With so many people now working from home, internet speed and reliability have become more critical than ever. As a business owner, you may wonder whether it’s worth getting business internet at your home—and encouraging your home-based employees to do the same.
To help you make the decision, it’s important to understand the key differences between business and residential internet. Here are five:
1. Speed
Depending on your internet service provider, residential plans can be offered at much slower download speeds than what you’d find with a business internet plan. “Typically business-grade service is a bit more robust across the board,” says Jason Harrison, president of Harrison Technology Consulting in Rocky Mount, North Carolina.
Keep in mind that some of your remote employees may have a residential internet plan with a much lower speed than what they’d get at the office. Many people have slower internet at home because they didn’t need very high-speed internet before the pandemic started. But now that they work from home, their residential internet may be insufficient—slowing them down and reducing their productivity. Moreover, other members of their household may be relying on the same lower-speed connection for other online activities, whether watching movies, distance learning or doing their own job.
2. Features
Residential internet plans often come with “extras” specifically geared for personal use, such as streaming TV on smart devices. Business internet plans, on the other hand, offer features designed for the needs of businesses and their employees.
Spectrum Business Internet, for example, provides up to 25 email addresses with your customer domain name, domain-name registration and a free award-winning desktop security suite for up to 25 business devices.
Business internet plans offer features designed for the needs of business owners and their employees.
3. Reliability
Business internet may offer a greater level of network reliability to customers than what is typically provided with residential internet. But with a business internet plan, there can be additional opportunities to bolster business continuity planning. Spectrum Business Internet, for example, has over 99.9% network reliability, but customers can add Wireless Internet Backup to prevent a power outage from disrupting their operations and productivity.
4. Dynamic vs. static IP
Many residential internet plans use dynamic internet protocol (IP). That is, the IP address through which the plans connect to the internet can change randomly.
In contrast, business internet packages that include static IP assigned by the internet provider allow your system’s “street address” on the internet to remain the same, Harrison says. This can be key for several functions, including remote-access tools that allow employees to connect from their homes or while on the road—as they can rely on a consistent IP address.
5. Technical support
The technical support teams assigned to business internet customers are often “better at addressing the more common issues businesses face,” Harrison says. Business support teams also tend to be more adept at handling the more complicated technical configurations some businesses require, he adds.
Making the switch
Thankfully, adding a business internet connection to a home is easy. If you or your employees are working from home on a rather consistent basis, you will probably discover significant benefits to them using business internet to do so.
CALL TO ACTION:
Spectrum Business can help you determine whether adding a business internet connection to your home is right for your company’s needs. Contact us at 855-299-9353.
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Ian
posted 05/06/2021
There's way, way more to the difference between residential and home Internet service than what Spectrum is leading us to believe in this promotion. In short, what you really get with a business Internet connection at home is potentially faster upload speed. Spectrum does offer a really cool 4G/LTE cellular backup connection for its business Internet customers - it's nowhere near as fast as the slowest wired connection they sell but if their main connection goes down, you'll still have SOME service, and it's not limited to just 4 devices like their fine print says. Nobody will likely ever find out because Spectrum advertises something like 99.8% uptime (and I'm sure it's better than they're allowed to advertise). The other benefits of business service is priority over residential customers when things break (e.g. utility pole gets knocked down), and better and more available technical support (from Spectrum, not your business). As for the rest of the rhetoric, if you're regularly working from home either your employer has everything already worked out for a home Internet connection, or if you haven't had a problem yet with your home connection a business connection won't get you anything more but higher upload speed and cost. Business and residential Internet service in your neighborhood both come across the same wires/fiber. It's just like the water main in your neighborhood delivers the same water to your house, the school a few blocks away, the convenience store down the street, and the fire station a mile away.