Roger Huffadine

Worcester UK

Retired [again]

The real cost of utilities to businesses is NOT what appears on the paper bill.

Cheap telecoms, for example, means that the 'utility' does not have enough bandwidth to give excellent service during busy periods (more busy signals) and it won't have as many experienced engineers (longer wait for repairs) and it probably has a 'crap' call centre (more stress).

If businesses want to be on line and excellent with rapid responses to problems then they need to shop around for excellent service NOT cheap bills.
The same goes for power utilities - if you don't mind not having gas, or electricity, for several days & your business will not suffer then go ahead go for cheap.

When I was in business our attitude was buy the best so that we could give the best to our customers. Even the workforce had maintenance contracts (medical insurance) because downtime on personnel is just as damaging as downtime on machinery & infrastructure.

Organisations like Utility Watch might be better employed concentrating on the factors that are important to businesses and spending less time sorting numbers on spreadsheets.