Can a Business Survive Without Broadband?

When it comes to getting online, you have two choices. You can either go for dial-up, which uses a phone line to get online and therefore ties up that phone line whenever you are on the internet, or you can opt for broadband, which is permanently on, permanently available, and often one hundred times faster than dial-up.

This simple but very distinct difference between the two options almost answers the question posed in the title without any further thought at all. If you are serious about running a proper business - even if that business is based at home - then you really must have broadband to get the best from your business. If you don't have it you will soon become frustrated at the limitations that dial-up gives you.

When we hear about how various people set up their businesses online and delve into the various aspects of website marketing and how to provide the best service to their customers, you will never hear too much about what service they use to go online with themselves. But you can almost guarantee that they will be using broadband.

The only situation in which the owner of an online business might just get away with using dial-up is if their website runs virtually on autopilot, and the only thing they need to do is to hop online occasionally to see what is going on and to check their stats.

But just imagine trying to run a business in which you are constantly online fulfilling orders and making sure that customers are satisfied. Anyone who has tried using dial-up in the long and distant past will know that it has a tendency to cut you off, and it is also much slower than broadband. What this means is that even if you aren't cut off at any point you will certainly notice that it takes much longer to process orders due to the slower speed of entering websites and pages than it would if you were using broadband.

It's reasonable to think that the smallest business just starting out online could get by for a time on dial-up. But once that business reaches any kind of success then broadband becomes almost necessary to encourage further growth.

One other point worth bearing in mind is that because dial-up internet connections tie up your phone line, you would either have to be unobtainable on the phone (not good for customer relations) or you would have to have another dedicated phone line put in. When all is said and done you are much better off simply opting for broadband in the first place - it's probably cheaper.

Internet marketing is a business strategy that tends to attract all kinds of people to it and has an image of being an easy business to succeed in. This is far from being the truth, of course, but some people will try and build a business without having the right tools to succeed - and one of those tools must surely be broadband.