UK Businesses Suffered Two Major Internet Outages Each in 2017

A new survey of 500 UK businesses by Opinium, which was commissioned by broadband ISP Beaming, has claimed that on average firms suffered two major internet outages each during 2017 and thus lost almost 82 million productive hours.

The good news is that an average of two outages during 2017 is roughly half the number from 2016. The bad news is that the total amount of productive time lost increased by 4% year-on-year, mainly due to the severity of the outages and it taking longer to restore service. The table below shows how this breaks down for different sizes of business.

The research suggests that small businesses still struggle with outages, although they also seemed to be more prepared for them. Just under half (48%) of the businesses surveyed said they focused on tasks that didn’t need the internet during outages, while almost a quarter (22%) said they switched to alternative connections (e.g. 4G).

Sonia Blizzard, MD of Beaming, said:

“Businesses today rely on the internet more than ever. But instead of getting better internet, many are simply getting better at managing the impact of a poor internet service.”

Smaller businesses suffer the most from internet outages because they are more likely to rely on broadband services designed for household use. The service level agreements on consumer packages tend to permit longer periods of downtime and don’t provide rapid access to technical experts that can address problems quickly.

Small businesses are taking steps to implement business continuity measures, but outages will undoubtedly affect their productivity. This is a hot topic when it comes to the wider economy.”

Investing in some good redundancy, where possible, would be a good way to cover some of these problems.