6 min read · Published August 24, 2026 · Vast Networks
Start with the specification, not the provider
Most comparisons go wrong at the first step, by lining up providers before deciding what is being bought. Two quotes that both say "500 Mbps business internet" can describe fundamentally different products: one a contended service where that figure is a maximum shared with a neighborhood, the other a dedicated circuit where it is a committed rate reserved for you and delivered symmetrically. The price difference between them is not a discount, it is a different specification.
So establish the specification first. Do you need committed capacity or is best-effort acceptable? How much of your traffic goes upward? Does anything real-time run over this connection all day? Answer those, then ask providers to quote against the answer. A shortlist assembled before that point tends to be ranked by price, which systematically selects the least committed product.
The four questions that separate real offers
**Is the rate committed or a maximum?** A committed information rate is what you are guaranteed to get; a maximum is what you might get on a quiet afternoon. If the quote does not say, ask in writing. Providers selling committed capacity will state it plainly because it is the thing they are selling.
**Is it symmetric?** Business traffic that matters — hosted applications, off-site backup, camera retention, video calls, telemetry — travels outward. A plan advertising a large download and a fraction of that upstream is describing a consumer-derived product with a business invoice attached.
**What does the agreement commit to?** Look for the availability figure, the window it is measured over, the response target when you raise a fault, and the restoration target. Then look for what happens when those are missed. A service commitment with no consequence attached is a marketing statement.
**Who do you reach at 2am, and what can they do?** Ask whether support is tiered, whether the first person you speak to can see your circuit, and how a fault gets to someone who can dispatch an engineer. This is the question that separates providers most sharply in practice and appears in no comparison table.
Ask about the route, not just the service
Two providers can deliver into your building over the same physical path — sometimes through the same conduit and the same entry point. If you are buying a second connection for redundancy, this is the single most important thing to establish, and it is not something a coverage map will tell you. Ask explicitly whether the proposed route shares infrastructure with your existing service: the same conduit, the same bridge or waterway crossing, the same building entry.
Ask also what happens between your building and the wider network. A provider that owns its regional infrastructure can answer questions about the path; a reseller frequently cannot, which is not disqualifying but does change who is accountable when a fault sits somewhere in the middle. Neither model is wrong. Knowing which one you are buying matters when something breaks.
Read the term, not just the monthly figure
Contract length, renewal behaviour, and what happens if you need to increase capacity mid-term all belong in the comparison. A longer term usually buys a better rate, which is reasonable — the provider is amortising a build. What is worth checking is whether an upgrade during the term restarts the clock, whether the renewal is automatic and at what rate, and what the exit terms are if you move premises.
For a service that requires construction, understand which costs are non-recurring and what triggers them. A quote issued before a site survey is an estimate, and the survey can change it materially. That is not a bait and switch, it is the nature of building to a specific address — but it should be stated as such rather than discovered later.
The comparison table worth building
Put the providers in columns and these in rows: committed rate, upstream rate, availability commitment, measurement window, response target, restoration target, contract term, upgrade terms, non-recurring charges, route diversity from your existing service, and support escalation path. Then fill it in from the agreements rather than the brochures.
Most shortlists collapse once that table is complete, because the offers stop looking comparable. That is the point of the exercise: to find out whether you are choosing between providers or between products.