Business broadband deals

Why choose business broadband?

A business broadband deal differs from a home deal in a number of key ways.

• Service and support – Though support for when your broadband goes down or you are confronted by other technical issues is generally good for both business and consumer broadband packages, business broadband acknowledges that problems with broadband for your business have the potential to cause more harm than simply not being able to stream Netflix. For this reason, business broadband deals tend to come with a raft of additional protections alongside ramped technical support
• Web hosting – You can often opt to host your business' website with your business broadband provider as well as opting in for other related services such as email servers and cloud storage for your company
• Static IP address(es) – An IP address is the numerical address of you computer or computers on the internet as a whole. Most consumer broadband packages offer non-static IPs, which means your computer or computers' address changes regularly. The advantage of static IPs (addresses that don't change) is they can be used to run a website from home, or to access your home or business desktop remotely
• Faster upload speeds – Where consumer broadband packages offer upload speeds that are considerably slower than the advertised download speeds, some business broadband deals offer either faster upload speeds, or what's called 'symmetrical' speeds, where the upload and download are the same. Faster upload speeds are useful to businesses for cloud computing, remote office applications, hosting websites and more

Static IP addresses and why they are important

An IP address is a series of numbers that identifies each computer or device that is connected to the internet. IP addresses may be permanently assigned (static) or allocated whenever a device connects to the internet (dynamic). If you have a dynamically assigned IP address, such as comes with typical consumer broadband packages, your address will likely change every time you reboot your router. Static IP addresses, however, always remain the same, making them more suited to certain tasks.

That said, most small/home businesses do not need a static IP or IPs. Here are the main reasons you might need one – if none of these sound useful to you, you almost certainly don’t.

• You have your own web server – Even if you are running an online business, you’ll most likely be hosting it elsewhere. Likewise for your own email server. Still, if hosting a web server is something you definitely need for your business, you will need a static IP
• You use a VPN – Stands for virtual private network. It allows you to share data between computers as if they were connected physically via a LAN, even when they’re not. An example of this may be accessing your main home or business computer remotely