May 2012 After all these years of mobile phones and computers and what not, we still need phone landline providers. Why? Because all of our really serious communications technologies require the stability and robustness of a land line to work properly. Try getting real broadband through a mobile mast and you’ll see exactly what we mean. Mobile Internet is simply not good enough for modern computing needs – not the workaday ones, at least: and that means landlines are still king of the business world.
One of the most annoying things that can happen to a business is this: the company that provides its landline and broadband services also sells broadband Internet packages to private individuals. This is bad because there are way more private individuals in the UK than there are businesses – which means, as simple maths, that it’s more important to keep private customers happy than business ones. A quick landline providers comparison will reveal two things: one, that most major landline companies in the UK have a habit of shunting private customers onto business networks when traffic gets too much; and two, that business that are not careful run a very real risk of being saddled with some kind of long term contract they can’t easily get out of.
All companies providing landline services are in the business of selling Internet communication. As a business user, your needs are quite different from the private user – who basically just wants to download movies and find albums they used to like when they were 15. A business user needs to send and receive work related information; a business user usually needs to host a web site; and a business user needs to manage emails and other forms of daily communication. That means, basically, that businesses need Internet and landline providers that do different things from the companies that work for the home body. For business use, you need to consider very carefully what options you are being given. Do you actually need them – or are you being asked to pay for a load of stuff you don’t need, just to get hold of one thing that you do?
Conversely, customers of home phone landline providers need to ask this question: am I actually getting everything I think I am getting, when I sign up for this contract? While businesses often fall foul of paying for a load of hidden stuff they have no use for, home users tend to miss out on stuff they could have had for free if they had gone to the right provider. The landline providers comparison is imperative in both cases – just for different reasons.