Nobody has to. No Australian modern award and no Philippine statute obliges an employer to fund a home connection, so who pays for internet for a remote employee is decided by the employment agreement and nothing else. Where it says nothing, the worker absorbs it. The Fair Work Commission settled the Australian half of that question on 27 August 2026.
Which means most founders running a remote team pay nothing, and have never checked whether that was a decision or an accident.
Outstaffer's own answer to the hardware half is to put devices on a subscription and ship them with the role, which is a disclosure of interest more than a pitch. The connection is the line nobody sells you.
No award and no statute assigns the internet bill
On 27 August 2026 a Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission decided to vary the Clerks Private Sector Award 2020 to include a working from home provision, published a draft determination, and took submissions to 17 September. The Australian Industry Group's advice records that the Commission rejected the union's claim for extra employer obligations. The term lets the parties shift ordinary hours and break rules. On the cost of running the home office, it is silent.
The Philippine position is older and just as quiet. Republic Act 11165 guarantees a telecommuting employee "the same treatment as that of comparable employees", then lists six entitlements covering pay, rest, workload and training. The nearest it comes to hardware is a right to "receive appropriate training on the technical equipment at their disposal". Whose equipment, and who funds the line it runs on, is absent. Department Order 202-19 pushes it into the contract, listing the use and cost of equipment as a term the parties settle themselves.
Two jurisdictions, one answer.
The same gap opens with hardware, which is why the laptop question belongs in the offer, not the first week.
The arithmetic on a connectivity line nobody budgets
The International Telecommunication Union's affordability report, published in Geneva in 2025, puts the global median fixed-broadband basket at USD PPP 44.5 a month for 2024, or 2.5 per cent of GNI per capita. Treat it as a scale, not an invoice. Roughly USD 534 a year, per head.
Outstaffer publishes Employer of Record from $250 a month per employee, or $3,000 a year. The connection is about 18 per cent on top, and it appears nowhere on the pricing page. Across a five-person offshore team, USD 2,670 a year is already being paid by somebody. If nobody wrote it down, it is being paid by the five people least able to renegotiate it.
Why does the regional number matter?
Because the same ITU report finds the fixed-broadband basket in Asia-Pacific stayed above the Broadband Commission's target of under 2 per cent of GNI per capita. In the region most Australian employers hire from, the home connection eats a larger share of income than the target allows. An unfunded line is not neutral there.
Does the saving cover it?
Comfortably, which is the awkward part. We ran the numbers on what an empty desk saves against commercial rents, and a connectivity allowance is a rounding error inside that figure. The employer banks the premises saving. The employee funds the infrastructure that made it possible.
The honest counter is that they already pay for internet
Most people you hire remotely had a connection before you met them. An allowance is partly a transfer, not a new cost, and plenty of teams have run five years without one.
Fair. The base rate of a dispute here is low.
It stops being low the moment the connection fails during a client call and nobody can point to a line saying whose problem it is. An unwritten term is an unmanaged one.
Related reading
Write the three lines and stop guessing
A named monthly contribution. A minimum speed the role needs. A fallback when the service drops. Three lines, settled before the first pay run, and the question never surfaces again.
Employment and classification rules differ by country, so get advice for your own situation.
If you want the honest version of what your remote setup costs, run one role through the platform and read the line items. What is in your agreements today, and did you put it there on purpose?
More from
Remote Work
category
%201.svg)
