Short answer
Business fibre is highly reliable. It is the main connection for most businesses, but it can still fail. Last-mile cuts, provider outages and congestion still happen. So at any site where downtime costs revenue, FirstNet recommends managed redundancy alongside fibre: a backup link that we manage.
In detail: How reliable is business fibre internet in SA?
What FirstNet business fibre includes:
- Symmetric or asymmetric, uncapped service, uncontended on local (on-net) traffic
- A FirstNet-managed router monitored through PRTG, with 24x7 NOC support
- Availability targets up to 99.5% on premium networks and 99% on standard networks, with a service-credit schedule
- International contention capped at 1:4, and only during undersea cable failures
- Dedicated, uncontended variants for mission-critical sites
Reliability also depends on how quickly a fault is fixed. A fibre cut needs physical repair. So on sites where downtime hits revenue, FirstNet pairs fibre with a different kind of backup: - licensed microwave, which travels through the air instead of sharing fibre's trench - LTE/5G or fixed wireless, for fast failover - a second fibre on another carrier. LTE/5G is not affected by fibre cuts or cable theft, which makes it a strong fibre backup. Last-mile quality and repair times vary by region and provider in South Africa. That is why FirstNet designs across multiple providers rather than relying on one.