Burstable pricing is a new option available for our premium business internet access service, Internet-on-Demand, on Console Connect. Internet-on-Demand (IO-D) allows you to extend internet connectivity to your users wherever you have a Console Connect port. When you know usage on your network can be variable, burstable pricing can give a flexible and efficient cost option to allow you to scale up quickly and efficiently without loss of service to your users. Console Connect offers a 95th percentile burstable billing calculation to make sure that surges and spikes in usage are taken into account without having to maintain service at the surge level for the entire month. Each month, we calculate your bandwidth usage, and remove the top 5% without billing for it, to enable you to soak those spikes. You can read more in our Help Centre documentation.
While a Pay-As-You-Go model suits businesses with known fluctuations in demand without commitment, the ability to burst bandwidth and scale up quickly means that high-traffic businesses are able to meet unexpected demand and changes smoothly and without downtime or frustration for their users or others who rely on their services.
Burstable pricing can be key for situations like this. For businesses that rely on peace of mind, burstable services allow for traffic to be quickly moved between providers in the event of a significant increase in load at very short notice. For companies using IO-D services in the field, burstable options mean that they can avoid the congestion they would expect with a surge of usage on a fixed-bandwidth contract. Being able to burst up to the surge means that they can give their users the experience they’re accustomed to without them ever knowing there was a potential issue.
The clearest recent example of this is the immediate increase in the use of videoconferencing during the Covid-19 pandemic. Burstable pricing allows for communications software providers to ensure that if an unexpected event creates demand for their services, that they can scale quickly and continue to provide service to all their new users, while ensuring their existing users do not experience service degradation or failure.
Take another example: a retailer with a significant physical presence that provides internet connectivity in-store for their staff, devices and customers. With footfall depending not just on the company’s own schedule of launches and software updates, but external factors as well, there is great comfort in knowing that regardless of the load the chain is under, the connection can flexibly accommodate a surge in usage without having to anticipate it.
In many cases, burstable pricing can provide an easy hands-off approach to managing your network traffic, allowing for a consistent experience during regular operation as well as providing peace of mind for those situations you just can’t predict.
This is just a small selection of the benefits of burstable bandwidth and pricing that Console Connect can offer. We’d love to know how you’re using this IO-D feature, and what use cases you might have in your business that we haven’t discussed here. Just let us know below, and if you’re not yet using burstable pricing but think it might be right for your business, you can order it through the Console Connect app today.