What is Business Broadband

Whether you run your own business from home, or have an office somewhere employing a group of people, the chances are you use the internet and email for business. Unlike when at home having a slow connection or if the internet going off for a little bit might be annoying, in business, this can cost you money and really bring about some negative consciences!

If you run a business you might have seen business broadband being advertised by some ISPs and wondering what it is. Typically business broadband deals allow for a more reliable and faster connection, with a larger download capacity with better support and advanced features and services. Business broadband allows for your business to expand as providers will offer several levels of service - as you grow, you can upgrade your broadband plan.

The Broadband:

Being a business probably means you require a different type of broadband connection to a home user, especially if you’ve got a few staff using computers. If there are a few staff in the office then by having a higher connection speed you won’t have to worry about your connection grinding to a halt when you’re all using the internet. This is especially useful if your business uses video and audio webcasts to communicate with others. A lot of business broadband connections come with download speeds from around 8 mb to 24mb.

Not only can they come with faster download speeds, but they can also have higher upload speeds. This is very important if your business has a website and you regually upload files to it, or if you send emails with large attachments. Having a slow upload speed is where a lot of home broadband connections fail.

Along with having a faster connection, most business broadband packages come with a higher “contention ratio”. The lower this is, the less people you are sharing your internet connection with, so you should get a faster and more reliable a service.

The Download Capacity:

If your business is a heavy internet user, then chances are you’ll get through a typical home broadband connection’s download limits with ease. A download capacity or limit is how much you can download off the internet. If you are streaming videos, downloading or uploading large files (such as receiving them via email, or uploading files onto your website) you will be getting through your download allowance very quickly.

A lot of business plans come with “unlimited download capacity”.  However, nearly all of these will be limited by a fair use policy, so if you take advantage and try to download as much as you can, your business broadband supplier may limit you.

Prioritised Support:

As a business, if you loose your internet connection it can be costly. Both in terms of employees not being able to use it for their work but also through lost communications, such as email. A lot of business broadband suppliers offer prioritised support and even service guarantees. This means that if you experience a problem you will be able to contact them quicker than regular customers and they may even have promises for the time length it takes to fix any problems. It’s not unusual that they may offer reimbursements if they don’t meet any support targets. The advantage of this is that once you have told them about a problem you know where you stand with getting it sorted. With home broadband deals you may be stuck at the end of a reasonably long line, before they can fix your issues, which just isn’t viable for most businesses.

A lot of business broadband suppliers will offer a free support phone line, where as many home broadband suppliers will offer an expensive pay per minute support phone line.

Advanced Features and Services:

Earlier I mentioned that business plans may come with advance features and services. Within this I include better security features, wi-fi minutes, free voice calls, email addresses, web space and so on.

As a business you may want your broadband connection to be more secure and even have website filtering/blocking software. By using this you will hopefully be able to reduce the likelihood of receiving viruses and other internet nasties. By having website filtering software you can also limit your employee’s access to certain websites - for instance, adult websites or more innocently, social networking sites like Facebook.

Most businesses now-a-days will have a website and getting a bit of web space with your broadband plan can save you a bit of money trying to find a company to host it, or having to purchase an expensive web server. Some business broadband plans come with the ability to have email addresses ending in your company website (eg, employee@my_business_name.co.uk and so on).

Free Wi-fi minutes allow you to benefit from the increased speed and download capacity of your line by being able to make phone calls through the internet - this is a great way to phone abroad.  When those run out, many business broadband packages come with a certain amount of free land line phone calls too.

With business broadband plans you are more likely to receive a static IP address. Home broadband plans generally come with a dynamic IP address, which means it changes every so often (such as when you connect to the internet, or reboot your router). With a static IP address, like the name suggests, it will not change. Advantages of a static IP address come when you want to network your computers together or run web/mail servers.

What should my business look for?

When looking for a business broadband plan there are a few things to consider.

• The price - what are you willing to spend and is this a reasonable and realistic price.

I would expect to look at paying at least £15 a month, maybe a bit less if an ISP is offering a special offer. Depending on the size of your package, business broadband plans can go over £50 for large businesses. Don’t just look at the introductory offer price, have a look at what you will be paying for every month, for instance it may go up after the first three. Generally the longer contract length, the better the deal you can get. But make sure the contract length is suitable - you don’t want to be tied into your broadband contract for longer than you need it for.

• What do you need? Decide what sort of speed you want and work out how much data you download. Are there any additional features or services you’d like?

There’s no need to go for the fastest connection with the largest download limit, that comes with lots of extras if you’re not going to use them. Work out how much you use the internet and what type of internet user are you. Do you download a lot of large files? If you’re just browsing web pages and sending emails, chances are you won’t need a lot of data usage or the fastest connection speed. If you download or stream a lot of videos and so on, then a larger plan will be more suitable. When you are thinking of signing up to a particular ISP, ask them what they think you need. Explain your situation to them and hopefully they’ll be able to point you in the right direction.

• What hardware & software will you get? Free routers, anti-virus and so on….

Check what your plan comes with. It might not work out more affordable if you have to buy routers, modems and so on. Getting anti-virus software and other security software with your plan can also be a nice extra that you may want to look out for.

• Support - what type of support service will you get?

When picking your business broadband plan have a look at what support methods are on offer. If they have a phone line, is it 24/7, is it a free phone number? It doesn’t have to be if you don’t need that but it is worth looking into.

• Set up fees

Make sure you know what it will cost to get connected to the broadband package you are planning on choosing.  A good deal might not be so good if you have to pay a high installation fee.

Hopefully this article has explained business broadband and what to look for, for your business.  If you’ve got any further questions, why not leave a comment below?