Your guide to business broadband
A business broadband deal differs from a home deal in a number of key ways.
- Service and support – Business broadband providers understand 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 tends to come with 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 addresses – Most business broadband packages offer static IPs. The advantage of static IPs (fixed address) 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 address
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 address. 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
