Summary Bullets:
• Leading UK business associations have asked Ofcom to establish an automatic compensation scheme for companies affected by broadband outages as connectivity is lifeblood of modern enterprise.
• Major broadband providers have backup options and enhanced service levels available, which they use in part to justify the premium they charge to business customers.
Leading British business associations have called on UK regulator Ofcom to establish an automatic compensation scheme for enterprises affected by broadband outages.
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC), the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), and the Institute of Directors (IoD) have jointly written to Ofcom, highlighting the benefits enabled by broadband and its equally significant negative impact when outages occur.
“Supporting businesses to increase productivity and economic growth is critical, and solutions which drive improvements in UK connectivity infrastructure will play an important role in achieving this,” they wrote.
There is no doubting the impact of broadband both on consumers and businesses. It has helped open up myriad opportunities and information sources, enabling key activities across many enterprises, large and small. Like all network components, reliability and speed are of the essence, so any outages or even lowered performance levels have a material impact on productivity at least, if not interrupting vital real-time activities such as banking, customer service, or online retailing.
The fact is that most business broadband packages command a premium over their consumer equivalents, this should mean better all-round performance – although many SMBs and SOHOs continue to use consumer broadband either because they have not felt the need to ‘trade up’ or because they double up using broadband for domestic and business use if they work from home.
Given that broadband plays such a vital role for their enterprise customers of all sizes, service providers are at pains to deliver the best service they can – not always successfully – but it is certainly their stated aim. This commitment comes in various flavors, from mobile backup to improved service levels. For example, BT offers premium features such as EE’s 4G backup and BT Prompt Care (i.e., next-day fault fixes). Similarly, Vodafone offers 4G backup, and Zen offers a range of optional care levels for faster fixes as well as 4G backup on some packages.
In most cases, these premium features are important sources of extra revenue for service providers as they believe the features will only be used infrequently. Often, compensation is available for customers impacted by outages but, by and large, it is only severe service disruptions that end up in reimbursements.
Although automatic compensation is largely irrelevant, service providers will likely sign up for it if asked. Otherwise, they might be perceived to have less faith in their networks and services than competitors.