Why Business Internet is More Expensive: In-Depth Analysis
You’ve probably noticed that business internet plans cost significantly more than home internet — sometimes double the price for what looks like similar speeds. A Bell residential fibre plan delivering 1.5 Gbps costs around $90/month. Bell’s business fibre at the same speed? $119.95/month. And dedicated business fibre at 1 Gbps? That starts at $1,100/month.
So what exactly are you paying for? Is business internet actually better, or are carriers just charging more because they can?
The honest answer: it depends on what you need. Business internet genuinely does include features that cost more to deliver — but not every business needs all of them. This guide explains exactly what makes business internet more expensive, feature by feature, with real 2026 Canadian pricing so you can decide whether the premium is worth it for your situation.
What’s in This Guide
The Price Gap — Real 2026 Numbers
Let’s look at what the Big Three are actually charging for comparable speeds on residential vs. business plans as of February 2026:
| Provider | Residential Plan | Business Plan | Premium You Pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bell (ON, 3-yr term) | Fibe 300: ~$75/mo | Business Fibe 300: $84.95/mo | +$10/mo (13%) |
| Bell (ON, 3-yr term) | Gigabit Fibe 1.5: ~$90/mo | Business Gigabit Fibe 1.5: $119.95/mo | +$30/mo (33%) |
| TELUS (BC/AB, 3-yr term) | PureFibre 1G: ~$85/mo | Fibre Internet 1G + Wi-Fi: $110/mo | +$25/mo (29%) |
| TELUS (BC/AB, 3-yr term) | PureFibre 3G: ~$110/mo | Fibre Internet 3G + Wi-Fi: $140/mo | +$30/mo (27%) |
| Rogers (ON) | Ignite 1G: ~$95/mo | Business Internet 1G: ~$130/mo | +$35/mo (37%) |
These are standard business internet plans — the same underlying fibre or cable infrastructure as residential, but with a business contract, priority support, and typically a static IP. The business premium (typically 13–37% more) pays for those extras. The real cost jump happens when you move to Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) — a completely different product category:
| Connection Type | Speed | Monthly Cost Range |
|---|---|---|
| Residential fibre | 1 Gbps | $85–$110 |
| Standard business internet | 1 Gbps | $110–$160 |
| Dedicated fibre (DIA) | 1 Gbps | $1,100–$1,800 |
That’s a 10–15× jump from standard business internet to dedicated. The reasons for each price increase are different — and understanding them helps you decide what level of service you actually need.
Six Reasons Business Internet Costs More
1. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) With Financial Teeth
This is the single biggest differentiator between business and residential internet — and the one most worth paying for if downtime costs you money.
A residential internet plan promises you “up to” a certain speed and “best effort” service. If your connection goes down, your ISP will fix it when they get to it — which could be hours or days. You have no contractual recourse and no compensation.
A business plan (especially dedicated fibre) comes with an SLA that contractually guarantees specific performance levels. In Canada, typical SLA terms include:
- 99.9% uptime guarantee — maximum 8.7 hours of downtime per year. If they miss it, you get bill credits. Standard SLA credits at Bell are structured as 10% of your monthly fee per 0.1% below the guarantee.
- Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) — a guaranteed response time, often 4 hours for on-site repair. Residential support offers no such guarantee.
- 99.99% uptime — only 52 minutes of allowed downtime per year. Adds 15–25% to the base price. Common for e-commerce, trading, and customer-facing applications.
Think of it this way: if an hour of internet downtime costs your business $1,000 or more, the SLA isn’t an expense — it’s insurance.
📌 The SLA Fine Print: Most SLAs exclude downtime caused by your own equipment, scheduled maintenance windows, and force majeure events (natural disasters, etc.). Always read the exclusions carefully, and understand how to actually claim credits when they’re owed — many businesses don’t realize they need to proactively request compensation. Read our full guide on strategies to combat internet outages.
2. Symmetric Upload & Download Speeds
This is a feature that’s genuinely more expensive to deliver and that many businesses don’t realize they need — until they do.
Residential cable internet (Rogers, for example) is asymmetric: their 1 Gbps plan offers roughly 1,000 Mbps download but only about 50 Mbps upload. That’s fine for Netflix, but terrible for video conferencing, cloud backups, VoIP, or uploading large files.
Business fibre plans from TELUS (PureFibre) and Bell (Pure Fibre) offer symmetric speeds — 1 Gbps down and 1 Gbps up. Dedicated fibre (DIA) is always symmetric by definition. This symmetry costs more because it requires the carrier to allocate equal bandwidth in both directions, reducing the total customers they can serve on a given network segment.
💡 When Upload Speed Really Matters: If your office runs Zoom/Teams calls (each uses ~3–4 Mbps upload), cloud backup (a nightly 50 GB backup needs sustained upload speed), VoIP phones (each call ~0.1 Mbps), or hosts any servers — your upload speed is likely the bottleneck, not download. A 10-person office on a Rogers cable plan with 50 Mbps upload running 5 simultaneous video calls is already using 15–20 Mbps of that 50 Mbps — leaving little headroom for everything else.
3. Static IP Addresses
Residential plans use dynamic IP addresses — your address changes periodically, which is fine for browsing and streaming. Business plans typically include one or more static IP addresses that never change.
Static IPs are essential for: hosting a VPN for remote access, running security cameras accessible from outside your network, hosting any kind of server or service, email server reputation (dynamic IPs are frequently blacklisted), and certain POS and payment systems.
The actual cost of a static IP is modest — $5–$15/month as an add-on — but carriers bundle it into business plans to justify the higher price tier. Some residential ISPs will provide a static IP on request, but it’s not standard.
4. Priority Support & Dedicated Account Management
Business plans get faster support response times. Instead of waiting in a general consumer queue, you typically get a priority business support line and, for larger accounts, a dedicated account manager who knows your setup.
How much this matters depends on your experience. With the major Canadian carriers, even business support during a large-scale outage can mean long hold times — during the 2022 Rogers outage, thousands of businesses were affected simultaneously and getting through to anyone was nearly impossible. But for everyday issues (slow speeds, equipment problems, billing disputes), business support is measurably faster and more competent.
Bell offers 24/7 support for all business plans. TELUS includes dedicated customer success managers when you bundle three or more business services. Rogers offers priority troubleshooting for business accounts.
5. Dedicated (Guaranteed) Bandwidth
With residential and standard business plans, you share network capacity with other users on the same node. During peak hours (weekday evenings, when everyone is streaming), your speeds may drop below what you’re paying for. The “up to 1 Gbps” on your plan might deliver 400 Mbps during rush hour.
Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) eliminates sharing entirely. The bandwidth you buy is yours alone, 24 hours a day. If you pay for 500 Mbps, you get 500 Mbps — guaranteed, at all times, with no “up to” language.
This is the primary reason DIA costs 10–15× more than standard business plans. The carrier is reserving infrastructure exclusively for you, which means fewer customers per fibre segment and higher per-customer costs. For a small business, a standard business internet plan is almost always sufficient. DIA becomes worthwhile when you’re running latency-sensitive applications (VoIP across 50+ phones, real-time trading, hosting customer-facing services) where speed consistency matters as much as speed itself.
6. Enhanced Security & Network Features
Business plans often include features that residential plans don’t offer at all: built-in DDoS mitigation (Bell’s dedicated internet plans include network-level DDoS defence), managed Wi-Fi services (TELUS charges $15/month per access point for business-grade managed Wi-Fi), LTE/5G automatic failover (both Bell and Rogers offer wireless backup as a business add-on), and advanced firewall and QoS (Quality of Service) settings that let you prioritize voice traffic over data.
These features address real business needs, but they also contribute to the higher price. Some are genuinely expensive to provide (DDoS mitigation requires constant monitoring), while others are more about convenience (managed Wi-Fi) and could be replicated with your own equipment.
Business vs. Residential — Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Residential Internet | Standard Business Internet | Business Dedicated (DIA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost (1 Gbps) | $85–$110 | $110–$160 | $1,100–$1,800 |
| Upload speed | Often asymmetric (50 Mbps on cable) | Symmetric on fibre plans | Always symmetric, guaranteed |
| Uptime guarantee | None (“best effort”) | Often informal targets, no SLA | 99.9%+ with financial penalties |
| Repair response | Next business day (maybe) | Priority queue, same/next day | 4-hour MTTR guarantee |
| Static IP | Dynamic (changes periodically) | 1 static IP included (often) | Block of static IPs included (/29 typical) |
| Bandwidth | Shared, “up to” speeds | “Up to” speeds, priority traffic | Dedicated, guaranteed speeds |
| Support | Consumer call centre | Business priority line | 24/7 dedicated support, account manager |
| Contract | Month-to-month common | 1–3 year terms typical | 1–3 year terms required |
| LTE/5G backup | Not available | Available as add-on | Available as add-on |
| DDoS protection | None | Basic | Network-level mitigation included |
| Annual price increases | Common but unstructured | Up to $5–$10/mo/year in contract | Fixed for contract term (typically) |
Standard vs. Dedicated Business Internet — The Big Cost Jump
The difference between a standard business internet plan and dedicated internet access is where the really big price jump happens, and understanding it saves you from overspending — or underbuying.
Standard Business Internet Plans ($75–$330/month)
This is what most small and medium businesses use. Plans like Bell Business Fibe, TELUS Business Fibre Internet, and Rogers Business Internet use the same underlying network infrastructure as residential — but come with a business contract, priority support, and usually a static IP. Speeds are “up to” the advertised rate. All three major carriers offer these plans.
Best for: Retail, restaurants, small offices, professional services, any business where occasional speed fluctuation is acceptable.
Dedicated Internet Access / DIA ($400–$3,500+/month)
This is a fundamentally different product. Your business gets a private fibre circuit — your own lane on the highway. Nobody else shares it. Speeds are symmetric and guaranteed. An SLA with financial penalties backs every promise.
In Canada, DIA pricing varies dramatically by location. A 1 Gbps dedicated circuit in downtown Toronto runs about $1,100–$1,300/month. In downtown Vancouver, $1,200–$1,500. In a smaller city like Kitchener-Waterloo or Saskatoon, $1,400–$1,800. Rural locations can exceed $2,000/month — if available at all.
Best for: Offices with 30+ employees, VoIP-heavy businesses, companies hosting servers, anyone where downtime costs more than the internet bill. For more detail, read our leased line cost guide.
📌 Type 1 vs. Type 2 Access — A Hidden Price Factor: If you buy DIA directly from a carrier that owns the fibre infrastructure (Bell, Rogers, TELUS — known as “Type 1” or “facilities-based”), pricing is typically 30–40% lower than buying from a reseller using someone else’s fibre (“Type 2”). Always ask: “Do you own the fibre infrastructure to my building?” If the answer is no, you’re likely paying a resale markup.
Do You Actually Need Business Internet?
Here’s the honest truth: many small businesses don’t need a business internet plan. A residential fibre plan with the right configuration can work perfectly well for plenty of commercial uses. But some situations genuinely require the business upgrade.
You have VoIP phones as your primary phone system
VoIP is highly sensitive to jitter, latency, and packet loss. Business plans with QoS settings and symmetric upload ensure clear calls. If your phones go down, you lose business. The SLA matters here.
You process payments (POS systems)
Payment processing needs reliable, always-on connectivity. A business plan with LTE backup ensures you can always take payments. The July 2022 Rogers outage showed what happens when POS systems go dark — the entire country went cash-only.
You host anything at your location (servers, cameras, VPN)
A static IP is essential, and you need reliable upload speeds. Business plans deliver both. Residential plans with dynamic IPs and limited upload are a poor fit for hosting.
Internet downtime costs you more than $500/hour
If the math says downtime is expensive, the SLA and priority repair of a business plan is the financially rational choice. Use our Business Internet Calculator to estimate your needs.
You run a small office with 5–15 employees using cloud apps
A standard business internet plan gives you priority support and a static IP, which is helpful but not always critical. If you’re on Bell or TELUS fibre (which is symmetric even on residential plans), the residential plan might be sufficient. If you’re on Rogers cable (asymmetric upload), the business plan’s symmetric fibre speeds are worth it.
You work from home as a freelancer or solo professional
A residential fibre plan is almost certainly enough. You don’t need an SLA, static IP, or priority support. If your home internet goes down, you can tether to your phone. Save the $20–$60/month premium and put it toward a faster residential plan instead.
Your business uses mobile/cellular as its primary internet
Many small retail operations, food trucks, and service businesses run entirely on mobile data. If that works for you, a business internet plan is unnecessary overhead.
Working From Home — Do You Need Business Internet?
Short answer: probably not. Remote work in Canada has matured since the pandemic, and residential fibre plans in 2026 are more than capable of handling home office demands.
A residential plan with 100–300 Mbps (which costs $55–$85/month from most carriers) handles video conferencing, cloud apps, file sharing, and VPN connections without breaking a sweat. You don’t need a static IP, you don’t need an SLA, and consumer support is usually adequate for a single home office.
There are a few exceptions where business internet at home makes sense: if your employer requires a static IP for security/compliance reasons, if you host client-facing services from your home network, or if you live in an area with unreliable residential service and the SLA provides meaningful protection.
⚠️ A Note on Terms of Service: Most residential internet plans technically prohibit commercial use in their terms. In practice, working from home on a residential plan is ubiquitous and ISPs don’t enforce this for typical remote work. However, if you’re running a business that generates heavy traffic (a media production studio, for example) or hosting servers, a business plan is both more appropriate and avoids any ToS risk.
One thing to watch: some residential ISPs block ports 80, 443, and 25, which prevents you from hosting websites or running mail servers from home. Business plans generally don’t block these ports. That said, hosting websites and email from home in 2026 is rarely the right choice — cloud hosting services are cheaper, more reliable, and far easier to manage.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much more does business internet cost than residential in Canada?
For standard business internet plans, expect to pay 13–37% more than residential for comparable speeds. In dollar terms, that’s usually $10–$40/month extra. Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) is a different category entirely — 10–15× the cost of residential, starting at $400/month for slower speeds and $1,100–$1,800/month for 1 Gbps. For a full pricing breakdown, see our Business Internet Cost Guide.
What’s the biggest difference between business and residential internet?
The Service Level Agreement (SLA). Residential internet makes no guarantees about uptime, speed, or repair time. Business internet (especially dedicated) contractually guarantees all three, with financial penalties if the carrier doesn’t deliver. Everything else — static IP, symmetric speeds, priority support — matters, but the SLA is the core differentiator that justifies the premium.
Can I use residential internet for my business?
Technically, most residential ToS prohibits commercial use, but ISPs rarely enforce this for typical office work. Many small businesses — especially home-based ones — run perfectly well on residential fibre. The real question is whether the risk of no SLA, no priority repair, and potentially slow upload speeds is acceptable for your business. If a day without internet doesn’t significantly harm your revenue, residential is likely fine.
Is business internet faster than home internet?
Not necessarily in terms of download speed — many residential plans now offer the same or faster download speeds than business plans. The difference is in upload speed (business fibre is typically symmetric, while residential cable is asymmetric), bandwidth consistency (dedicated business internet doesn’t slow down during peak hours), and guaranteed performance (SLAs ensure you always get what you pay for).
Do I need business internet to run a VPN?
Connecting to a VPN (as a client) works fine on residential internet. Hosting a VPN server that others connect to benefits from a static IP, which is easier to get on a business plan. However, most modern VPN and remote access solutions (like cloud-hosted VPN, Tailscale, or WireGuard with dynamic DNS) work well on residential connections without a static IP.
What about Starlink for business?
Starlink offers a Priority/Business plan at approximately $250/month with higher speeds and priority network access. For rural businesses without wired alternatives, it’s a game-changer. For urban businesses with access to fibre, Starlink is better suited as a backup connection than a primary one — its latency (25–50ms) and variable speeds make it less ideal for VoIP and real-time applications. Read our full Starlink Business Guide.
The Bottom Line
Business internet costs more because it delivers things that genuinely cost more to provide: guaranteed uptime backed by SLAs, symmetric speeds, dedicated bandwidth, priority repair, and static IP addresses. These features have real value for businesses where internet reliability directly impacts revenue.
But not every business needs every feature. A solo consultant working from home doesn’t need dedicated fibre. A 5-person design studio on TELUS PureFibre (which is already symmetric on residential plans) probably doesn’t need to pay the business premium. A 30-person office running VoIP phones and processing payments absolutely does.
The smart approach: figure out which specific features you actually need (use our Business Internet Calculator to help), get quotes from at least two carriers, and only pay for the service level that matches your risk tolerance. The most expensive plan isn’t always the best value — and the cheapest plan isn’t always the smartest choice.
