What Causes Internet Outages and How Does It Affect Your Business?
In today’s digital age, most businesses rely on the Internet for just about everything, from video conferencing and point-of-sale transactions to cloud computing. Unfortunately, internet service interruptions do happen.
There’s hardly a good time for an internet outage, but it always seems to happen at the worst possible time. Even the best internet connections drop from time to time, and it helps to understand what causes internet outages and how it affects your business.
As a business fiber internet provider, our team at TelcoSolutions delves deeper into the most common causes of internet outages, their impact on business, and how to prevent downtime.
Causes of Internet Outages
Unfortunately, internet outages occur more frequently than business owners realize. Your internet connection may drop for many potential reasons, including:
Equipment Failures
Your internet equipment, including your modem and router, bring in the signal and distribute it to your devices. Should any of these gadgets fail or malfunction, it can cause an internet outage.
Human Error
Sometimes, vandals, construction workers, or landscapers may intentionally or accidentally damage internet infrastructure and cause an outage. Similarly, accidental mismanagement or poor network configuration may lead to network downtime.
Natural Disasters
Inclement weather, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, tornadoes, and other forces of nature account for a significant percentage of internet outages.
Even a minor storm could damage infrastructure that brings internet to your home, such as fiber optic cables and towers, leaving your business without internet access.
Defective Software
Software applications, databases, and servers may become infected with malware or viruses as part of a phishing campaign, rendering the tools you need to connect to the internet inoperable.
Cyberattacks
Malicious and unexpected attacks from hackers can disrupt business operations, and cost affected businesses plenty of time and money. Unauthorized traffic can also cause excess network congestion that leads to a network failure.
Power Outages
Harsh weather, heat, and even accidents like trees falling on power lines can cause an unplanned power outage. Such power outages can leave your business with no internet access if the equipment providing internet service has no battery or generator backup system.
Although different types of internet connections have varying reliability levels, you can’t guarantee 100% uptime. That said, besides knowing what causes internet outages, you need to consider the impact an outage may have on your business.
The Impact of Internet Downtime on Your Business
An internet connection outage can significantly impact a business. Even a few minutes of downtime can trigger a snowball effect. Some of the effects of a network outage on your business include:
Reduced Productivity and Output
During an internet outage, you probably won’t be able to update software, send and analyze data, support customers, operate your CRMs, or perform any other functions that need internet access.
Moreover, your IT department may have to spend valuable time troubleshooting your internet connection rather than working on critical tasks.
Financial Losses
When you have no internet access, customers can’t use your services, check out, or contact support. You also may have issues sending invoices, communicating with customers via social media, or processing card payments.
Many customers will abandon their shopping carts if web pages cannot load. Ultimately, an unexpected outage could cause a loss in customers and lower sales.
A Damaged Reputation
Network outages can cause customers to doubt your reliability. If existing as well as potential clients can’t access your website or schedule service, they can’t rely on you to provide products and services when they need them most.
Security Risks and Compliance Issues
If you suffer a system breach, your business may be vulnerable to cyber-attacks that raise the chances of running into compliance issues.
Decrease in Morale
Internet access provides employees with plenty of resources and a whole host of information at their fingertips that allow them to do their job effectively. A lack of internet access may directly affect job productivity levels and lower overall motivational levels.
How To Keep Internet Outages at Bay
Don’t let network downtime from outages negatively affect your business. Knowing what causes internet outages allows you to address the risks before things get out of hand, take a proactive approach, and make informed mitigation plans.
When you lose your internet connection, you should put measures in place that enable you to switch to a redundant or reliable backup system.
LTE backup and Hybrid Bonded Internet, for example, can provide backup internet access and give you peace of mind whenever you face an internet outage.
Hybrid Bonded Internet
Hybrid bonding uses services such as Fiber, Cable, DSL, Wireless, or Mobile Data and bonds multiple lines into a single managed access.
The bonding hardware brings together various services, whether Cable with Fiber, multiple DSL lines, or a combination of various services, to provide a single-IP solution that provides high-quality internet access.
With Hybrid Bonded Internet, you can combine various service providers to create a fully dependable, resilient, single-IP network. If one service goes down, the bonded appliance dynamically manages data over working connections so you can keep conducting business without any interruptions.
LTE Backup
LTE backups work well for helping you maintain network connectivity and avoid service interruptions. These systems typically use a cellular gateway coupled with a SIM card to provide internet access using Mobile networks.
When you lose your primary connection, the failover kicks in to keep your devices connected.
Trust Your Top-Rated Carrier Agent-Consultant
When you need a business telecommunications partner, look for a reputable company with an impeccable track record. At TelcoSolutions, we have the experience and credentials to find the right business telecommunication solution for your needs.
With over 75 years of combined industry experience, we represent over 30 of the industry’s top carriers, providing the following services:
- T1
- VoIP-Hosted PBX
- Ethernet
- Cloud computing
- PRI
- Data center
- MPLS
- Cable internet
- Business phone
Contact our TelcoSolutions team at (800) 564-9810 for voice, data, and cloud solutions globally. Reach out for more information on what causes internet outages or to learn more about the reliability of fiber optic internet.