Lightwire has over 200 high sites across the Bay of Plenty and Waikato, giving us coverage to around 90,000 properties located as far north as South Auckland and as far south as Taupo.
We often get asked what’s the difference between a residential grade and business grade wireless internet connection, so we made a short video about it.
The difference between residential and business wireless internet
We have two types of fixed wireless service categories, residential and business, and this service type, Fixed Wireless, is the only scenario in which we actually offer residential services in Australia or New Zealand.
Other than that, it’s entirely business. So when it comes to the differences between business and residential service options in the fixed wireless space, the differences really come down to data, speed, price and support.
So let’s start with data.
Residential services have data caps and additional charges for over-usage, whereas business services have unlimited data. Residential support is available between 8 AM and 7 PM Monday to Friday and 9 AM to 5 PM on the weekends.
But as you would probably expect, business support is 24/7. Speed is better on business services, but we should talk about why…
All residential services use unlicensed spectrum and so does our lowest cost business plan, but the business plan uses a higher power dish to maximise speeds and limit interference. That interference can come from other wireless devices on the same spectrum range.
The second type of business service that we offer in the fixed wireless space is a premium licenced service, It has symmetrical speeds up to 200 megabits per second and very strong SLAs (Service Level Agreements), around latency and jitter. And we can do that because it’s not subject to the same spectrum interference or risks.
Price, really as the last point, it probably goes without saying that residential services are lower cost.
Choosing business wireless plans, instead of a residential service option, will really come down to a couple of key criteria, key things that are important to your business.
One would be that you need unlimited data. The second one would be that you need the best speeds possible. But a third sort of gotcha and something that I like to keep in mind when discussing options with clients is that when we schedule work on our high sites, our towers up on the hills.
We look to take down residential services during the workday to minimise disruption based on what a residential usage profile looks like, e.g they’re busiest at night. Whereas for a business customer we would look to take them down late at night or on weekends.
So if you’re a business using a residential service, you may find yourself having scheduled downtime during the business day. So if that’s not something you can tolerate, you should really stick to the business plans.
Interested in reliable fast wireless internet? Check out the product pages.
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