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Business broadband coverage

Understanding broadband coverage is crucial for locating your premises and procuring the right connection for your business.

Whether your business needs ultrafast broadband or wants to achieve 100% uptime, knowing what is available will help you make the best choice.

This article covers everything you need to know about broadband coverage.

💡 Key Takeaways

Infrastructure: The availability and price of ultrafast broadband depends on the network infrastructure at your location.
Residential vs Commercial: While they share the same infrastructure, business traffic typically takes priority.
Check before you buy: Use Ofcom’s broadband checker to verify available options before comparing and buying.

What is business broadband coverage?

Business broadband coverage is the geographical area where a specific broadband service is available to businesses. For example, Virgin Media’s cable network is available to about 50% of UK businesses, and KCOM‘s fibre network just covers the Hull area.

On the other hand, any satellite broadband provider covers 100% of the UK territory, sometimes including its maritime borders, albeit not at the same level of performance.

Business vs residential broadband coverage

Business and home broadband share the same coverage. Both have access to the core broadband infrastructure, whether fibre, cables, copper wires, mobile, or satellite.

The only difference is that some business-grade services are unavailable to residential customers, including:

Specialised services like 5G private networks, multi-band routers and static IP addresses.
Dedicated options like leased lines.
Bandwidth priority. If there is congestion in the network, businesses are less likely to experience bandwidth throttling.

For a full comparison, read our residential vs business broadband article.

Where can I check business broadband coverage?

The best place to check what broadband is available for your business is Ofcom’s Mobile and Broadband Checker.

You enter your business’s postcode, and it will use coverage data from multiple providers to tell you what speeds and networks are available at your property.

Note:

It will only show the four main mobile networks: EE, Vodafone, O2, and Three.
It may not show the coverage of some small local providers.
It doesn’t include satellite business broadband providers such as Starlink and OneWeb, which cover 100% of the UK territory.

Where can I check the best deal for my property?

Once you understand what broadband may be available for your business, compare business broadband deals by providing us with your postcode and contact information.

Our business broadband experts work with a range of broadband providers to help you find the best option at your premises.

The importance of business broadband coverage

Checking coverage is essential in broadband procurement or knowing where to locate your business.

If your business requires high-speed broadband, it will need access to the full fibre network, which is also required for accessing leased lines. If your rural business only has access to the standard telephony network, satellite broadband may be your best choice.

If you require 100% uptime but don’t have access to full fibre, you may get multiple connections and use broadband redundancy and a network management solution like SD-WAN. Broadband coverage determines your broadband possibilities and whether you need to relocate or not.

What are the main components of the coverage?

When evaluating broadband coverage, several key components play a crucial role:

Availability: This is the most basic component. It determines whether broadband service is offered and is influenced by the infrastructure available, such as fibre, co-axial cables or 5G networks.
Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the capacity of the connection in Mbps, determining how much data can be transmitted at once. Higher bandwidth allows for smoother and faster data transfer, which is especially important for businesses with multiple users.
Speed: Speed indicates how quickly data is sent and received over the connection. It’s typically measured in megabits per second (Mbps) and impacts everything from browsing to streaming and downloading. Do a broadband speed test to measure your current speed.
Reliability: Reliability is the consistency of the broadband service, including uptime, latency and minimal disruptions. A reliable connection is vital for businesses to maintain productivity and prevent costly downtime.

What types of broadband will be in your coverage area?

The following broadband types could be available for your business, depending on its location and the provider’s availability.

The list goes from most performant to least performant and includes an approximate percentage coverage for UK businesses:

Leased line broadband: A dedicated full fibre connection (~10% of business properties).
Full fibre business broadband: Fixed fibre-optic cables in the entirety of your connection (~50% of business properties).
Cable business broadband: A part-fibre, part-co-axial cable connection, available with Virgin Media only (~45% of business properties).
Mobile business broadband: Wireless broadband delivered through 5G and 4G cellular networks (~75% of business properties).
Satellite business broadband: Wireless broadband delivered through satellite networks (~100% of business properties)
SoGEA business broadband: A part-fibre, part-copper cable connection without a landline (~95% of business properties)
FTTC business broadband: SoGea + landline. Only offered in the absence of full fibre (~10% of business properties)
ADSL business broadband: Standard broadband supported by the telephony copper network (~99% of business properties).

What if your business broadband coverage is poor?

Broadband technologies have significantly improved over the last decade, so “poor broadband coverage” is no longer true, at least to some extent.

With the arrival of high-speed LEO satellite internet in 2022, relatively high-quality internet is now possible anywhere in the UK.

Only businesses whose operations need performant broadband need to be in the full fibre network. Alternatively, connecting to multiple lesser networks can achieve similar performance.

At least for now. While broadband performance keeps improving, so do bandwidth requirements. Smart devices, cloud storage, internet-based project management and supply chain management systems, and so forth are constantly increasing requirements.