Who is Responsible When Broadband Fails – 45 Percent of UK Businesses Don’t Know

A new online survey of 401 full-time UK business connectivity decision-makers, which was conducted by alternative UK broadband network provider LightSpeed Networks (company with a vested interest), claims to have found that 45% of respondents have experienced a fault where “responsibility between suppliers was disputed or unclear“.

The study suggests that clear accountability during a network outage remains a challenge for many businesses and 34% of buyers say ownership of fault resolution across their connectivity supply chain is not clearly defined, sometimes leaving businesses having to navigate multiple suppliers. This is despite the fact that 75% of UK business connectivity buyers believe cloud and AI adoption has made resilient connectivity more important.

Poor outage response was also found to be the most-cited reason businesses would switch connectivity providers, highlighted by 56% of buyers, ahead of price (51%) and poor customer support (48%). Clear accountability and confidence in fault handling are therefore becoming increasingly important parts of the provider relationship.

Suffice to say that 61% of buyers were said to now prefer providers with an end-to-end, owned and operated network, while 66% say knowing who owns the underlying infrastructure is more important to them than it was a year ago. Admittedly all this assumes that the problem isn’t within the businesses own local network, which is another possibility.

Ultimately, the provider most responsible for a network outage is the company that holds the contract for the relevant service, which takes on the responsibility for engaging whomever owns the underlying infrastructure – unless the network provider is vertically integrated.