reliable broadband for small home business

louie171

hi,

I'm a web designer and I've been using home BT broadband, but find it dire, drops connection alot and slows down alot ( alot of the time i have to switch onto my three mobile broadband).

Anyway I'm looking for a reliable broadband service (I don't mind paying alittle extra). I don't need super duper fast (10 mps would do so long as its reliable).

has anyone got any recommendations ?

Also a static IP would be nice.

JJ_Egan

Plusnet or BT Business broadband .
Unless you are in a Virgin cable area all the internet will travel via BT line .

What have BT said about your problems ??

Is this dropped connections via cable or WiFi .

Browntoa

Upgrade to fibre if it's available , mines been much more stable since the switch

Most suppliers will use the same copper pair from the exchange for standard ADSL , if the faults on that then it won't make a blind bit of difference

jadziad

http://aa.net.uk/

Rikki

I can recommend zen.

Not the cheapest, monthly contract, very good with technical help and for customer service.

http://www.zen.co.uk

They provide fibre broadband and non-fibre broadband. I don't have the fibre option at my exchange.

I have been with them for years.

flashg67

I switched from adsl to fibre in November, and I've gone from 2-3 drops a day to none (so far so good). I work from home so a good connection is a must. Seems fibre is much more stable, even if you don't need the speed.

I'm with Plusnet and found their support better than most. They also offer a static IP for a small one-off fee.

Graham1

I would suggest saying which market area your exchange is in https://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search to get useful answers. If you are stuck in a market 1 area (services via BT wholesale only) then the offering from Xilo seems to have a pretty good reputation and performance/price ratio. Of course, if it is an issue with your specific line, then other ISPs will have the same problems and an openreach engineer visit is probably called for.

Nilrem

If it's going to be essential to your business, in addition to the other comments I would make two suggestions.

1: Get it on a business account, it'll cost more but home BB has little or no guaranteed repair times, so there is no compensation other than possibly a partial refund to cover the time it's down, and maybe a goodwill gesture. A business account will usually have some form of "service level agreement" that specifies how fast they have to try and fix it, and compensation if it's not fixed in that time.

2: Get a home router that can take a second connection of some kind, for example the better routers can have a mobile dongle attached to let you retain a basic connection if the ADSL/Fibre/Cable connection falls over (some isp's used to offer a dial up access number as backup for their ASDL customers to get email etc).
An example of this kind of router are the likes of the Asus high end models (starting at around £100 from memory) that have the connection for your normal modem via network cable, then have two or more USB ports that work with certain mobile phone dongles for 3g access.

Number two will probably work out cheaper than #1, but ideally if you really really need the connection and it's vital both options would be taken.

I_have_spoken

Yep, I got an Asus RT-AC68U and that can certainly take a 3G/4G dongle on USB port to backup the broadband. It can also do two broadband links such as an ADSL and cable modem, so you'd have three ways of reaching the interweb.