Business broadband: Should you upgrade?

If you’re using the internet for business in any capacity, then you would probably benefit significantly from using business broadband. This is specifically designed for heavy-duty use. As such, it offers many benefits for business users. Here are some of the main ones.

Faster speeds

For many people, videocalls have taken the place of a lot of real-world meetings. There are many advantages to this, not least the time saved on travelling. Videocalls do, however, depend on all the participants having a fast internet connection. When internet speeds drop, they become a painful experience in the frustrations of lag and buffering.

Even audio-only calls benefit from a fast internet connection. That’s particularly true if you want to use other applications at the same time.

More reliability

Speed on its own isn’t enough. You need to be able to rely on your connection holding steady. In the real world, internet service providers (ISPs) sometimes find themselves running low on bandwidth. When that happens, they (understandably) prioritise the customers on higher-level packages over those on lower-level packages.

Painless sharing

If you share a home with anyone else, there’s a strong likelihood that you’re going to end up wanting to use the internet at the same time. Logically, the more people there are in your home, the more likely it is that this will happen.

If you’re running your own business, then you may also need to enable other people to connect to your internet connection. For example, you may need them to come on-site to work for you or to have a meeting with you.

Even if you live and work entirely alone, you may benefit from the fact that business broadband has a lot of support for sharing. You probably have at least some smart devices in your home, these will need access to the internet.

What’s more, some of these may need fast, reliable connections. For example, internet-linked security cameras demand much the same level of resources as web cameras in videocalls.

Better security

If you’re working from home as an employee, getting extra security can simply be a nice bonus of upgrading. Your employer will have most of the responsibility for ensuring that you connect to their network securely.

If, however, you’re a freelancer or entrepreneur then you need to take cybersecurity very seriously. Ensuring the safety of your internet connection is fundamental to ensuring your digital security as a whole.

The option to use a static IP address

Again for employees, this is likely just to be a nice bonus. Even for some freelancers and entrepreneurs, it may be more of a nice-to-have than an essential. For some business owners, however, it is essential to have a static IP. In a nutshell, using a static IP address makes it much easier to run extensive digital networks.

Priority customer support

The more important a customer you are, the higher the level of customer support you can expect to receive. If you look on any ISP’s website, you will often see dedicated contact details for people on business packages. These are essentially priority lines and as such, they are advertised as selling points. Even if you don’t see a separate line, you will probably find that the ISP’s call-routing system prioritises business customers.

Access to business-friendly services

Standard business packages often include bundled services aimed at business people. They may also give you access to special deals on other services. Typical examples of services offered are backup and recovery plans and VoIP (internet calling) services.

These are included with business plans because they’ve traditionally been of more interest to businesspeople than to consumers. At this point in time, however, they could be very useful even for home-workers.