Can/should I get business internet at my home office?

July 3, 2018 7:31 AM

About to move to a new place. Is there any value to getting "business" internet instead of the regular deal? Is this even possible? I do work at home in a dedicated home office, but it's just me and I do nothing bandwidth-intensive for work, and I don't think I can write this expense off in a valid way. I won't have TV channels, will just watch streaming TV. Would paying more (I assume) for a "business" connection get me anything super valuable?
posted by mccxxiii to Computers & Internet (16 answers total)

Probably not. I would imagine that very few people working from a home office have a 'business' Internet package. I certainly don't (and have been working from home for 12 years).

The difference is likely to be in the area of technical support. A business package may include same-day engineer call out, whereas domestic users may have to wait a day or two if something needs fixing.

Some suppliers specify in their domestic contracts that the account is not for business use, but 'working from home' is such a grey area these days that's it's not something they ever really enforce.
posted by pipeski at 7:44 AM on July 3, 2018

I had a business internet connection (through Spectrum) for about 3 days when I first moved into my house earlier this year, because I work from home and thought that it I might need the enhanced access to technical support for same-day call out.

It was more than twice the price of my standard residential internet package, the engineers were awful, and they installed three modems (one for the internet, one for a phone line that I didn't want, and one for a hotspot - Spectrum hadn't made it clear to me that there was so much equipment). I cancelled the business internet after 3 days of it not working properly and switched over to residential. (That was another nightmare, as I had to make calls for months to make sure they had actually cancelled the business account.)

For me, it wasn't worth it. I know it's hit or miss with the engineers anyway, but the business ones I dealt with were absolutely terrible and the service wasn't worth the extra equipment or hassle. You're probably fine with a standard residential package.
posted by minsies at 7:52 AM on July 3, 2018 [4 favorites]

I haven’t gone through an install, but customer service for a business account vs a home account had been way better in my experience. Clearly, with different companies ymmv.
posted by furnace.heart at 8:02 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

Something to be aware of is turn around time for problem reports. We resell cable and dsl - for one, there's a sub 48 hour turn around time to book a technician for a business line vs. the 5 business day (read: it will always be a few hours short of a week) for a residential line. For the other medium, there's no difference, so we don't subscribe business lines from them.

If your business really depends upon you not having an outtage, consider the business pricing, but only if it will get you different levels of support.
posted by nobeagle at 8:04 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeah, echoing everyone else, a business plan may get you better support. It's not at all a guarantee though. I work from home, and don't have a business plan. Some of my colleagues do, some don't, and some have secondary backup connections (be it a cell tether, or another ISP entirely).
posted by so fucking future at 8:18 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

From my hazy recollection, 'business' internet gets you slightly better support but it also gives you the option of a fixed IP address so you can set up a server and etc. You might also get better or symmetrical upstream speed.

Residential users do not get that, but of course there have always been workarounds (dynDNS, etc)
posted by JoeZydeco at 8:24 AM on July 3, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don't think the speed difference, if any, will be worth it, unless you are doing something that requires tons of speed and bandwidth. Others have commented on the possible differences in service.

However, I think the most important issue has to do with your local office. For example, I have Spectrum home internet, and one day a passing truck snapped the overhead cable feeding my house. I called the support number and they told me that a "no internet" call got top priority, and they someone would be out within an hour. Sure enough, a technician showed up less than an hour later, apologized for "taking so long" (he said they actually try to be on site within 30 minutes) and strung a new cable.

The reputation of cable companies is awful, and I've had terrible service in the past, but I have to say our local office is very impressive. Caveat: I live in a city in Montana of about 100,000 people.
posted by The Deej at 8:24 AM on July 3, 2018

Usually, it's 2x the price of 'residential' internet, with prioritized restoration in case of an outage, and (possibly) non traffic-shaped service. You might also have a different Terms of Service about what kinds of traffic are allowed (read the fine print), or have the option to have a static IP address.
posted by Wild_Eep at 8:25 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have business-class broadband (reimbursed through work) and I can confirm that for my major national ISP, the only difference is customer support. The install process was way, way less of headache and the tech didn't try to do irritating things like install software on my personal laptop in order to "activate" the internet connection (which was an issue a few years prior when using the same ISP for residential broadband). He also was happy to drill some holes and run the cable in a way that put the drop exactly where I needed it, another thing that previous techs hadn't been willing to do. But otherwise: it's the same service. If we didn't get it reimbursed we'd probably switch back to regular residential high-speed internet service.
posted by iminurmefi at 8:27 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've had both a business account at my home and a residential account. I got slower internet on the business account and it was more than double the cost. I never needed tech support on either account, so differences in support were a moot point for me. Knowing what I know now, I wish I'd stuck with a residential account!
posted by summerstorm at 9:00 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

I work at a local ISP in Vermont, and the difference between our residential and business services is 24-hour customer service. We have MANY home businesses that use the residential service, and we have a few that pay extra for the support. We usually ask them "If the Internet goes down at 11pm on a Sunday night will it matter if we send a tech on Monday or is it mission critical for someone to come at midnight?" If the answer is "it can wait until Monday" then we suggest they save some money and use the residential.
posted by terrapin at 9:21 AM on July 3, 2018 [2 favorites]

Is this even possible?

It will vary from provider to provider and on your specific location.

As others have noted, at best you're buying better tech support and may or may not be throwing money away on it. You might see if there's a local forum of small business owners in your immediate region and see if anyone there has experiences, positive or negative, with the business class internet.

If you're not doing anything bandwidth intensive, you're probably better off putting your money into a backup DSL connection or pay as you go mobile hotspot, depending on the level of redundancy you need.
posted by Candleman at 9:23 AM on July 3, 2018

I started getting letters from ComCrap offering business internet after I registered my sole proprietorship with the city/state for the required tax laws.

I never open them. We already have only the choice of ComCrap and I doubt paying more would be better. (Ask they always have “introductory” prices that are basically lies.)
posted by Crystalinne at 10:09 AM on July 3, 2018

I have some buddies that have business internet at their house because the business internet doesn't have a monthly bandwidth cap. But it doesn't sound like that would be an issue for you.
posted by gregr at 10:45 AM on July 3, 2018

In short, probably not. At length: [This experience is now 6 years old, determine your appropriate salt level.]

I had Comcast home internet at the same time my office downtown had Comcast business internet. The two locations were about four miles apart. The main differences were:

1. a. The business service came with a leased, managed modem with a limited interface for me to use while troubleshooting. When things broke, there was literally nothing I could do except call Comcast. Their default stance was to blame something in our local network and use that as an excuse to bump us to 72 hour response, and escalating it was harder than it should have been. Every now and then they would actually acknowledge a problem, but that was usually after other businesses had already called it in. b. At home I owned my own modem, and they tended to try to use that as an excuse whenever things broke, but I discovered that they were much more likely to fix issues that affected our TV service. Internet outage? "We don't see a problem on our end." TV affected? "We'll send a technician." That only worked for the eight months we had TV service. (Worth noting: that got better after we moved, but I don't know if it's just because we moved to a less congested node where problems were more obvious, or if they really did improve their customer service).
2. Business internet had faster uploads. I think I had 50/5 at home, and at the office we were at something like 50/25. When they bumped the 50 Mbps tier for home service to 105/10 Mbps, the office stayed at 50/25 (or whatever it was). Their service tiers have changed a lot since then, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
3. They didn't really overprovision business service like they do home service. Home service tended to show evidence of congestion during prime time, and we usually saw our full rated speed only during the day. That was fine for working from home, but annoying for streaming Netflix after work. Business service, to its credit, always tested at about 110% of rated speed as long as the circuit was up. Which was most of the time, to be fair.
4. The office had a fixed IP. At home we had a dynamic IP that stayed the same for months at a time. If our power went out or they reset something upstream we'd get a new IP, but it was solid enough that I could get it added to the firewall whitelists at work without annoying the people I had to ask (although eventually they realized I could be trusted not to break things and gave me rights to update the whitelist myself). This is a difference in utility that probably won't matter to you unless you really need to run a server or your employer uses whitelists the same way mine did.

There was a consistent service problem on both home and business lines that they tried to blame any and all service interruptions on faulty wiring on our side of the demarcation point. That time they bumped us to 72 hour response at the office was indeed a wiring problem, but it was on their side of the modem, and thus their problem to fix. When it happened with our home service, it eventually turned out they had a faulty piece of equipment a couple blocks from our apartment, and the summary of my calls with them is as follows: deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, finally admit there's a problem (that turned out to be with equipment a couple blocks from our apartment). Usually things worked just fine, but getting Comcast to agree that there was a problem always felt harder than it should have.

In general any outage that affected the office didn't affect my home service, and vice versa. It's been a while, but I think we had about one major outage a year at the office after they solved that first problem they tried to blame on our internal wiring. At home things got better after they fixed the equipment a couple blocks away, and better still after we bought a house and moved a mile from that apartment.

Personally I don't think I'd pay for business service, but if you need faster uploads, a truly static IP, or the shorter response time they might still try to weasel out of, then it might be worth considering.
posted by fedward at 10:55 AM on July 3, 2018 [1 favorite]

As far as I know, business internet services cost way more than residential. I've worked from home for years and I always use normal residential internet. It's all you need.
posted by AppleTurnover at 11:02 AM on July 3, 2018