For every business today, fast and reliable broadband is vital for smooth communications with staff and clients, and ensuring high levels of productivity. If you’re a small business or are self-employed, however, you may be tempted to get by with a cheaper, residential broadband service. So, what do you get with a business connection that you don’t with a residential one? In this article, we look at business versus home broadband to make you aware of the ‘extras’ you get for your money.

What is business broadband?

The crucial difference between home and business broadband is that a business service runs off a dedicated connection that’s set up in an office or workspace. Business broadband offers faster speeds (upload and download), more reliable and more secure connections, service guarantees, and better customer support in the case of technical issues or outages.

What are the key features of business broadband packages?

Business broadband includes many features that you simply don’t get with home broadband. Let’s look at some of them:

Business traffic gets priority

Service providers prioritise business broadband traffic over residential traffic. This means a more reliable, consistent, and better quality service that isn’t affected by number of users (contention ratio) or peak times of the day when everyone’s online!

Faster speeds

Most business broadband packages are delivered via fibre optic connections that provide faster speeds than ADSL broadband. Upload speeds, in particular, are likely to be significantly faster than they are with home broadband. This is important in a business context where staff are sending large files, working on documents in shared drives, and making video calls using online services.

Enhanced customer support

This area is a significant one and one of the most marked differences between business and residential broadband, from a user perspective. With business broadband, customer service is a high priority. Your provider will typically offer comprehensive technical support and fast response times if you experience any issues. For example, faults on your line will be repaired much more swiftly than is the case for residential broadband.

Service level agreement (SLA)

Most business broadband providers will guarantee you a certain standard of service in writing, via a service level agreement (SLA). The SLA is likely to cover speeds, uptime guarantees, timeframe for fixing faults, and compensation for breaching the agreement. Home broadband doesn’t generally come with this, so you’re very unlikely to receive compensation for an unreliable connection!

Static IP address

Residential broadband will give you a dynamic IP address which will change each time you connect to the Internet. Business broadband provides a static IP address that allows you to carry out a range of useful functions, including:

● Hosting mission critical business applications

● Hosting business websites or web servers

● Accessing computers or servers remotely

Do I need business broadband?

If you’re a sole trader, for example, you might not need a business broadband package. However, if you run a small to medium-sized business (SME), e.g. with ten employees or more, the improved service is likely to be worthwhile! You can also look at claiming the cost of your connection as a business expense in your end-of-year tax bill.