Almost a quarter of British SMEs risk limiting their business efficiency and incurring substantial overage charges by using broadband packages designed for consumer users. Comparison site Consumerchoices offers a guide to choosing the best connection for your business.
A recent study of 1,000, UK based, small and medium sized enterprises found that 24% of respondents use broadband packages tailor-made for consumer rather than business use.
Consumerchoices.co.uk, which commissioned the study, believes companies misusing consumer broadband packages do so under the mistaken belief that consumer packages are “cheaper”. In reality this is rarely the case and businesses can end up suffering from poor connection speeds and a lack of bandwidth to run business applications. In addition, companies using consumer broadband services run the risk of breaching their ISP’s terms and conditions.
Other interesting findings were:
• 41% of businesses rate speed as the most important criteria when selecting their office internet service provider
• 22% cite a large/unlimited download limit as most important
• 20% name customer tech support as the key reason for package choice
Whilst each of these features is more extensively catered for within business broadband packages, just 59% of business respondents subscribed to a business broadband package.
Simon Piper, Head of Business Development, Consumerchoices.co.uk, comments: “Our research indicates that a high percentage of businesses are operating on inferior consumer service level agreements in the mistaken belief that they’re cheaper. If the internet is vital to the way you do business, you need to ensure that it’s up and running as much as possible – and that if something does go wrong, you can get help quickly and easily. That’s why it’s important to choose business-grade services, with business-level support.”
Piper continues: “Reliable business broadband isn’t as expensive as you might think. You can get online from less than £10 per month. It is important you compare small business broadband options before you buy and make sure the package and SLA meet your specific requirements. Anything else is a false economy.”
Five top tips for SMEs when selecting a business broadband provider:
1. IP addresses: Check whether your business broadband provider offers free static IP addresses. These are needed if you want to run your own website or receive emails direct to your PC without the use of a host like Hotmail or Yahoo! which can look unprofessional.
2. Priority network access: Make sure your office broadband package offers priority network access – you’re going to get a much better connection than you would with a residential package. Priority network access means that your web traffic will take precedence over other users on the same line – which can make a huge difference to how your site runs and to your customers’ user experience.
3. Lower contention rates: Standard residential broadband packages have contention rates of 50:1, meaning that up to 49 other people can be sharing the same line as you – and their activity will affect your speed. Look for a business package that offers a contention ratio of 20:1 or even 1:1 – though a dedicated line will cost you more.
4. Priority customer support: Check your business package gets you priority customer support 24 hours a day so your calls will be answered and dealt with before those of other users.
5. High download allowances: It is important to know your download cap. Activities such as uploading information to your website and backing up your server would use up a normal download allowance pretty quickly, and while your “unlimited broadband” business package could still be subject to a fair usage policy, ISPs know that business users tend to need higher allowances and will accommodate this. So you’ll be less likely to end up with a warning from your provider to curb your usage, or being fined for excessive downloading.
www.Consumerchoices.co.uk