How to Select the Best Business Internet Provider in Texas

All but a few organizations use the internet for core services, and more than ever, that means doing business in the cloud. The average company uses 130 cloud apps. Artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and the cloud are driving digital transformation on a staggering scale. Gartner reports that more than nine out of 10 businesses are pursuing a digital initiative, and 87% of executives believe this transformation has the potential to disrupt their industry significantly.

Today’s ultra-fast business internet is empowering these changes and driving cloud adoption. A robust, reliable and consistent internet connection is critical to realizing the benefits of these changes.

Searching online for the “best business internet provider in my area” will yield plenty of results, but not all internet service providers are equal. You cannot afford to trust your success to a provider that does not provide robust and reliable business internet. So how do you decide what’s good internet for a business? Let’s review the key factors to consider, and how to find the best internet for businesses.

How Do I Choose an Internet Provider for My Business?

It is easy to underestimate your business internet requirements. Many cloud-based applications today – whether messaging tools, collaboration tools or document-sharing platforms – run in the background on your devices, sapping bandwidth. Videoconferencing has become the norm for business, especially as more teams have remote or hybrid work schedules.

Given the flexibility businesses require, it is a good idea to ensure that you have a good grasp of your current and future business internet needs.

When evaluating which providers can deliver the best internet for businesses, it is important to choose a company that has a variety of options for speed and service, and makes it easy to scale when the time comes.

Monitor Usage Trends

While historical data can help you get a handle on how employees are using the internet, new applications are being added every day. The rapid emergence of generative AI in many businesses is eating up bandwidth. While Open AI’s ChatGPT only hit the market in November 2022, there are already more than 7,000 AI-powered apps, tools and wrappers in app stores. AI requires robust business internet to perform at an optimal level.

Allow for Peak Usage

When planning your internet requirements, it is important to account for peak usage times. You will need enough throughput to handle the most demanding loads without slowdowns or disruptions.

Prioritize Reliability

While fast internet speeds are important, a reliable connection is critical. Reliable speeds allow your team to work productively.

Look closely at any marketing claims about internet speeds. Some providers will advertise high download speeds, but cap upload speeds. If you are in a business that moves a lot of data back and forth, these speed bumps can really slow you down. The best internet for business will allow for symmetrical speeds, giving you the same consistently fast uploads and downloads.

Speaking of speeds, how much is enough?

Get the Right Speeds

After examining your usage and thinking about the future, you should have a better idea of your business internet requirements. Still, there are several options for speeds and higher speeds cost more.

Is 100 Mbps fast enough for business? 100 Mbps easily supports videoconferencing, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and webinars without lag time if you are a relatively small business with only a few devices and a few employees. However, many businesses today need much faster speeds. In fact, most homeowners have more than 100-Mbps speeds. As of August 2023, broadband homes averaged 210 Mbps, according to Speedtest.

Today, businesses are more likely to have speeds somewhere between one and ten Gbps. Bandwidth costs have dropped considerably over the past few years, so your internet service provider can help you determine the right speeds for you.

Choosing the Right Network

What is the best network for a business? That is one question that is easy to answer. The best internet for business is a fiber network. Fiber provides the fastest speeds available and enables those symmetrical speeds. Fiber is also unaffected by electrical interference and is less prone to moisture than copper lines or coaxial cables. You will have less downtime with fiber by a mile.

The best business internet provider in your area will operate a fiber network and provide 24/7 year-round monitoring to ensure consistent performance and security. It is a good idea to work with a business internet service provider that owns its fiber whenever possible.

Many regional and national providers used lease lines or shared connections, which can lead to slowdowns during peak times and finger-pointing when it comes to solving problems. If you work with a provider like LOGIX Fiber Networks, you can eliminate these concerns.

The right network will also provide high availability and built-in redundancies to ensure minimal downtime.

Dependable Performance

Look for a business internet provider that has a state-of-the-art core backbone, multiple fiber rings in major Texas markets and diverse Tier-1 internet peering points. These features significantly reduce the potential for disruption or bottlenecks. For example, multiple internet pathways and connectivity can leverage dynamic routing to overcome traffic jams and reroute traffic to avoid slowdowns.

Tier-1 peering points provide high-speed and low-latency connectivity with fewer hops between networks. Having access to Tier-1 networks automatically bypasses lower-tier networks that may have bandwidth restrictions or congestion.

Optimal Uptime

You cannot afford to lose business, frustrate your customers, or hurt your productivity with unreliable internet. If your connection goes down or slows down, it can cause all sorts of problems. Studies by the Uptime Institute show that 60% of businesses suffering internet outages lose at least $100,000. For enterprise companies, it is not uncommon for an hour-long outage to create losses of more than $1 million.

While your business may not suffer losses like these, if you are not working with the best internet for business, you may be putting your business at risk.

When evaluating business internet providers, pay particular attention to their uptime claims. 99% uptime may sound like a good deal until you consider that it might mean 87-plus hours of downtime a year. Look for a provider that offers the gold standard of five nines: 99.999% uptime. That works out to an average of just a little more than 5 minutes of downtime per year.

You may also see other percentages cited for uptimes, so here is a chart that can help you see the impact of even just a few tenths of a percent.

Availability	Downtime per Year
99%	87.6 hours
99.5%	43.8 hours
99.9%	8.76 hours
99.99%	52.56 minutes
99.999%	5.256 minutes

Plus, if a fiber provider monitors its network 24/7 year-round for peak efficiency, they can detect and resolve issues before they become your problem.

Service and Support

Customer service and technical support should be top priorities when evaluating business internet providers, although they are often overlooked. Frustratingly, poor support experiences are all too common in the tech industry.

Avoid companies with call centers halfway across the country or with limited staff to handle issues. It will be challenging for support teams without direct knowledge of local network operations to resolve problems quickly. Look instead for providers prioritizing friendly, fast and local customer service. Having in-house technicians and support staff with direct oversight of local networks enables faster response and resolution times.

Long hold times, scripted and uninformed responses, and lack of ownership of issues plague the industry. You do not have to settle for this experience. Ensure that your provider has the local resources and expertise to deliver an exceptional customer service experience.

Bundled Services

It is common for companies to use services from a range of IT and telecom vendors. While the ability to choose best-in-class solutions from multiple providers has advantages, managing a complex multivendor environment also comes with significant challenges.

Dealing with multiple vendor relationships spreads IT resources thin. Each vendor requires separate management, from contract negotiations to solution integration to understanding unique customer support processes. This fractured approach makes it hard to holistically manage the overall IT environment.

When considering internet service providers, look for a company that can help with multiple types of services to make your life easier. Bundling services simplifies operations, billing and management of your tech, and tends to reduce costs.

Other services you may want to consider include:

• Business phone service featuring VoIP and advanced calling features.
• A cloud-hosted private branch exchange for advanced calling and remote connectivity.
• Business Ethernet for private networks and site-to-site connectivity.
• Cloud connect for private, secure and direct connectivity to cloud service providers Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.
• Business wavelength for even higher bandwidth to connect data centers and locations.
• Colocation data centers to reduce your in-house data center costs and provide greater redundancy.

Top providers may also offer additional tools to help you manage your network more efficiently and securely. For example, secure access service edge tools such as a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) with integrated security can provide greater flexibility and control for network operations. SD-WAN lets you extend and control network services to remote workers and dynamically steer traffic for priority applications. The best solutions will integrate a next-generation firewall, URL filtering, intrusion prevention and antivirus capabilities to protect your network – all from a single portal interface.

Who Has the Best Wi-Fi and Internet Service?

If you ask just about any business internet service provider, they will likely tell you that they do. However, using the information provided in this article, you can sort through the claims and hype to find the provider that works best for your business.

We are confident that when you add it all up, you will agree that LOGIX Fiber Networks is your best choice. LOGIX operates a Texas-based customer support center and Texas-based network operations center for 24/7 year-round monitoring, along with local technicians nearby to handle any issues that may arise. These local resources mean that you get faster, more responsible service.

LOGIX operates the largest fiber network in Texas, with more than 300,000 miles throughout the state. As a result, more than 10,000 businesses have chosen LOGIX as their provider of choice.

If you are tired of slow business internet speeds and downtime, rude or poor customer service, frustrating response times, or companies that do not seem to care about your business, it is time to switch. Do not settle for poor business services from big national providers or residential cable companies.

The LOGIX team prides itself on exceptional service from local employees, best-in-class network reliability, lightning-fast and scalable high-speed internet, and flexible options to fit your business objectives.

Who has the best business internet in Texas? LOGIX Fiber Networks. Call LOGIX at 281-688-6231 today to discuss your needs, or request a quote online.