On Sunday 2 August, customers of Canadian telco Telus across several British Columbia towns lost their TV, internet and mobile service at once. The cause was not a cyber attack or a software bug. Someone stole copper wire. Terrace, Masset, Kitimat, Prince Rupert, Smithers, Burns Lake and Fraser Lake were all affected, and Telus said it immediately arranged roaming on another carrier so customers had some service while repairs went ahead.
It sounds like a remote problem, but the lesson travels well. Copper theft, roadworks, a backhoe through a conduit or a failed exchange can take a whole street offline in Sydney just as easily. If your EFTPOS terminal, your cloud accounting and your phones all ride the same connection, one cut cable stops the lot.
What this means for your business
The question worth asking is simple: if your internet vanished for a full day tomorrow, could you still take money and answer the phone? For most small businesses the honest answer is no, and the fix is usually cheaper than people expect.
- Have a second path to the internet. A mobile broadband backup on a different carrier is the practical option, because a backup that shares the same cable is not a backup.
- Know how to divert your phones. If you use a hosted phone system, work out today how calls get sent to a mobile, and write the steps down where staff can find them.
- Check your payments fallback. Many EFTPOS terminals can fail over to the mobile network, but only if that has been set up and tested.
- Keep offline copies of what you need. Customer contacts, supplier numbers and today’s bookings should not live only in a browser tab.
Outages are not rare events, and the businesses that cope well are the ones that decided what to do before the line went quiet. A short plan and one backup connection is usually the whole job.
Worried this affects your business? Get a free 15-minute IT check – call Trends IT on 0485 011 911 or visit /contact/.