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The case for internet failover for UK businesses. Downtime costs, how often outages happen and why the era of tolerating internet downtime is over.
In 2015, most UK businesses could muddle through a few hours without internet. Paper order books, cash payments, desktop software, local file storage. Today, that list of fallbacks is essentially gone. Cloud-based everything means that when the internet goes down, the business effectively stops.
The average UK broadband fault lasts 4–8 hours. Some are resolved in minutes; cabinet or fibre cut faults can take 24–48 hours. Openreach's SLA for business broadband is "same day" — which in practice often means late afternoon or early evening resolution for a fault reported in the morning.
For a 10-person professional services office billing £150/hour per person, a 4-hour outage costs £6,000 in lost productivity. For a restaurant processing £1,200/hour across tables, a 3-hour Saturday evening outage costs £3,600 in card payments alone — most of which are simply lost rather than recovered.
Assure X failover costs £29–49/month. For virtually every business with meaningful revenue, the ROI on failover is measured in months at most.
Any business accepting card payments — card terminals and EPOS systems require live internet. A failover event during a busy Saturday service doesn't just mean inconvenience; customers leave.
Any business using VoIP phone systems — VoIP runs over internet. Without failover, your phones go silent during outages. Calls to your number ring unanswered; you miss enquiries and appear to be closed.
Any business using cloud software — Microsoft 365, Xero, Sage, Salesforce, booking systems — all require live internet. Teams calls, shared documents, CRM access — all offline without failover.
The average UK business on business broadband experiences 2–4 outages per year, ranging from minutes to many hours. Leased line businesses typically experience fewer outages but no connection is immune to infrastructure faults.
For a typical small business, a 4-hour outage costs between £500 and £6,000 in lost productivity and revenue depending on the nature of the business. For card-intensive retail and hospitality businesses, the cost is primarily in lost sales.
Assure X failover starts from £29/month. For any business with meaningful revenue, this represents extraordinary value versus the cost of a single outage event.
No — Assure X works alongside any existing broadband or leased line from any provider. No changes to your current provider or contract are needed.