Short answer
FirstNet offers enterprise service levels covering availability, response times and restoration targets. On broadband links, availability targets and service credits follow the underlying last-mile provider's SLA, and FirstNet handles escalation, SLA validation and credit claims for you.
In detail: Broadband and last-mile SLAs
What applies depends on the access type:
- Business fibre: availability targets up to 99.5% on premium networks and 99% on standard, with a service-credit schedule.
- Dedicated Internet Access: defined SLAs with service credits aligned to the carrier's commitments, set out in your contract, on uncontended, symmetric bandwidth engineered for predictable latency, jitter and packet loss.
- Fixed wireless: usually an availability target of up to about 99%, with next-business-day fault restoration as standard.
- LTE/5G: best-effort, with no fixed uptime SLA. Temporary wireless, used while fibre is built, also carries no SLA and runs on a minimum six-month term.
Your exact targets are set out in your contracted service terms.
How a credit claim works in practice:
- The fault is picked up by monitoring or logged by you with FirstNet support.
- FirstNet's NOC works the fault with the carrier through to restoration.
- FirstNet validates the outage against the carrier's SLA.
- FirstNet submits the claim and passes the credit through once the carrier pays it.
You do not chase the fibre or wireless operator yourself, because FirstNet is the single escalation point across all underlying providers. For multi-site customers FirstNet works to standardised SLAs across its national footprint, with one escalation point, and monitored links come with alerts and monthly service reviews.
Support and monitoring run on different clocks. Standard broadband support runs during business hours with after-hours callout for severity 1 issues, and the exact cover depends on your service tier. Monitoring does not stop after hours: every managed router is on FirstNet's PRTG platform with SNMP up/down and bandwidth alerting, and the NOC handles incident response. Tickets go to support@firstnet.co.za or the support portal, and escalations run through your Service Manager.
When comparing providers, look at two numbers. The SLA is the promise on uptime, response and restoration. MTTR (mean time to restore) is how long outages actually last. A link can meet its SLA on paper and still hurt the business if each fault takes long to fix, because a fibre cut needs physical repair and a microwave link may need realignment or site access.
Service credits compensate for downtime but do not prevent it. For revenue-impacting sites, FirstNet's default design is a primary link plus a diverse backup, such as licensed microwave, LTE/5G, a second fibre on another carrier or LEO satellite, so traffic fails over while the primary fault is worked. If a site has outgrown best-effort broadband, Dedicated Internet Access gives committed bandwidth with defined, carrier-aligned SLAs.
Source: FirstNet Nationwide Last-Mile Connectivity service page →