How Much Should a 100-Person Office Pay for Internet in SoCal?

The Short Answer: $400-$900/mo Depending on What You Buy

If you’re running a 100-person office in Southern California and paying more than $900/mo for your primary internet circuit, you’re likely overpaying. If you’re paying less than $400/mo, you’re probably on a shared business broadband connection that won’t hold up under real load.

Here’s the math that most IT directors never run.

Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) vs. Business Broadband

These are two fundamentally different products, and most businesses confuse them:

Business Broadband (Spectrum Business, AT&T Business, Cox Business):
– Shared bandwidth with other businesses in your building/area
– Advertised speeds are “up to” — not guaranteed
– Typical cost: $100-$300/mo for 200Mbps-1Gbps
– No SLA (Service Level Agreement)
– Symmetrical speeds rarely available

Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) (Spectrum DIA, AT&T DIA, Lumen/CenturyLink, Zayo):
– Dedicated bandwidth — only you use it
– Guaranteed speeds with SLA uptime (99.9%+)
– Typical cost: $400-$900/mo for 100Mbps-1Gbps
– Symmetrical upload/download
– Static IP addresses included

Bandwidth Math for 100 Users

Here’s a conservative estimate for a 100-person office:

Real-world peak demand: 500Mbps-1Gbps

That means a 500Mbps DIA circuit is the sweet spot for most 100-person offices. A 1Gbps circuit gives you room to grow without a forklift upgrade.

What You Should Actually Be Paying (SoCal Rates, 2026)

The difference between “provider range” and “our negotiated range” is where we earn our fee. We carrier-shop across Spectrum, AT&T, Lumen, Zayo, and regional carriers to find the best rate for your specific location and usage.

The Failover Question Nobody Asks

Here’s what most businesses don’t think about until it’s too late: what happens when your primary circuit goes down?

If you’re on business broadband with no failover, the answer is: everything stops. No email. No cloud apps. No phones (if you’re on VoIP). No POS. No access to patient records (if you’re medical). No WMS (if you’re in logistics).

The cost of downtime for a 100-person office:

• Employee waste: 100 employees × $40/hr loaded = $4,000/hr in idle labor
• Lost revenue: Depends on your business, but $5,000-$50,000/hr for transactional businesses
• Compliance risk: If you’re in healthcare (HIPAA) or financial services (SOX), a prolonged outage can trigger breach reporting requirements

Managed failover (cellular backup via Peplink or Cradlepoint) costs $149-$189/mo. That’s less than one hour of downtime.

5 Questions to Ask Your Current Provider

1. “Is this dedicated or shared?” — If they can’t answer clearly, it’s shared.
2. “What’s my guaranteed speed, not advertised speed?” — Ask for the SLA.
3. “What’s the uptime guarantee?” — Should be 99.9% or better for DIA.
4. “What happens when this circuit goes down?” — If the answer is “call us,” you don’t have failover.
5. “When does my contract expire?” — We can often negotiate better rates 6 months before expiry.

The Bottom Line

If you’re a 100-person office in SoCal paying more than $900/mo for a single circuit, or you don’t have failover, or you’ve never had anyone carrier-shop for you — that’s where we come in.

Free 15-minute connectivity audit. We’ll look at what you’re paying, what you should be paying, and whether your failover plan would actually survive an outage. No pitch, just numbers.

Schedule your free audit →

Northview Telecom Advisors is a carrier-neutral telecom advisory firm based in Southern California. We help businesses optimize their connectivity, cloud VoIP, structured cabling, and managed failover — without vendor bias.