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Business broadband
If you run a small or medium enterprise (SME), ensuring that you have the right broadband package can make a huge difference to your business.
Research by BT (www.BT.com) has shown that 40 per cent of the UK’s smaller businesses are still without a dedicated company website and 21 per cent have no online presence at all - this is even higher when it comes to sole traders, with almost half having no web presence.
However, the majority of small businesses recognise the benefits of the internet with more than half now using it as the primary channel to promote their company and communicate with partners (BT, 2007).
Why do I need business broadband?
Customers are far less likely to return to or buy from a slow-running website, or one that has a delay in answering emails so if you run one of the 4.3 million business enterprises in the UK - 99.3 per cent of which employ less than 50 people (BT, 2007) - you need to make sure that your customers can always get in touch and that you always stay one step ahead.
While this doesn’t necessarily mean that you need live video streaming and podcasts on a java-scripted website, the BT research did show that 63 per cent of SMEs believe the internet allows them to compete with bigger players and in different markets while 74 per cent see the internet as playing an important role for their business in the next five years.
Ivan Croxford, head of Market Development at BT Business, said: “There is a perception that technology has changed this and made the world less personal, but that’s not the case. We may not go to as many face-to-face meetings, but we’re communicating and sharing thoughts a lot more, using e-mail, blogs and social networking sites in both our business and personal lives.”
What are the benefits of business broadband?
There are a load of great benefits that you can get from a business broadband package - all of which help your company and make it easier for your customers to find you and get in touch.
Email addresses and web space
As well as offering free email addresses for your company, business broadband packages will give you dedicated website domains. For example, Plusnet’s ((www.Plus.net) business broadband gives you up to two free .co.uk addresses so you can have a professional URL from which to run your business.
You will also get an advanced mail delivery system which will limit the amount of spam you receive and will protect your incoming and outgoing emails. Plusnet’s business packages offer this SMTP mail system on an unlimited number of email free addresses and also have a fax-to-email facility that allows you to ditch the fax machine and just receive your faxes direct to you inbox.
Eclipse (www.Eclipse.net.uk) also offers comprehensive business broadband packages, starting at only £16.99 a month, offering up to 100 email addresses and up to 250MB of web space for free, or the option of paying an extra £1 a week for own company web address and professional email addressing.
IP addresses
The majority of home user broadband connections have dynamic IP addresses that refresh and change at regular intervals. Business broadband usually offers free static IP addresses that 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.
Static IP addresses also allow you to connect remotely to your PC, run a secure FTP server for uploading and sharing files with partners and clients and eliminate the possibility of downtime when a dynamic IP address refreshes itself.
Priority network access
You might think that because many SME broadband packages are “up to 8Mb” - just like your home connection - that you don’t need a dedicated business connection, but because office broadband offers priority network access, you’re going to get a much better connection than you would with a home package.
Priority network access means that your web traffic will have priority over other users on the same line and this can make a huge difference to how your site runs and your customer’s user experience.
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, and their activity will affect your connection. With a business broadband package from Plusnet, you will have a far more favourable connection at 20:1 so there’ll be less interference from other users. If you go for a Be Broadband (www.BeThere.co.uk) broadband package it will be even better - it offers speeds of up to 24Mb and contention ratios of 1:1 on all packages.
Priority customer support
With a business package you’ll also get priority customer support 24 hours a day so your calls will be answered and dealt with before those of other users. Plusnet claims that their business customers wait an average of only 23 seconds before their call is answered, with 95 per cent of calls answered in the first minute and 90 per cent of online queries answered within four hours.
High download allowances
Activities such as uploading information to your website and backing up your server will eat up normal download allowances pretty quickly and while your “unlimited” business package could still be subject to a fair usage policy, ISPs know that business users tend to need higher download 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.
Faster uploads
If you spend a lot of time connecting to the office from home, or uploading data to an FTP site you’re running, you might want to make use of the faster upload speeds that you can get with some business broadband packages.
Normal upload speeds tend to have a maximum of around 448Kb but Be Broadband customers get upload speeds of up to 1.3Mb as standard and Be Pro customers can opt to have this increased to up to 2.5Mb. Plusnet and Eclipse Business customers can get up to 832Kb upload speeds.
More expensive business packages can be bought with SDSL lines meaning that the upload and download speeds are the same. These connections will offer 10:1 contention rates and packages start from around £125 a month.
Free security
All businesses need to have a good anti virus software to protect sensitive information, and to ensure that they don’t inadvertently infect their entire network with a nasty virus or Trojan. Going for a business broadband package will ensure that you get the kind of protection you need as most will come with a free, reliable anti virus and spam protection to cut down on the number of phishing emails and spam you receive.
So what are the options?
All of the features of a good SME broadband package work to improve your website, online communication and business prospects so you can be sure that by having a reliable, fast broadband package, your business will grow in the way that you want it to.
Getting a good SME broadband package isn’t as expensive as you might think either. Eclipse and Plusnet offer very good packages starting from £16.99 and £13.61 respectively for solo traders, going up to £49.99 and £34.99 respectively. Be’s Pro package is great for home office users and costs £22 a month. BT also offers a range of business packages, but you’ll have to pay extra for some of the features you get free from other providers - such as static IP addresses.
Check the table below to compare some of the best business broadband packages around:
Company and package features
Plusnet business, £34.99 a month
Eclipse Option 3, £49.99 a month
Be Pro, £22 a month
BT Business Option 3, £45
Download speed
Up to 8Mb
Up to 8Mb
Up to 24Mb
Up to 8Mb
Email addresses
Unlimited
Up to 100
£5 a month for five
10
Web space
500MB
250MB
100MB
50MB
Free static IP?
One as standard, you can request more free of charge
Unlimited amount for free
One free, 8 for £10 a month, 16 for £20 a month
No. You can buy them starting from £5 a month for one, or bulk buy
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