How To Choose The Best Internet Service Provider For Your Company

You might have just started your business and are looking for an internet service provider, or you already have an established company. Still, you are looking for the best internet service provider to help grow your company.

One thing is sure, there are several options out there. However, it can be quite hard to know which service provider offers real value and find the right isp for your company with these choices.

With the fierce market conditions, from large national communications companies to smaller regional phone and internet providers, every company is putting more into marketing to win your business for broadband service.

Therefore, before you start shopping around for an internet service provider for your company, you should know the key features that an ISP must have.

Let’s begin

Speed

As a company, you have to ensure that your company has sufficient speed that would not delay your daily activities, even at the highest demand. To certain companies, speed is of utmost importance when determining an ISP. These companies simply want the fastest internet they can get in their area.

This is based on the location and what you are offered as a consumer or company. When you compare plans, the number you look at is the bandwidth. Bandwidth is simply the number of information per unit of time that the transmission medium can sustain.

Some companies can be lucky and get access to fiber connections with more than 1000 Megabits (Mbps) per second, while certain rural companies might be stuck with about 3 to 6Mbps DSL connections.

Also, it would be best if you didn’t look at the speed advertised since that is not what you might get. Instead, you should check neighboring businesses to know the speed you can realistically expect.

Availability

In rural areas, this is usually the most significant deciding factor. It would not do your business any good if it had a good fiber connection or a high-speed cable, but the service is not available in your area.

Surprisingly, a large number of homeowners and volcanoes have few options. Usually, one of the options is a type of broadband or a satellite internet option. On the other hand, it could be a 4G-LTE network. You can also get tailor-made IoT sim card plans that you may like.

Reliability

Another factor you should consider is reliability. This is especially so for company customers. When you have unreliable internet, it could be counterproductive and stressful. If your industry cannot risk internet service disruptions, you can consider an ISP that offers a service level agreement (SLA).

SLA is a service contract that explicitly states how reliable the internet connection should be. Reliability vies together with customer service. Irrespective of how good the connection might be, something could go wrong one day.

It could be a physically damaged line or a dying piece of hardware. Good customer service would measure how fast they would be able to get you back up and running.

Companies usually can’t wait several days for new hardware to be shipped and replaced. Therefore they require a higher service level and good internet service providers understand this.

Connection Type

The connection type usually has a big influence on how fast the internet can be. Satellite internet is known for being seemingly slow. This is despite its huge and respectable download speed (about 25Mbps).

The reasoning behind this is physics; signals sent from the satellite travels around 22,000 miles out to space. Moreover, the satellite in orbit makes contact with a network center to find the requested site.

Then, the information is then sent back to the satellite in orbit and back to you. Even at this speed of light, the process usually takes about 500 milliseconds with any additional processing time for the request that generally takes place on both the client-side and the server.

This might not sound like much, but an extra 1 or 2 seconds added to every action could make it seem slow if you are used to a traditional connection. On the other hand, the 4G-LTE signal is usually around 100 milliseconds versus 400+ milliseconds for satellite connections. Other connections like fiber offer lower latency, most times under 20 milliseconds.

That’s A Wrap

It shouldn’t be difficult for you to choose an internet service for your business. It would be best if you researched what you need before you decide to shop.

Don’t let your deciding factor be based on cost alone, not your business size (which might likely change) or the type of service to deliver (which could expand or evolve). Ask the right questions, and find the right internet service provider. Don’t settle for the least.