Do you want to start your own business ?

So you want to start your own business. The next question is where to start. For any business, infrastructure is key. Whether you run a bakery, manufacturing firm or service, you need access to electricity, water and the internet. The first two are a given or else you won’t be able to work out of the space. And then there’s internet. This may not seem slightly less important, but you can’t afford to have slow or capped internet access. Here’s why.

The Impact of Slow Internet Service on a Business

In today’s landscape, you can’t afford to have a slow internet connection. For example, a slow loading website will lose potential customers at around 10 percent per second they wait. Slow processing on a shopping cart will cause online customers to abandon their purchases. If you’re trying to process payments via a card reader connected to a cell phone, a slow connection could cause payments to fail or frustrate customers. Both will kill the possibility of repeat business.

Internet access affects your business in a lot of ways. If you can’t send payment processing information reliably and quickly or fail to send the necessary files in a timely manner, it hurts your professional reputation. If you don’t have a decent connection to the cloud, your employees will be waiting to access key software applications, hurting their productivity. If you don’t have enough bandwidth, your employees can’t work while your servers are being backed up to the cloud. Or your backups fail, and your business is at risk of catastrophic failures if your server is damaged or destroyed.

How to Make the Right Choice

Don’t make the mistake of choosing the wrong internet plan. The slightly lower price of a slower plan means you’ll lose business when your servers are backing up or your website is experiencing a spike in demand. The best Internet plans offer high speed internet and high data limits. With this type of plan, your business will be prepared to handle an influx of demand.

There are other reasons to go with more bandwidth and data than you initially need. You can scale up your usage without having to get the telecommunication company’s permission first and you don’t have to worry about limits when software updates to your computers go up. If you set up free wifi for customers in the lounge or hire contractors working on their computers in your office for a week, the rest of your business’ access to the internet and local intranet access won’t suffer. You’ll be able to handle the transition to computers showing virtual desktops that follow the user from system to system instead of software installed on individual tablets or PCs. You’ll have the bandwidth to do mass updates of your antivirus or corporate software when necessary, simplifying IT support and maximising protection.