Keeping Going When Your Broadband Goes Out

This week, a major outage on the BT network caused broadband service problems in the Wolverhampton area.  This affected a few of our clients, leaving them without their regular Internet connection for several hours on Monday morning and a couple more hours on Tuesday morning.

Because ADSL broadband services are relatively low-cost, BT do not provide service level agreements for these type of connections, which can leave small businesses in a tight spot if they run into problems.  BT do provide an ‘enhanced care’ option, at extra cost, but even this only provides a guarantee that service will be resumed within 20 working hours.  In the event that this target is not met, 50% of the monthly service fee is refunded, which isn’t much consolation.

So, what steps can you take to help you cope with a broadband outage in your business?

First of all, you can make provisions for a back-up Internet connection.  This could be a cheap low-cost broadband service with a different provider to your main connection, or, if your router supports it, a 3G USB dongle can provide a decent alternative.  This will give you outbound Internet access, but inbound services such as SMTP email delivery will still be unavailable.

To enable access to email during an outage, we can provide an online back-up mailbox that will allow access via web browser, enabling you to send and receive email as normal.  For convenience, you will also be able to access all email sent or received during the past 30 days.

A further option is to replace ADSL completely, with a leased-line Internet connection from BT.  Whilst this will provide dedicated bandwidth and improved service levels, the cost is usually prohibitive for small businesses.

To summarise, for the majority of small businesses, the most cost-effective solution is a 3G USB dongle to provide basic Internet access, and back-up mailboxes to provide access to email for key users.