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Boosty Launch 4G Smartphone Failover for UK Business Broadband Connections

Monday, Aug 21st, 2017 (4:26 pm) - Score 1,688

Boosty, which is a subsidiary of Sharedband, appears to be taking a second stab at the hybrid UK fixed line and mobile connectivity market by launching a business broadband resilience service, which can seamlessly failover to a Smartphone based 3G/4G data connection when your main line fails.

Back in 2015 Boosty tried to solve some of the slow home broadband woes by launching a special service that could combine the performance of a 4G Mobile connection with your existing fixed line broadband link in order to improve connection speeds. This made use of a modified portable TP-Link WiFi / 4G Router, which plugged into one of your existing router’s LAN ports and then combined both links using a remote Boosty server.

Sadly the Boosty service struggled to take off in the residential market, not least because 4G coverage was fairly poor in 2015 and data caps / excess charges at some mobile operators were a problem. Since then the coverage of fixed line superfast broadband (24Mbps+) has also increased to around 93% of the UK and many of those who use 4G for home connectivity often prefer to adopt a dedicated 4G router, which doesn’t require a Boosty subscription.

Nevertheless Boosty is back and this time they’ve come up with a new idea based around the same premise, except the new approach is less focused on being a hybrid connection and more intended as 4G based redundancy for when a business fixed line connection goes down.

Paul Evans, CEO of Boosty, said:

“Businesses now see broadband as a vital utility. With the adoption of cloud services, off-site data backup, VoIP and e-commerce, any disruption can cost them hundreds or thousands of pounds an hour. Despite this many businesses don’t have contingency plans in event of broadband failure. Up-front hardware costs, complexity to install and the need for an expensive (largely unused) 4G data SIM are cited as the main reasons.

Our radically different approach helps businesses with networks fail-over to the 4G connection they’re already paying for; their smartphones.”

Under this approach a small Boosty device is plugged into the back of a business broadband router and a small app is then installed on smartphones. Only when the business broadband line fails will Boosty “seamlessly move traffic to the smartphone’s mobile connection,” which keeps data usage under control by allowing you to select which devices / services are most important (e.g. assign traffic to your shop till but not guest wifi etc.).

The Boosty Business Broadband Resilience package is £99 +vat, which includes the Plug & Play Router and 12 months’ service (normally £30 per year). Apparently several Smartphones can be linked to the service (i.e. when you hit a data cap on one then the system will look for the next available Smartphone). However the service doesn’t support dedicated (static) IPs but this is said to be coming “soon“.

What do I need for Boosty? (from the website)
* A Broadband Wi-Fi router with spare Ethernet (LAN) port
* A power source for your Boosty device; via an unused USB port on your Wi-Fi router, or using the supplied USB power adaptor
* At least one smartphone (running Android 5 / iOS 8 minimum) connected to your Broadband router’s Wi-Fi
* Good 3G/4G mobile reception and sufficient mobile data allowance to cover any Broadband outage
* A Broadband connection running at up to 52Mbps (we’re not sure why there’s a 52Mbps limit)

However it may face competition from similar approaches that already exist, such as simply flicking your Smartphone into WiFi Hotspot mode or taking your phone’s SIM out and plugging it into a USB Dongle that then goes into the back of your router (many modern broadband routers support 4G/3G mobile distribution and handle it with ease).

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
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