"Broadband is available for as little as 15 a month, but many businesses fail to appreciate thehidden costs of such a service," says Neil Stephenson, sales and marketing director at OnyxInteract, an Internet service provider based in the north-east of England. "Providers offeringbroadband for rock-bottom prices are notorious for poor service, with regular breakdowns andheavily congested（拥堵的 ）networks. It is always advisable for businesses to look beyond the pricetag and look for a business-only provider that can offer more reliability, with good support." Suchservices don't cost too much —— quality services can be found for upwards of ~ 30 a month. The benefits of broadband to the occasional home worker are that they can access email in realtime, and take full advantage of services such as Internet-based backup or even Interact-basedphone services. Interact-based telecoms, or VolP （Voice over IP） to give it its technical title, is an interestingtool to any business supporting remote working. Not necessarily because of the promise of free orreduced price phone calls （which experts point out is misleading for the average business）, butbecause of the sophisticated voice services that can be exploited by the remote worker facilitiessuch as voicemail and call forwarding, which provide a continuity of the company image forcustomers and business partners. By law, companies must "consider seriously" requests to work flexibly made by a parent witha child under the age of six, or a disabled child under 18. It was the need to accommodateemployees with young children that motivated accountancy firm Wright Vigar to begin promotingteleworking recently. The company, which needed to upgrade its IT infrastructure toprovide connectivity with a new, second office, decided to introduce support for remote working atthe same time.……
