Wireless technology for your business comes in many, many forms, thought it wasn’t so long ago it was literally unheard of.
Back in the 70s, they were big and expensive; they weren’t considered essential pieces of business equipment. Typewriters were common, but computers were a specialized tool used in more high-tech environments. In the ’80s, that started to change, but it wasn’t until the early ’90s, with the explosion of the internet, that businesses saw the writing on the wall. Back in the ’90s and early naughts, RCI spent many hours recabling buildings so that each workstation had two ports – one for internet and one for telephone. Today, cabling can be an expensive endeavor, which is why most homes and many businesses use wireless technology.
Wireless technology for business has allowed business owners to save thousands of dollars in cabling costs. It’s not easy – especially in an older building. Think solid brick walls, high ceilings, or anywhere without space to run cable behind walls. But that’s only the most familiar use case for wireless technology for business. There are many other ways that wireless can solve problems that were previously unsolvable or at least prohibitively expensive.
Here are a few unique uses for wireless technology for your business.
Point to Point Wireless Bridge
Some businesses have more than one building on the same property. The second building can be as large as a multistory hospital or as small as a shed. Where wireless tech comes in handy is when only one of those buildings has access to fiber or another form of outside internet.
Did you know that you can connect one building to the other to make the internet available to the building without access to it? Traditionally, this could be with an underground cable, but often, in the modern world, the most efficient way to provide internet is with a point-to-point wireless access bridge.
The bridge will beam the internet from one building to the other! All you need is a clear line of sight.
Secure Outdoor or Campus Wireless
For schools or anywhere with employees or customers who spend time outside, outdoor wireless access is a beneficial differentiator that sets a business apart. Even though most of us now have the ability to log into our phones as a wireless hotspot or use our phones to browse the internet anywhere with a cell signal, these activities consume resources like batteries and data.
Wireless Cameras
While cabled camera systems are still the most secure, wireless surveillance is often the more economical choice for budget-conscious businesses. A wireless camera goes up more quickly but may be easier to hack and more prone to outages. Still, surveillance of any kind is a safety improvement over no surveillance at all.
Wireless Backup and Disaster Recovery Links
Does your building have easy access to secure internet? That’s great!
However, if your business relies on the internet for critical functions, you may want a backup system available just in case of loss or disruptions from natural disasters, power outages, or routine maintenance.
Wireless backup and disaster recovery links are an excellent use of wireless technology for your business! They provide a fallback in case you lose the internet and are invaluable in industries like healthcare or anywhere where losing the internet is more than just an inconvenience.
Depending on your setup, you can use wireless links to failover to cellular, satellite, or even another building with the aforementioned point-to-point wireless bridge. It’s one-way Wireless Technology for business allows businesses to continue even in the most trying circumstances.
Wireless Network Segmentation
If you’ve ever left your house, you’ve almost certainly seen a list of available wireless networks on your smartphone or computer. Typically, many of them begin or end with “Guest Wi-Fi network.”
Often, a guest wi-fi network uses wireless network segmentation. It may be the number one most common use of wireless technology for your business. That allows customers to use a different portion of the network than employees, and that has two significant benefits.
Security
If you have sensitive documents shared on your business wireless network, it’s best to have an additional layer of security that prevents your customers and visitors from accessing them.
Priority of Resources
While allowing guests access to wireless internet on your network is a nice perk for them, it’s likely not essential to your business model. That’s why network segmentation allows you to guarantee a certain level of service to your core business!
Other Wireless Technology for Your Business
There are so many specific uses of wireless technology for business that we don’t have enough room to describe them all here. From underwater wireless to inventory management, most wireless technology for business are industry-specific.
The good news is, if you have a problem with getting internet access, someone who studied your industry has probably already created a product to solve it! Now, you just need to find a trusted technology partner like RCI to implement and maintain the solution for you.
We’re always happy to help!
