Maintenance
Part of Provider comparisons: a small-business evaluation method
One wired provider at your address: 3 alternatives, 5 moves
Provider comparisons when one wired network serves the address: three named alternatives, an independent second line, and five moves when nothing serves it.
Provider comparisons alternatives matter when a business has no meaningful choice. At many business addresses, one company can physically deliver a wired service, and everything else on the shortlist is that same infrastructure sold by somebody else. This page is about that case.
Three concrete US alternatives to price first are incumbent telco fiber, cable business broadband, and 5G or fixed wireless. The table gives named examples and typical ranges, not quotes.
Provider alternatives
Named US examples
- Incumbent telco fiber
- AT&T Business Fiber, Verizon Business, Lumen
- Cable business broadband
- Comcast Business, Spectrum Business
- 5G or fixed wireless
- T-Mobile 5G Business Internet, Verizon 5G Business Internet
Typical range
- Incumbent telco fiber
- Symmetrical 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps
- Cable business broadband
- 300 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up to 1 Gbps down and 50 Mbps up
- 5G or fixed wireless
- 25 Mbps to 300 Mbps down and 5 Mbps to 50 Mbps up, latency around 20 ms to 60 ms
Key rule
- Incumbent telco fiber
- Ask if the fiber is theirs to the building
- Cable business broadband
- Check the upload and the repair commitment
- 5G or fixed wireless
- Confirm signal at the exact address and the data cap
The FCC broadband benchmark is 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. Use the FCC National Broadband Map to check the exact address.
What to take away
- Ask who owns the wire before you count competitors. Several names selling the same physical line are one point of failure with several bills.
- Two modest connections that fail for different reasons usually beat one large connection that fails alone.
- When nothing is available now, the question is who is building, where, and how you get on the list, not which offer is best.
Owned network or resold service
A provider either owns the physical path to your building or buys access to
Owned Network vs Resold Access
Owns the path
- Who repairs a break
- Their own crew
- Who you escalate to
- One company
- What you gain
- Direct fault handling
- What to ask
- Where their network ends
Resells access
- Who repairs a break
- A crew they do not control
- Who you escalate to
- Two, in sequence
- What you gain
- Contract terms, support, billing
- What to ask
- Repair commitment in writing
Owns the path
- Who repairs a break
- Their own crew
- Who you escalate to
- One company
- What you gain
- Direct fault handling
- What to ask
- Where their network ends and another begins
Resells access
- Who repairs a break
- A crew they do not control
- Who you escalate to
- Two, in sequence
- What you gain
- Contract terms, support, and billing that may suit you better
- What to ask
- The repair commitment they can pass on, in writing
The question that separates them: if a digger cuts the cable at the end of the road, whose crew arrives? Ask it early: the answer decides whether your second line is independent or a second sale of the same cable. That distinction is the whole point of provider comparisons.
Two lines instead of one big one
If your problem is reliability rather than capacity, splitting the budget is
Independence Rules for Two Lines
- Different physical medium
- Different entry point to building
- Different power dependency
- Router uses second path automatically
usually the better buy. The rule is independence, not size:
- Different physical medium. A fiber line and a cellular link fail for unrelated reasons; two fibers in the same duct do not.
- Different entry point to the building where the building allows it.
- Different power dependency, which means a battery for the equipment and a plan for the rest. FEMA's Ready.gov guidance on power outages is a plain checklist of what stops working, and the answer for a network closet is the same as for a refrigerator: know how long, and know what you lose.
- A router that will use the second path automatically. A spare line nobody has configured is a monthly charge, not a backup.
Cellular is the usual second path because it is fast to install and depends on nothing in your street. What it costs you is capacity and predictability. 5G business internet sets out how that path behaves once several people lean on it at once.
When nothing serves the address
This happens, and shopping harder does not fix it. The useful moves:
- Check the address, not the area.Availability is recorded per premises, and a building can be missing from a street that is otherwise served.
- Find out what is planned.Public build programs and their coverage records are the only source that is not a sales conversation. The largest is the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, run by NTIA through each state's broadband office, so that office is the place to ask what is planned for your address. Start from the FCC's own material on getting broadband and its equivalents elsewhere.
- Ask about a build quote.A provider will sometimes extend a line for a contribution. It is expensive and slow, and it is a real option for a business that is not moving. Where the quote is out of reach, an antenna on the roof can reach a building no cable will, and fixed wireless sets out what that costs you in line of sight and weather.
- Ask the landlord and the neighbors.An easement or right-of-way that already exists for another tenant is the cheapest infrastructure you will find. Satellite service is the remaining fallback where nothing on the ground reaches: low-earth-orbit service such as Starlink, or geostationary service such as Viasat and HughesNet, which carries much higher delay and suits calls poorly.
- Reconsider the requirement.A team that needs upload for calls and backups has a different problem from one that needs bulk download, and the second is easier to solve badly and get away with.
What is not an alternative
Sharing a neighboring business's connection sounds sensible and usually breaches their contract, puts your traffic under their account, and leaves you with no standing when it breaks. If two businesses want to share, that is a conversation with the provider about a service that permits it, not a cable through a wall.
Consumer service used for business work is a softer version of the same problem. It often functions. What you give up is the repair commitment, and you find out on the day you needed it. The mechanics are in business internet.
Common questions
How do I tell an owned network from a resold one?
Ask who performs the repair and who you escalate to. Sales material rarely says. A direct question in email usually gets a direct answer, on the record either way.
Is a cellular link a real alternative or a stopgap?
It is a real second path and a poor sole path for most offices: capacity varies with everyone else on the same cell. As a backup that turns on by itself, it earns its cost.
We only have one provider. Is negotiating pointless?
Not entirely. Term length, install charges and the repair commitment move more often than the price does, and those are the terms you live with.
Should we wait for a planned build?
Only with a date in writing and a plan for the interval. Build dates move. Design the interim arrangement to be worth having even if the date moves twice.
