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When choosing internet connectivity for your business, there is a range of options available, with different costs, depending on your needs:
What is business broadband?
Business broadband and home broadband both do the same thing; they both connect you to the internet. But business broadband has many advantages over home broadband for businesses. For example, you can get a much faster, more reliable connection with lower, or no, contention ratios. Business broadband also offers extra security, vital these days to protect businesses against cyber-attacks, and your supplier may offer other services, such as domain names, cloud storage, and web hosting. You may also be able to add on phone services, such as VoIP and international call plans.
Business broadband also comes with service guarantees such as the minimum speed you can expect and top-class, priority customer support if anything goes wrong. Unlike with home broadband, no business can afford to wait hours or even days for technical support, and with business broadband, you can expect support to be available 24/7, 365 days a year.
What is bonded broadband?
Bonded broadband combines ASDL and Fibre broadband lines into one connection for exceptional speed and maximized performance. You also have the reassurance that even if one of your lines goes down, you are still online and still able to continue working.
You will need a specialist provider, but costs can be lower than leased lines, which may be a consideration for smaller businesses, and you do get excellent performance.
Bonded broadband can make your business more efficient, especially if you often need to send and receive large digital files. Bonded broadband is also excellent if you want to use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services.
What is FTTP?
FTTP stands for Fibre to the Premises. With FTTP, your connection is directly from your local exchange, via fibre optic cables, straight into your business, and it is the fastest type of fibre connection available. This gives you a very stable connection with excellent speeds, allowing your business to work smoothly and without delays. You have fast upload speeds and, with FTTP, you’ll often find that your upload and download speeds are the same.
It’s fast and efficient, but not necessarily expensive, making it a good choice for smaller businesses, or really, for any cost-conscious business. You also don’t have to have a phone line to get FTTP, which can save on costs too.
What are leased lines?
Leased lines are dedicated data connections between your provider and your business. Your service provider rents your line to you, and no one else will be using it. With a leased line, your connection will be excellent, no matter what time of day it is. You won’t be slowed down by peak usage times as you aren’t sharing your line with anyone else. You’ll also get a symmetric connection where the speed is the same for both uploads and downloads, which gives you greater efficiency, especially if you need to send and receive large files or use services such as VoIP.
How to choose the right connectivity for a business?
With so many options available, you have to think carefully about your business needs and your budget. While you can get the fastest internet connection available, along with a host of extras, including telephone services, cloud services, and web hosting, you need to go through your business needs and decide what’s necessary.
While all those extras are nice to have, they can add to the costs associated with a business broadband connection, which can add extra expenses to your business for very little gain.
Make a list of pros and cons for each option and get a range of quotes before deciding which connection is the right one for your business.
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