Small businesses encouraged to embrace broadband

Small businesses have been advised that they could be left behind by not making the most of their broadband internet connection.

An IT industry insider said that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) should not just provide broadband access for their staff, but be "aware of how to use it to its full potential".

This could include selling products or services over the internet, linking up the office servers with employees working from home or switching telephone services over voice over internet protocol (VoIP) in order to save on call costs.

Brett Marino, business manager of Small Business Computing said that dial-up connections could be holding back SMEs as they were missing out on higher productivity, fixed monthly costs and faster downloads.

"The question most small businesses need to ask themselves is what is the cost of not having broadband and how is that affecting their business," he said.

Research conducted by BT Broadband earlier this year found that over four out of five SMEs said adding a broadband connection helped to improve employees' work-life balance.

And more than three quarters of these firms also said they decided to add broadband due to the speed and flexibility benefits it offers, allowing employees to work away from the office when complemented with a VoIP network.