Short answer
Last-mile connectivity is the final link from a provider's network to your premises, carried over fibre, radio or satellite. It largely decides the speed, reliability and lead time your site gets.
In detail
It is the hardest part of a connection to deliver, because it has to be built or engineered to each address. Fibre may need construction, wayleaves and landlord approvals, so lead times typically run from several weeks to months. LTE/5G can often be live within a few working days.
FirstNet's last-mile options:
- Business fibre on the major open-access networks, with availability targets up to 99.5% on premium networks and 99% on standard
- Dedicated Internet Access: uncontended, symmetrical internet for head offices and critical sites
- Licensed microwave, subject to a line-of-sight survey
- Fixed wireless and LTE/5G where fibre is not yet available, or as a backup link
- LEO satellite for remote sites, with typical latency of around 50 to 80 ms
FirstNet is carrier- and medium-agnostic, so it picks the access type per site after a site survey. For a fixed site without fibre, it checks licensed microwave first, then fixed wireless, LTE/5G and finally LEO. Where options are limited, it designs blended connectivity to meet performance and availability targets, and for critical sites it adds a diverse backup path.
FirstNet's Nationwide Last-Mile Connectivity service puts every site under one provider: a FirstNet-managed router on each link, PRTG monitoring with alerts, NOC incident response and one escalation point across all underlying carriers. On broadband, service levels follow the last-mile provider's SLA, and FirstNet handles escalation and credit claims on your behalf.
Source: FirstNet Nationwide Last-Mile Connectivity service page →