Choosing Business Broadband: What to Consider
What’s the best business broadband?
When it comes to choosing a broadband plan for your business, there’s a lot more to consider than just the price. Of course, selecting broadband that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg is important, especially for small businesses that need to carefully consider all outgoing costs. But there are other factors beyond the price that are valuable to look at.
Speeds and data
With ultra-fast broadband (UFB) becoming available more widely, more and more New Zealand homes and businesses are switching from older copper technology (VSDL and ADSL) to fibre. Fibre is an excellent choice for businesses because it provides higher speeds and better reliability, meaning work or tasks that rely on the internet can be done faster and with less interruption.
Though all fibre is more reliable than copper, there are still varying speeds. You should choose the speed that’s best for you based on your unique business needs; for example, if your staff are often uploading and downloading large files, a faster fibre plan will suit better.
Regular fibre plans are suitable for most businesses, but large companies may benefit from dedicated fibre. Dedicated fibre is an uncontended (unshared) connection directly between your business and your provider’s data centre, making it the fastest possible connection you can get.
No matter which speed you choose, you’ll likely want to make sure that you’re selecting a plan with unlimited data. Although most broadband plans these days do not have data caps, it always pays to be sure you won’t be charged extra if you exceed certain usages.
Add-ons and other solutions
Though broadband itself is fairly straight-forward, there are many other crucial business tools that go hand-in-hand with broadband that can enhance and simplify your business processes. When choosing your plan (and provider), it’s important to consider what else your selected plan can be used for, as well as what else your provider can offer.
Phone system
If you’ve chosen a fibre plan, you can capitalise on the speed and reliability by adding VoIP (Voice over IP) - a cloud-based phone system (such as Voyager Voice). A VoIP solution uses your existing fibre connection and eliminates the need to purchase or maintain costly PABX hardware. Check to see if your broadband plan includes a VoIP line and consider what benefits your chosen provider can offer with its VoIP solution, such as unlimited calling or a cloud softphone add-on that will allow you to take office calls on your desktop or mobile.
Collaboration tools
With more people working remotely than ever before, it has underscored the importance of keeping staff connected, wherever they are. Check to see if a broadband provider also offers tools like Microsoft 365 and Teams, which enables things like video calling and meetings, instant chat communication, and file sharing and storage – all in one package.
Instant communication solutions
If you’ve got a great broadband connection, you may as well put it to work! iSMS is a solution that allows you to send SMS text messages over the internet, using either email or an API. This will enable you to send texts straight to the mobiles of your customers or staff, providing instant and reliable communications for things like delivery notifications, appointment reminders, event information, office closures, or even marketing and promotions.
Choosing a suitable broadband plan from a provider that offers additional solutions helps simplify things for a business owner because it means one single bill, and just one phone number to ring for support.
Support and service
Speaking of support, this is perhaps one of the most important – and oft overlooked – things to keep in mind when choosing broadband. As with any product, you want to ensure that if something goes wrong, you can get it addressed quickly. Time is money, after all, so if your broadband goes down there’s a good chance it will cost you.
When choosing a broadband plan, it’s key to look at what type of support a provider offers. Sure, the cheapest plan may look enticing on the surface, but it might limit the number of times you can ring the helpdesk for support before you are charged extra. Or perhaps you’ll be kept waiting for long periods of time whenever you try to ring for help or ask a question; every minute spent waiting on the phone is a minute away from getting work done. Some providers don’t even give a phone number to ring, providing support only via email.
Take some time to look at the support offered by a provider, paying attention to whether they have a dedicated business helpdesk or extended phone hours.
Voyager prides ourselves on our dedication to customer service, especially for businesses. With a dedicated business support team and an average wait time of less than 60 seconds, help is only a phone call away.