Broadband connections are here at last, as BT and many other providers of fast access to the internet will tell you. This is a good thing, most of them will claim, because it allows businesses to get on to the internet more quickly and efficiently than ever before. It's taken a while to get here but now that it's here, it's great, right? Well, perhaps, but people are getting carried away with the idea before they really know what it's going to be for.

Stepping back for a moment, it's worth considering what smaller businesses are doing in terms of the internet already. The idea that everybody is connected by now is something of an exaggeration. According to information from research company Prodata, only 63% of businesses with between one and 50 employees had internet subscriptions for business reasons, this figure slumping to 30-40% in retail, hotels and hospitality and the real estate sectors. Most of the existing users have been online for two years or more.

Broadband take-up, though - if we take broadband to mean "faster than ISDN" - is sluggish: in late 2001, 3% of smaller businesses were using it, with a projection of 6% take-up by the middle of this year and 15% by 2005, assuming stable pricing. Most (78%) are using it for emailing and browsing/searching; only 20% quoted sending and receiving large files as driving them to buy broadband, but around 35% ended up using it for this purpose anyway.

So, the impetus to move needs to be based on two things: cost and the need for extra or improved functions. The costs are easy to calculate and are mostly based on BT because it wholesales the service to most of the other service providers.

This month the price from BT came down and demand for broadband went up accordingly. Price reductions happened for two reasons: first, the wholesale price came down and second, a new tranche of hardware, which allows companies and individuals to install their own equipment instead of receiving a visit from an engineer, became available.

The effect is that faster connections to the internet are more affordable and, as long as supplies of the right equipment hold up, faster to get at than ever before. It's perhaps odd, then, that BT and the other companies involved seem to be expecting people to buy into the idea simply because it's faster, rarely pausing to explain why this should be a good idea.

Microsoft, for example, is keen to get its small business customers on to broadband as soon as possible. Tim Kimber, small business product manager, stresses that people can get web performance to the standard of their larger competitors at an affordable price, get competitive information through the web and maintain their own websites. But isn't that already possible with an ordinary modem and a dial-up account? "The feedback I get, particularly from small businesses, is that any sort of metered internet service results in sub-optimal use of the web for their business," he says.

Agreed, but then that's why so many people opt for an unmetered account, for which you don't necessarily need broadband. "I acknowledge that an un-metered dial-up service gets around part of this, but most small businesses I speak to want better bandwidth to share internet access among their Lan users, for instance with Small Business Server," says Kimber. This, indeed, is a key part of the broadband argument: the fatter the "pipe" into your organisation, the bigger a chunk of it everyone will get when they share it.

The question of whether there are things you could do with broadband that you couldn't do before is moot, however. Gary Dooley, managing partner with Bradford design agency Pure, is one customer whose business has been transformed by it. "The download and send times for attachments is making our workload far more manageable. And although I hope we don't all surf silly during the working day, it is so much quicker now to research potential client information and acquire all the details you need fast," he says.

"The costs can look prohibitive but the extra efficiency has freed up time that can be put towards pitches and creative work. In fact broadband in no small measure has contributed towards a rapid expansion in business in a very, very short space of time," Dooley adds.

Andrew Fisher, technical director of design company Redhouse Lane, agrees and notes that getting email in real time is quite a boon: "You can filter information into high priority and leave the others for later or whatever. This is much more effective and more responsive for your customers, meaning faster turnaround times and hence higher customer satisfaction.

"The other aspect is that remote workforces can do things such as video conference over the internet with some degree of ease," he adds. The basics to do this are included in Windows, and you can get hold of a web camera for less than £100.

Inevitably, the people first coming forward with praise for broadband were the ones with a need to download and upload large files frequently: design companies, those using video. But the mundane stuff can get easier too, which at around £25 per month is now actually worth considering.

Andy Williams, campaign manager for the Broadband4Britain pressure group, readily concedes that to look for a "killer application" is a red herring. But he maintains that just getting broadband into households will improve the lot of the average e-trader. "This is the market for lots of [companies'] products and services, whether the e-business model is direct or indirect. No consumer eyeballs, no e-economy," he says. "This applies as much to lawyers, accountants, financial advisers, estate agents and travel agencies as it does to retailers."

But there are still problems. Jeff Meulman, managing director of Via Net.works UK, points to service outages in recent months: "Whatever the cost, ADSL presents too much of a risk for many businesses, which are being forced into opting for relatively expensive leased lines," he says.

And broadband is not universally available yet. Peter Gallon, head of Two One Communications, is based in Dorset and has difficulties because his locality isn't covered by BT's local loop. There are no plans to get the area connected in broadband terms either, and Gallon is currently stuck on ISDN. "If the government is serious about encouraging more businesses to work in rural areas and in reducing car journeys, they have to intervene or provide some incentive to BT and SMEs to take the plunge," he says. The other alternative, satellite, has until very recently looked prohibitively expensive, although, the price is set to fall. This could help those businesses left out of the broadband equation so far.

Broadband: providers and products
These prices should be taken as a guide: the broadband market has been changing rapidly in recent weeks, and new prices - and offers - can appear from day to day.

BT (wholesale): BT IPstream (home). Self-install product for people with ordinary BT lines. £50 set-up plus £25 per month (This is a wholesale price).

Easynet: DSL. Self-install product. £30 per month (projected cost only as this has yet to be finalised).

Sonnet Internet: ADSL. Self-install product. £25 per month (company is calling for further reductions from BT).

BT Openworld: Internet Business Pack. Package including connection, business card on the net and a number of other bells and whistles. £89 per month plus VAT, but it does include a lot more than a simple connection.

Star Internet: SDSL. Much faster connection than ordinary ADSL, crucially including an agreement on minimum service levels. £275 per month plus installation fee, for a 512kb connection.

NTL Business: Broadband Cable or ADSL connections available, includes service level agreement. £70 per month upwards plus installation fee.

Breathe: BreathePro. ADSL self-install connection. £25.99 per month plus VAT.

Internet connection

There are several means of connecting to the internet. The most common are as follows:

· Modem: still the majority option, although by now the slowest. Top speed is, theoretically, 56k.

· ISDN: Single ISDN offers 64k uploads; double offers 128k. This was, until broadband came along, the fastest option within many SMEs' budgets.

· ADSL: A version of DSL (digital subscriber line) technology, and the standard broadband offering from BT and many of its competitors. Offers an always-on connection and speeds of up to 10 times those of ordinary modems. Has a number of geographical restrictions: you need to be close to a properly equipped telephone exchange. Other versions of DSL will, in the future, offer more power and so make services like video on demand possible.

· Cable: Offers similar speeds and always-on functionality as ADSL, but to get it you must be based in a cabled area.

· Satellite: The ultimate in wireless, geographically neutral broadband. Some versions offer fast access from anywhere, and costs accordingly. Other cheaper flavours offer ADSL-speed downloads, but rely on you using a much slower landline for uploading.