Choosing Business Broadband and Failover
Business broadband frequently costs more than a consumer package at the same headline speed, and the marketing does a poor job of explaining why. The difference is in the contract, not the connection.
What you actually pay for
A service level agreement with a committed fix time. Consumer faults are fixed on a best-efforts basis, which can mean days; business packages commit to a target, often measured in hours, with compensation if missed.
Priority support with business-hours or round-the-clock access, and staff who can escalate.
A static IP address, which matters for hosting services, remote access, VPNs and some email configurations.
Symmetrical or better upload speeds on some products, which matters considerably for video calls, cloud backup and file sharing.
Contention and guaranteed bandwidth
Standard broadband is contended: capacity is shared and speeds vary with local demand.
Leased lines provide uncontended symmetrical bandwidth with strong service guarantees, at substantially higher cost and with lead times measured in weeks or months for installation.
Between the two sit business fibre products with better contention ratios than consumer equivalents.
Working out whether you need it
Calculate what an hour of downtime costs: staff unable to work, orders not taken, customers unable to reach you.
For a business where everyone works in cloud systems and phones run over the internet, that figure is substantial and a service guarantee is worth paying for.
For a business where connectivity is convenient rather than critical, a consumer package plus a mobile backup may be entirely adequate.
Failover
A second connection that takes over automatically when the primary fails. The important detail is diversity — a backup that uses the same physical infrastructure fails at the same time.
The cheapest effective option for most small businesses is a mobile data connection on a different network, either through a router with a SIM slot or a dedicated failover device.
Test it. Failover that has never been tested frequently does not work when needed, usually because of a configuration detail nobody checked.
Phones and internet on the same line
If phone service runs over the internet, a broadband failure takes out the phones too. Configure call forwarding to mobiles as part of the failover plan.
Many providers allow forwarding rules that trigger automatically when the connection drops, which is worth setting up in advance rather than during an outage.
Contract points
Check the term, which is often three years or more for business products, and the early termination cost.
Check whether installation is included and what happens if the survey finds unexpected work required.
Check whether the router is included, owned or rented, and whether you may use your own equipment.
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