Office Stack GuidePlain-English guides to the software and IT services small businesses actually use.

Business Internet Service: Costs, Speeds and How to Choose

By Office Stack Guide Editors · Updated 2026-11-12

A US office of 2 to 50 people pays about $60 to $300 a month for business fiber or cable as of 2026. Upload speed decides which plan is enough. Eight people on 1080p Zoom calls need about 30 Mbps of upload, which is already above the FCC's 20 Mbps benchmark. AT&T's $60 Business Fiber plan gives 300 Mbps both ways.

A fiber modem and business router mounted on a wall in a small office network closet, with cables routed neatly beneath them in daylight.

With a static IP, a 5G backup and a price lock, a realistic bill comes to about $235 a month. Dedicated fiber with an uptime guarantee costs about $300 to $1,400.

At a glance

Option Monthly cost or need Source, year
Business fiber or cable alone $60-$285 AT&T, Comcast, Verizon sites, Nov 2026
Broadband plus static IP, 5G backup and price lock (example) About $235 Comcast and Verizon sites, plus a typical static IP fee, 2026
5G fixed wireless From $69 (Verizon, 100 Mbps) Verizon site, Nov 2026
Starlink Business From $55, plus about $349 for hardware Starlink, 2026
Dedicated internet access (DIA), 99.99% SLA About $300-$1,400 on 36-month terms Broker data, 2026
Upload for 8 people on 1080p calls About 30 Mbps Zoom, 2026

Fiber, cable, 5G or satellite: what can reach your address

Your address limits your choices before price does. Enter it at the FCC National Broadband Map, which lists each provider, its technology and its advertised speeds. The FCC's help guide explains how to filter for business service.

Basic service reaches nearly everyone. The FCC's 2026 broadband report says 96.9% of people had access to 100/20 Mbps wired or fixed wireless service as of June 2025. Fiber's reach is much smaller. According to figures the Fiber Broadband Association gave the FCC, fiber passed about 84.6 million US homes at the end of 2025, roughly 60%. Both counts cover homes, so confirm service at your exact suite.

How much speed does your office need? Size the upload first

Ads lead with download speed. An office runs out of upload first, because every video call sends your camera feed out and every cloud backup pushes files up.

Zoom's support pages list these per-person figures for group calls:

The FCC Broadband Speed Guide lists 6 Mbps for HD video conferencing and 5 to 25 Mbps for telecommuting. The FCC calls these rough guidelines that are not based on its own testing, so treat them as a floor.

The FCC's broadband benchmark is 100 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up, and its August 2026 report kept it. That is enough for one household and too little for an office. The same report also abolished the 2024 long-term goal of 1,000/500 Mbps, which was the only federal upload target close to what an office needs. Commissioner Gomez dissented on that point.

Worked example: a 10-person office

Load at the busiest hour Upload needed
8 people on 1080p Zoom calls at once (8 × 3.8 Mbps) About 30 Mbps
Cloud backup and file sync, capped at 20 Mbps 20 Mbps
Peak total About 50 Mbps
With 2x headroom for phones, uploads and growth About 100 Mbps

The calls alone exceed the FCC's 20 Mbps benchmark. Download stays light: eight calls take about 24 Mbps. The backup cap has a cost too. At 20 Mbps, a 50 GB first backup takes more than 5.5 hours.

AT&T's $60 fiber plan gives 300 Mbps of upload. That is six times this office's peak and three times its headroom figure.

Cable is less certain. Comcast Business says its cable plans upload at "up to 25 Mbps to up to 300 Mbps," on a page listing tiers on sale as of May 7, 2024. At the low end, this office is over its limit at peak before any headroom. A cable plan sold as "1 Gig" costs more than AT&T's $60 plan. If its label shows typical upload under 100 Mbps, it serves this office worse.

Business internet cost: what you get at each price tier

Tier 1: business broadband alone, about $60 to $300

These are the lowest advertised list prices as of November 2026, before taxes and fees. Comcast's prices include a $10 discount for AutoPay and paperless billing paid from a bank account. AT&T's page also shows $70, $110 and $160 for its three lowest tiers, so ask which price applies to your order.

Provider Plans and monthly price
AT&T Business Fiber 300 Mbps $60, 500 Mbps $100, 1 GIG $140, 2 GIG $185, 5 GIG $285
Comcast Business (1-year pricing) 300 Mbps $70, 500 Mbps $100, 1.25 Gbps $150, 2 Gbps $180
Verizon Fios Business 300/300, 500/500, Gigabit and 2 Gig; 500 Mbps for $69 on a 2-year term with AutoPay and paper-free billing, in select areas

AT&T has no annual contract and no data caps, and it waives its $99 installation fee on online orders. Comcast's plan names and prices differ between its site and third-party listings, so read these as "Comcast's site, November 2026." Verizon lists prices only for its 500 Mbps promotion and charges activation fees.

Tier 2: broadband plus the extras, about $235 in a typical setup

A technician mounts a fiber optic terminal on the wall of an office and connects its cabling.

Here is one realistic office bill:

That totals about $235 a month before taxes and fees. Your own total depends on which extras you buy. The spread runs from about $135 (AT&T 300 Mbps plus a $5 static IP and the same 5G line) to about $400 (AT&T 5 GIG plus a 13-address static block and the 5G line).

Tier 3: dedicated internet access, about $300 to $1,400

Dedicated internet access (DIA) is a fiber line reserved for your business alone. It comes with a service-level agreement (SLA), a contract that promises uptime and pays credits when the provider misses it.

No primary price list exists, because providers quote DIA one building at a time. Lumen, for example, prices its DIA marketplace only by address. Broker and aggregator data from 2026 puts DIA with a 99.99% SLA at:

Both ranges assume 36-month terms. If no fiber reaches your building, expect construction charges and a lead time before service starts.

What changes the price

AT&T's reward cards, $99 bill credit and early termination fee (ETF) buyouts of up to $750 are temporary promotions. There is no federal tax credit for business internet. Get every item above as a dollar figure on the written quote.

Backup internet: when one line isn't enough

Every uptime percentage still leaves hours offline:

Uptime Downtime per year
99.5% About 43.8 hours
99.9% About 8.8 hours
99.99% (DIA-grade SLA) About 53 minutes

Business broadband providers don't publish outage frequency, so log your own outages for a month or two to get a baseline.

You need a backup if an outage stops revenue. That applies to internet phones (VoIP), cloud point-of-sale systems, card terminals or a fully cloud-based workflow.

The cheapest sensible setup is a second connection from a different provider plus a dual-WAN router, which takes two connections and switches between them automatically. Know the limit first.

A static IP belongs to the provider that issued it. A backup line from another carrier arrives with a different address. A Comcast static IP does not move to a T-Mobile 5G line. Anything tied to that address, such as a VPN, a firewall rule or phone service registered to it, needs its own plan for failover. Even a same-provider backup can leave things out: AT&T's page says static IPs and VoIP do not fail over to the 5G backup included on its 1 GIG and higher fiber plans. Ask your phone provider and IT support what happens on the backup line before you buy it.

How to choose and compare quotes: 6 questions to ask before you sign

The Broadband Facts label is the tool for comparing quotes like-for-like. Providers must show it for mass-market plans sold to small businesses. The FCC's July 2026 order (FCC 26-48), as summarized by the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, kept that requirement. Enterprise services such as DIA are exempt.

The label lists the monthly price, the intro rate and how long it lasts, typical speeds and latency, data caps, contract terms and the early termination fee. The 2026 order lets providers show non-government fees, meaning the ones the provider sets, as "up to" amounts. It also lets phone reps summarize the label instead of reading it out. These relaxations were awaiting OMB approval and not yet in force in mid-2026. Ask for the label in writing either way.

  1. Can you email the Broadband Facts label for this exact plan?
  2. What are the typical upload speed and latency, not the "up to" figures?
  3. How long is the contract, what is the early termination fee, and what is the price after the intro rate ends?
  4. What repair time do you commit to, and what credits do I get if you miss it?
  5. Will my backup line carry my static IP and phone service?
  6. What will all fees and taxes add, as a dollar total?

Get at least three written quotes. Compare total monthly cost, one-time cost and cost over the full term in one table.

Red flags:

FAQ

Is a business plan worth it over a residential plan?

A 5G fixed wireless router sits on an office shelf next to a wired router and a network switch with cables plugged in.

Only if you need what it adds. AT&T Business Fiber 300 Mbps starts at $60, so compare it with the home plan at your address. Buy business service if you need a static IP, an SLA or faster repairs. A two-person office on cloud apps with mobile phones can reasonably use a residential plan if its label shows enough upload.

What does an internet outage cost a small office?

No reliable independent figure exists for a 2-to-50-person office. The widely quoted numbers come from surveys like ITIC's. ITIC counts firms with up to 200 users as "small/midsize," 45% of its respondents had more than 1,000 employees, and its downtime figures cover all IT failures. Use your own revenue per hour instead.

When does a small business need dedicated internet access?

Moving from a 99.9% to a 99.99% uptime level saves about 8 hours of downtime a year. DIA costs roughly $240 to $1,100 a month more than Tier 1 broadband, or about $2,900 to $13,000 a year. Buy DIA if 8 hours offline would cost you more than that difference, and if a cheaper backup line can't cover the risk.

For a small office with nowhere wired to turn, yes. For the 10-person office above, the $55 entry tier works only as a backup. That tier includes 50 GB of priority data, which the 50 GB first backup uses up alone. Extra data is sold in blocks, so price it before you commit. One 1080p Zoom call uses about 3 GB an hour in both directions. Eight people on calls two hours a workday adds up to roughly 1 TB a month.

Key takeaways

The bottom line

Request quotes now, and get each plan's Broadband Facts label and the all-in dollar total in writing. Once the 2026 changes take effect, provider-set fees can appear as "up to" amounts and phone reps can summarize instead of reading the label, so a written total protects you. Before each renewal, recheck the FCC map. BEAD-funded builds will add providers at some addresses, but they won't lower the price.

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