Is your backup connection ready?
Why connectivity is now a business continuity issue
For most businesses, the internet connection is now the one line everything else runs through: email, Microsoft 365, cloud apps, card payments and, increasingly, the phones. With BT’s analogue network switching off on 31 January 2027, calls that once ran over copper will run over your broadband instead. So when the connection goes down, the whole office can go quiet with it.
Outages aren’t always dramatic. Two recent stories show how easily a site can drop offline, and why a backup plan is worth having before you need it.
One small fault, a month offline
In October, ISPreview reported that a single faulty Openreach optical network terminal (the small box where fibre enters a building) disrupted four homes on a shared full fibre network. One household was offline for about a month before Openreach isolated the faulty line and replaced the unit.
The fault wasn’t even at the affected home. Full fibre to the premises (FTTP) usually runs over a shared passive network, where several premises use the same fibre back to the exchange. Most of the time that works well. But a problem on one connection can affect its neighbours, and finding it can take time.
Storms and power cuts hit mobile too
Mobile isn’t immune either. The GSMA estimates that severe storms and floods already cost mobile operators around $1.7 billion a year in repairs to cell sites, and that this could pass $3 billion a year by 2050. It names the electricity supply as the biggest weak point: when the power goes, a site can drop offline once its backup power runs out.
None of this means fibre or mobile is unreliable. It means every connection can fail, and the businesses that cope best are the ones that have planned for it.
Fibre isn’t all the same
It’s worth knowing what kind of connection your business actually runs on. Most full fibre broadband is shared with other premises and is repaired on a best-efforts basis, which suits plenty of businesses well. A dedicated ethernet line (often called a leased line) is different: the fibre is yours alone, speeds are the same up and down, and it usually comes with a service level that commits the provider to faster fixes.
For a small office that can work from mobiles for an afternoon, FTTP with a backup is often the right answer. For sites that can’t afford to go down, such as a busy contact centre, a head office running cloud phones or a site taking card payments all day, the difference between the two is worth understanding. We’ll be looking at when ethernet makes sense in more detail over the coming weeks.
Four steps to a more resilient connection
1. Know what you’re on
Check whether each site uses FTTP, older copper-based broadband or a dedicated line, and who your provider is. If you don’t know, that’s the first job.
2. Add a second route
A backup connection on a different technology, such as a 4G or 5G router or a second line from another network, can take over automatically if the main line fails. Mobile coverage is improving fast: VodafoneThree, for example, is aiming for 99% 5G Standalone population coverage by 2030.
3. Protect your phones
If your calls run over the internet, make sure they can fail over too, whether that’s to a backup line or by diverting calls to mobiles and Microsoft Teams.
4. Match the line to the risk
Work out what an hour offline really costs each site. Where the answer is “a lot”, look at a dedicated line with a stronger fix commitment alongside a backup route.
Plan it before you need it
The best time to sort a backup connection is before the line goes down. We can help you compare business internet options for each site and add a mobile backup route, so your team keeps working when a line fails. If you’d like a hand reviewing your sites, speak to Flotek.
Sources: ISPreview, 26 Oct 2026; The Register, 3 Nov 2026; VodafoneThree, 4 Nov 2026.
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