Importance of business internet continuity

Network business continuity is a plan to keep your interconnected physical and virtual hardware, software, and devices up and running in the event of disruptions like power outages, cyberattacks, and other unexpected incidents. It also helps you restore services quickly and automatically if there’s a disruption.

If your network is down, it’s likely that your internet service will be affected as well. Not only are your operations disrupted, but you can’t effectively serve your customers. Having a network redundancy plan for both systems helps ensure that your business stays active, your operations continue, and you protect yourself from related costs and lost revenue.

A network outage can be very costly. Over a quarter of global businesses report losing $5 million or more annually due to network outages or poor performance, and small businesses risk losing their reputation as a reliable local partner.¹

Rather than wait until a critical failure occurs, your business can maintain operations with an effective and well-maintained network business continuity plan.

Network business continuity is a proactive strategy to make sure that your company’s network stays active, despite outages or disruptions. It includes backup connectivity, automatic failovers for business continuity that switches on in the event of an outage, business internet continuity, and cloud-based support. Your multi-layer strategy needs to cover all locations and aspects of your business.

What can cause a business network outage? There’s no number one cause, but it can be:

An effective strategy keeps you prepared regardless of whether the outage is caused outside of your business, which may be beyond your control, or within your business. It also includes redundancies, regular evaluations and tabletop exercises, and layered protections that help prevent further problems. You may even include backup generators in your plan to make sure you have power.

The responsibilities for network business continuity typically fall to your IT department, but you may have a managed service provider on call to help as well. And because network disruptions may be caused by cybersecurity events, it’s a shared responsibility of all employees to understand common threats and the prevention plans you have in place. Your plan can protect your business from financial, reputational, and even compliance impacts.

Simply put, an effective business continuity strategy prevents loss—loss of productivity, revenue, reputation, customer trust, and more. All of these, as well as the costs associated with recovery and repair, are protected.

Because your internet connectivity is likely to be affected, your continuity plan needs to include a layer for business internet continuity. This plan includes redundancies and a recovery plan specifically for your business fiber internet and other network components to prevent or minimize the damaging effects of downtime. That downtime is felt by a business of any size, even a small business.

Regardless of the size, industry, products or services, having a solid business continuity plan helps to ensure seamless operations. Most importantly, it helps to reduce the negative impact interruptions can have.

Financial impact

Downtime can result in lost sales, operational delays, and high expenses to restore services. In one report, small businesses average $427 per minute for downtime, and mid-sized enterprises average $9,000 per minute. For large enterprises, downtime can range from $9,000 per minute to a whopping $23,750 per minute.²

Included in this cost are network repairs, which are highly variable, especially when you have to rely on a third party to restore connectivity.

Reputation risk

A network outage can damage customer trust and cause churn and attrition. Customers may not be able to submit orders. You can’t access their data or process orders, or you may not be able to function at all. Not to mention, if your outage is caused by a cyber breach, both business and customer data can be jeopardized. All this creates a poor service experience. According to Gartner, up to 80% of customers will leave for a competitor due to poor service.³

Compliance

Network compliance and interruptions are linked. In heavily regulated industries like healthcare and financial services, uninterrupted service is critical for meeting regulatory and compliance requirements. An interruption to network services may result in legal liabilities, compliance violations, and legal fees. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), for example, can levy substantial fines on financial services firms for off-network communications that may occur if your network is unavailable.

A solid network business continuity plan enables you to minimize, if not avoid, these consequences. This includes data backups, recovery, and notifying others about any issues.

While there are best practices for network business continuity, your plan must be unique to your business. It’s important to be thorough and identify each and every operation, application, and system that must remain operational during any network outages.

In building your network business continuity plan, consider:

And for ensuring maintenance of your plan:

Although your plan is designed to prevent downtime, it’s good to have a backup plan for recovery. It enables you to outline the acceptable amount of downtime and data loss you can incur until network services are restored.

In addition, you need to have a plan in place for communicating the outage and its impact on your customers. Once you’ve determined your tolerances for certain network scenarios and have a communications plan, it may be time to employ a professional to give you peace of mind that your plan will run smoothly when an outage occurs.

Business continuity solutions and services keep your essential processes, applications, data, workspaces, and networks running smoothly. They may include preparation for and identification of disruptive network events, and a way to automatically and securely backup your data. If the worst does happen and you have downtime, they include a way to recover your data so you can mitigate your losses, recover your data, and resume operations as quickly as possible.

Failover systems

An effective failover system is layered with redundancies that duplicate the primary system. It includes continuous monitoring of the network and its components. Failover clusters—equipment, software, networks, and servers—are included as either continuous availability, which prevents data loss if a primary system fails, or high availability, which aims to minimize downtime.

[Read: What is a failover for business continuity?]

Managed services

An experienced managed services provider for IT systems can be an essential part of your continuity plan. They need to support disaster recovery, system integration, and critical updates across your network. Make sure that they offer not only management but monitoring and support for your network business continuity.

Your managed services provider may include software-defined wide area networking (SD-WAN), which can automatically and seamlessly re-route traffic and deliver other layers for continuity.  

Cloud-based solutions 

Cloud-based solutions ensure business-critical data is securely backed up and easily recoverable. Reliable and secure cloud infrastructure should be flexible and scalable. Effective cloud-based solutions, which might be included in your managed services, can use automated and customized alerts to both manage traffic and maintain service availability across multiple locations.

Cybersecurity and data protection

Internet access is a gateway into your network where threats can activate, taking down your operations. A cybersecurity plan needs to be the foundation for your network infrastructure with security that starts at the network to help prevent disruption.

As another part of your managed services, Cybersecurity as a Service (CSaaS), which is managed security that may include cloud-based support, is a solid option. Your provider monitors your network, makes sure patches and updates are deployed on time, and is available in the event a disruption does occur.

[Read: What is network security? A new model for protecting business]

Internet redundancy

Fixed wireless access (FWA) is an easy, accessible backup to your business fiber internet. It has no wired connection. It’s also helpful when fiber isn’t available at your locations, providing the speed and reliability your business needs in connectivity. Our solution, AT&T Internet Air for Business, provides this versatility.

In total, a comprehensive network continuity plan manages, monitors, and protects your network and internet infrastructure. It also mitigates the risks and potential impacts of downtime while protecting your operations, data, and most importantly, your customers.

There are a lot of components to a continuity plan. We can help. We offer consulting and professional services, and a suite of managed services—including managed SD-WAN solutions—so you can better understand your options. We also work to create diverse connection options across fiber, fixed wireless, and other technologies to help ensure continuous connectivity.

Learn more about AT&T Business solutions that can help maintain business continuity during unexpected interruptions. To connect with an expert who knows business, contact your AT&T Business representative.

See how ultra-fast, reliable fiber, protected by built-in security and 5G connectivity give you a new level of confidence in the possibilities of your network. Let our experts work with you to solve your challenges and accelerate outcomes. Your business deserves the AT&T Business difference—a new standard for networking.

¹ "28% of businesses lose $5M annually from network failures, says report," Light Reading, July 1, 2025, https://www.erwoodgroup.com/blog/the-true-costs-of-downtime-in-2025-a-deep-dive-by-business-size-and-industry/
² Keith Erwood, “The True Cost of Downtime in 2025: A Deep Dive by Business Size and Industry,” Erwood Group, June 16, 2025, https://www.atlassian.com/incident-management/kpis/cost-of-downtime.
³ “Cost of Downtime: Downtime Impact on Customer Satisfaction: Why Every Minute Matters,” FasterCapital, April 11, 2025, https://fastercapital.com/content/Cost-of-Downtime--Downtime-Impact-on-Customer-Satisfaction--Why-Every-Minute-Matters.html#How-Downtime-Affects-Your-Customers-