Whether they’ve set up their own small business or are logging in to a company network via Remote Desktop, increasing numbers of people are now working from home.

When you set yourself up to work from home, you may think that connectivity is one thing you don’t have to worry about. Your house is already connected to the internet, so you can just use this to carry out your work, can’t you?

For a temporary spell of working remotely, using consumer broadband might be workable, but if your intention is work from home regularly, it’s not only possible to get business broadband installed at your home, but advisable that you do, for the following reasons.

Security

From a security perspective, the ideal situation when using RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) or VPN (Virtual Private Network) to connect to your company’s network would be to use an internet connection that’s entirely separate to your home network. That way you mitigate the risk of opening up access to company data should a device on your home network be compromised by cyber criminals.

An internet service provider specialising in connectivity for businesses should place the utmost importance on the cyber security of its network, with extra measures in place to protect your business data, as well as offering expert guidance in the best practices, software and hardware to ensure your business is as safe as possible from cyber threats.

Performance

Providers of consumer broadband design their networks to deliver the best possible performance for the average customer, who may use their connectivity for streaming TV shows, gaming and browsing social media. Policies vary from provider to provider but at peak times when bandwidth is being shared between many users, most consumer broadband providers “manage traffic” so that these services are prioritised. As a consequence, your RDP connection or video conference call may suffer a slowing down in service.

A business broadband provider should ensure low contention so that even at peak times, performance doesn’t suffer.

Use of RDP and VPN

Connecting to your company network via RDP or VPN enables you to share and use company resources from home, but not all consumer broadband networks and routers are designed to support them, at least not without some complicated networking knowledge.

A business broadband provider can configure your router to access your remote desktop or VPN, so all you have to do is connect and get to work.

Connecting to a cloud voice system

If your business uses a hosted telephone system, you can plug in to it from any location with an internet connection. If you’re going to do this you’ll need a reliable internet connection to ensure crisp call quality and conversations that don’t drop out.

Get a quote for flexible hosted telephony to help you work from any location

Service Level Agreements

Most home broadband services don’t come with a SLA (Service Level Agreement) as such, and jobs that are deemed more important than fixing a fault on your line – such as resolving a problem for a business customer – are likely to take priority. Faults that require additional work such as an engineer visit, will not be dealt with as quickly without the additional SLA, and could leave you unable to work effectively for days.

When you take a business broadband connection, your internet service provider will give you a SLA to guarantee that your speed stays above a certain level, downtime is kept to a minimum and where possible, faults are fixed within a specified period of time.

How do I get a business broadband connection at home?

Setting up a business broadband connection at your home is no different to having a consumer grade connection put in. And if a line already exists, it’s possible it could be done quickly, without any need for a visit from an engineer.

Get a quote for business broadband at home