What does a business broadband SLA actually cover?

What an SLA is actually promising

A service level agreement is a specific, contractual promise about how a provider will respond when something goes wrong, not a general assurance that things will not go wrong. The two parts that matter most are response time and fix time.

Response time

How quickly a fault gets acknowledged and worked on after you report it. This is often quoted in hours, and can vary a lot between a basic package and a premium care tier.

Fix time (or "time to restore")

How long the provider commits to actually resolving the fault, not just acknowledging it. This is the number that matters most in practice, and it is also the one most likely to be vague or absent on a cheaper package.

Service credits

Where a genuine SLA is breached, most providers offer service credits, a reduction on your bill, as compensation. It is worth checking exactly how these are calculated and claimed, since some providers make the process onerous enough that few customers actually bother.

What a basic broadband package usually does not include

Standard consumer-grade broadband, even when sold to a business, typically comes with a best-effort fix time and no formal service credits at all. This is fine for many small businesses, but worth knowing rather than assuming.

Questions worth asking any provider

• What is the guaranteed fix time, not just the response time, and does it apply around the clock or only during working hours?
• Are service credits automatic, or do I have to notice the breach and claim them myself?
• Does the SLA apply to the whole connection, or only specific fault types?
• What happens if the fault is with the underlying network rather than anything the provider directly controls?

How we structure this

We offer three care levels on business broadband specifically so the SLA can match what downtime actually costs at your site, rather than a single one-size answer. See our business broadband page for the specifics, or our guide on when a business needs backup internet for the layer that sits underneath any SLA.