What Happens When Your Business Internet Goes Down?

Short answer: most of the business stops with it.

Ten years ago, an internet outage meant no email for an afternoon. Today that same line carries the card reader, the point of sale, the phones if you have moved to a cloud phone service, the security cameras and the scheduling software. When it drops, the doors are open but you cannot take a payment or answer a call.

Most small businesses we walk into run on one internet connection from one provider. Nobody planned it that way. It was the line that came with the building.

What actually goes down

When the line drops, it is rarely a big storm. It is a cut cable down the street, a failed modem, or a provider outage that takes three hours to fix and gets no notice. You find out when a customer is standing at the counter with a card in their hand.

• Card payments. Cloud POS and most card terminals need the internet. Some will hold transactions offline, but many owners do not know if theirs does until the day it matters.
• Phones. Cloud phones ride the same line. No internet, no ring.
• Everything else. Cameras stop recording to the cloud, online orders stop arriving, and staff cannot clock in.

Your backup options

• Cellular failover. A router with a 4G or 5G connection takes over automatically when the main line drops. For most small businesses this is the most practical place to start, because it does not depend on the same cable in the ground.
• A second wired line. A second provider adds capacity, but if both run on the same pole or conduit, one backhoe can take out both.
• Satellite. Starlink works well where wired service is poor, or as a third path for businesses that cannot afford to go dark.

Why we use Peplink

As a Peplink Certified Sales Specialist, I recommend Peplink because it does more than switch over. Basic failover keeps you open, but a call or card payment in progress drops and has to be redone. Add Peplink’s SpeedFusion and the session carries through the switch, so the customer on the phone never hears it happen. Every router is managed from the cloud, so we can see a problem and often fix it before you call.

The question to ask yourself

If your internet went down at noon on your busiest day, what would you lose by 3:00? If the answer is more than you want to think about, a backup connection usually costs less than one bad afternoon.

Find out what a backup connection looks like for your business