need to find reasonable pricing for Business internet access in Dallas
March 19, 2014 5:12 AM   Subscribe

My wife is opening up a dance/fitness studio within the next couple of weeks and my task for the past week has been to source a business internet provider for her. And I have hit a brick wall. Charter advertises their business internet as 60MB speed for $55. a month. Sounds great, right? But they don't have coverage in my wife's location (basically Addison/Carrollton 75006). TWC wants $300. a month for slightly more than half that speed (35MB). We attempted to s/w Verizon, but they were supposed to call back and have not done so... Does the community have any helpful suggestions for other providers?
posted by rxbert to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)
 
You can check out Clear. AT&T Uverse might be available, or AT&T may have something that will work for you.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 5:39 AM on March 19, 2014


Your second choice will depend on your phone company. If you're in Addison (75001), it's AT&T. If you're in almost all of Carrollton, it's Verizon. You have no third option, except for wireless, unless you want to pay for a leased circuit and a very expensive data connection.
posted by fireoyster at 5:57 AM on March 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


This seems like overkill for a dance studio. I assume your wife will have one or two computers using the connection? If so, it seems like regular consumer-grade Internet would suffice, no?
posted by ewiar at 6:33 AM on March 19, 2014


Yeah, you left out some relevant information. How many people will use the studio's connection? What for?
posted by askmehow at 6:38 AM on March 19, 2014


I agree that this seems like overkill for a dance studio. Have you considered adding a hotspot to your mobile plan?
posted by melissasaurus at 6:39 AM on March 19, 2014


I agree with the above-- A personal account should be just fine for most things including video streaming from the net, and if she needs web-hosting, she should co-locate or remote-host the site somewhere else rather than running it through a private connection. If she's uploading video, or other sorts live feeds (multiple webcams, e.g.), that's where she'll have a bandwidth need that she can't displace to a web host.

The difference between personal and business broadband accounts, generally speaking, are that business accounts might get dedicated lines, uptime guarantees, greater upload bandwidth of the sort needed for web servers and other services (personal accounts very often have low upload). However, in 100% of cases, they are priced for a business market, no matter how comparable they are to a personal account.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:01 AM on March 19, 2014


What y'all are missing is that every provider I've encountered in the D/FW area always charges business rates when at a business. If you have a house you can get residential or commercial service but an install in a shopping center (just guessing where this dance studio might be located) is going to be the higher rate.
posted by fireoyster at 8:10 AM on March 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


You should just get a personal account. And stay clear of Clear - I had huge problems when I used it.
posted by Dansaman at 8:11 AM on March 19, 2014


Could she chip in on the bill for the business next door? Their wifi probably extends to her.
posted by amaire at 8:59 AM on March 19, 2014


I was also thinking about offering to split the bill with a neighbor and using wifi off of their service.
posted by COD at 9:18 AM on March 19, 2014


Response by poster: Thanks all, for your responses; the hive mind is awesome! I don't think we've really uncovered any new ground as of yet though. I'll try to respond to most of the answers thus far;
She does want to provide free wifi to customers that are at the studio waiting for a class, that sort of thing. And I think she wants to upload some videos of classes to be viewed from her website.
She is already chipping in with a neighbor (kind of), as there is a boxing studio being built out that she will be sharing space with. the existing neighbors, I really don't think so, you know?
We actually had Clear once before for mobile broadband, a few years ago; I don't that would be a good solution for us.
In speaking with Time Warner, they actually brought up AT&T; which tells me that Time Warner has no fear of lower price competition from AT&T. I will verify that though.

so, nothing else? anyone... *smile* hoping. hopeful. Please and thanks to all that contribute!
posted by rxbert at 12:01 PM on March 19, 2014


Does Grande Communications serve your area? We're pretty happy with it.
posted by Neekee at 7:16 PM on March 19, 2014


Response by poster: I just checked on Grande Communications, they look interesting but do not offer service where the studio is located. Thanks though!
posted by rxbert at 3:36 AM on March 20, 2014


I would be very surprised if TWC didn't have something in between the $300 a month deal and a more normal residential rate. Unless the building doesn't have coax to it already, in which case, you're mostly out of luck from the cable company short of a several year contract or very high construction charges. One of our business partners is in Carrollton has something around 25/25 from TWC delivered over fiber for around $500 a month, so I'm rather surprised that they want $300 for HFC service.

Some cable companies do a three tier thing where they have normal residential plans at one rate, "SOHO" plans for a relatively small upcharge, and full on commercial service with an SLA and everything once you get up over a couple hundred a month.
posted by wierdo at 6:18 PM on March 20, 2014


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