apparent, but they’re also further reaching.

Ting expanding Triangle fiber Internet footprint to Wake Forest

Fiber is about much more than how we access the Internet today. A fiber future is one where we don’t even think about how we access the Internet anymore because we don’t have to.

In short, better access to the Internet means more opportunities at home, in education and in business. Fiber means better Internet access today, but it means much more to the future.

Ting is happy to be building true fiber to the premises networks in select towns and cities around the country and specifically in North Carolina in Holly Springs, North Carolina and with our latest announcement, in Wake Forest too.