If your company is considering installing a wireless network there are many advantages that will benefit your company. Whether the goal is to provide internet access to guests at a large country club, or residents living in a retirement community, or a busy company where employees use desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones a wireless network can save time and money.
Increased mobility is by far the biggest attraction that wirelesses networking hold for most businesses. Being able to sit at any terminal, anywhere in the building and access the server is a great advantage. When laptops were developed, because of the new mobility convenience factor that they brought within them, this gave added impetus to the advantages of being able to work anywhere within range of the wireless network signal.
Another important by-product of the increased mobility factor is that it promotes increased productivity, allowing employees to collaborate where and when they need to. It brings freedom of operation and speeds up the working process. But there is another factor too, and that is that employees take their device’s home with them, and can work, (as many do), in their own time when it’s convenient to do so.
Wireless networking has also gone into the public domain, with Wi-Fi hotspots being available in many high street coffee shops, hotels, railway stations, airports, universities, hospitals, etc. It enables people to get onto the Internet when they’re away from the office, or away from home. People can pick up their emails, both social and business, and if their place of work allows, can also connect into the business network remotely.
Having a wireless network also means that a business can provide secure network access to visiting colleagues from other sites within the organization. It enables them to access the data they need and pick up and respond to their emails. It also grants Internet access to visiting customers and suppliers. It’s now something that most business people who have reason to travel, have come to expect.
Another one of the benefits of having a wireless network is that it can be used to make telephone calls using voice over Internet protocol. VoIP calls are often free, depending on the country and the devices you are calling, and are considerably cheaper than using conventional technology to make international calls.
Using wireless technology rather than having a hard wired network can be much more cost-effective. The larger the network, both in terms of area and users, the more expensive a hard wired network will be to install. Once a wireless network is in place, maintenance costs are lower, and there are normally no additional costs involved in scaling up, unless the signal needs to be boosted.
All things being considered, there are many significant advantages in having a wireless network in place, rather than a wired network. Where enhanced security and superfast operating speeds are not strictly necessary, the many benefits of increased mobility that wireless enables can easily outweigh the restrictions that a wired network imposes.
Many companies are now introducing a limited or selective wireless network alongside their existing hard wired connection, in order to reap the benefits of both worlds. This does however have additional cost implications, but can be the ideal solution, especially for larger organizations.