Business broadband has always been seen as more expensive than consumer packages, but there are plenty of commodity providers willing to label their consumer deals as business broadband and sell them claiming that they are ideal for the SME sector. In light of this it is perhaps with no great surprise that itwales.com highlights some Point Topic research which suggests that price is often a primary concern with companies buying broadband subscriptions.
The Point Topic survey lists 40% of those who were most likely to change provider cited price as the most important reason, followed by quality of service at 19%. Just 13% cited customer service as their top priority.
With an ever increasing reliance on broadband connectivity for day-to-day business tasks such as tax returns, ordering supplies and communicating with customers, both small and large businesses need to consider carefully any new broadband deal, particularly if the primary driver is price. All too often a low price in the consumer sector has meant high levels of demand leading to congested networks, or even products designed to run far slower than expected at all reasonable hours.
Businesses evaluating their broadband options should consider:
The sorts of things businesses need to be considering when ordering broadband are what the backup options if my landline broadband fails? Can I access the email from anywhere? What happens to my email address if I move providers? Is support available 24/7 so that when it fails at 7pm on a Friday you can get the ball rolling on fixing things? Are enhanced support options available, to get a broken line fixed quickly?
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Some of the points listed really shouldn't be left in the hands of any broadband supplier, if you are doing things right... (A proper business setup should ensure access to email from anywhere without being reliant on comparitively unreliable broadband suppliers, separating the email/domain from the broadband supplier, password resets are trivial and should be an automated feature, etc)