You’re business has been online for a while but you’re not sure your broadband supplier is quite right for you. Perhaps you suspect you save money by switching elsewhere? Maybe your line is too slow? Or perhaps you’ve been working through a domestic package and simply wonder what switching to a dedicated business provider could add to your experience. Here are 10 tips drawn from our experience that will help you choose the right business broadband product from the huge range of options available.

1)      Cost

As with any business expense, you want to make sure you get what you need for the lowest price possible. There is a huge range of pricing available for broadband, so make sure you pick a competitive supplier.

2)      Service

Your internet connection needs to stay live if you change provider. If you’re setting up a business for the first time you need your internet and telephone set up as soon as possible. Make sure you choose a company that can get you going smoothly and efficiently.

3)      Speed

How fast is your connection? Everyone knows that speed is critical if you want an internet connection that is fast enough to use. Speed is particularly important in a business environment – nothing is worse than a workplace that has ground to a halt while you wait for websites to load or files to download.

4)      Usage

An 8mb connection allows you to receive eight million bits of information every second - roughly one million textual characters, a 1 megabyte picture file or a third of a typical mp3 file. Many businesses are opting for faster 24mb speeds, which may be necessary if you’d like a faster internet, have several computers sharing the same connection through a router or if your employees use the internet a lot for work.

5)      Connection sharing

With a traditional telephone line you secure a dedicated line that your calls travel along, a bit like a private path on a country estate. This is not how a broadband connection works. In fact, with broadband you send your data along a road that you share with a number of other people. And just as a road might become congested if too many people to try to drive down it at the same time, so too your broadband might become congested if you share it with too many people who try to use it at the same time. The number of people you share your broadband connection with is called your contention ration and many residential broadband connections might have a 50:1 ratio which means fifty users sharing the same connection. A business broadband contention ratio might be as low as 20:1.

6)      Network priority

Another way to increase speed is if your internet data doesn’t have to compete against video streaming and online gaming. These applications can be real bandwidth hogs and some business broadband providers de-prioritise domestic-oriented applications like these to keep connection speeds up.

7)      Spam protection

If you’re paying good money for your internet connection, the last thing you want is it to work against your business by delivering viruses, spam and other distractions. A good business broadband offer will include anti-virus, anti-spam, abuse control and backup protection.

8)      Good value with a business phone line rental

Most packages these days are linked to the line rental charge. Make sure you check the price of this line rental before deciding the total cost of the package.

9)      Cost of equipment

If you already have a router, you don’t want to have to pay for another one, even if the new router is “free” but the cost is hidden in the monthly charge. Similarly if you don’t have a router, you want one at a good price – often these can be available at discounted rates compared with buying one from a computer shop.

10)   Upload speeds

If your business needs faster upload speeds than a normal line offers, look out for Annex M technology. This is a form of broadband connection that allows uploads at up to 2.6mb which is much faster than a normal connection. So if your business uploads site plans or graphics files, you could take advantage of this to make your life easier.

Christian Nellemann, XLN Telecom

Find out about XLN Telecom’s broadband range at: http://www.xlntelecom.co.uk/business-broadband/