EFM – Ethernet First Mile

An EFM is often taken out by companies who want a fibre leased line but don’t quite have the budget for it. In today’s blog we explore why an EFM could be the way forward for your business.

First of all a brief explanation of what an EFM actually is. EFM stands for Ethernet first mile and to put it bluntly that’s exactly what it means, simply the first mile of the line is Ethernet (fibre) and the rest is copper. The main drawback of this is that copper degrades over distance so if you are too far away from the POP location and EFM may not be available at all or may be restricted to a very low bandwidth.

However an EFM may be the right option for you if you are looking for up to 20Mb up and down on an uncontended service. The other solution that is usually compared against an EFM is FTTC (BT infinity) which is much cheaper and can give you higher upload speeds.

That being said it is also growing in popularity meaning even more sharing with other businesses and home users. The current contention ratio is usually up to 50:1, so as you can probably imagine your speeds are likely to fluctuate. FTTC can be great for some small businesses who aren’t heavily reliant on their connection bandwidth, for those who need a more reliable and stable connection and EFM is a valid contender in many areas.

Due to the reduction of prices in Ethernet EFM’s can now start as low as £200 per month so if you wanted to get a free quote and see how cost effective an EFM can be for your business then get in touch today for a free quote!