Broadband - Residential or Business, what's the difference

If you work from home, is it worth paying for business broadband or is a residential connection suitable.
You can get a 256kb up/2mb down speeds for both resindential and business. They have the same 48:1 contention ratio and a 1890 support phone number.

If you are an IT tech person you can deal with most tech problems yourself.
If you are a non tech person you need good accessible support.

Why do I write about this? Because Price usually differentiates the offerings out there, but you do not always get a better service with a higher price.

Some Key items which came to the fore over the week
1. Support Hours
Is support available when you are working. At 10pm at night there may be no support
2. Time taken to get to a support person
If broadband is your life line, you need answers quick and not be stuck for 20 minutes to a repeating message of "Your call is important to us" or "We will connect you shortly"
3. Monthly Billing Invoice
If you are a business you need a VAT invoice. You can work out the VAT yourself without a VAT invoice if you know how to.
4. Download Limits
While many packages now offer "unlimited" downloads, do you need this. If you only send e-mails then no. If you love listending to music or receive big graphic or multi media files then yes.
5. Contention Ratio.
How many other people share the same 2mb line as you. 48, 24, 12, 1, the lower the number the faster you can download and upload data. if all 48 people are on at the same time as you you may only get 1/48th of the 2mb download speed.
6. Connecting to another office.
Items 1 to 5 above determine how fast and how reliable your connection is and who you can call if there is a problem. If you only connect now and again, then no big deal. But if you need to be connected 24 hours a day (or during business hours)you must have guaranteed speed and a support line that you know will answer your call rapidly and solve your problem fast.

So in answer to my first question which broadband to choose. Well there is no definitive answer. You must examine what is most important to you. But usually you get what you pay for. Good support costs money. Check out how much the calls to support are. Some companies residential service is better than some business services all because of support.

To Broadband service providers, don't give broadband a bad name with your bad support. We need broadband to bloom and become the norm like a mobile phone. Make it easy for individuals and companies to get broadband. Don't oversell it, give them what they need not what you want to sell and ensure they get a good service. Don't scare them with business/residential differences or caps or contention ratio's. Keep it simple or Ireland will remain at the bottom of broadband takeup in Europe.

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