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Get Prices → 📞 0121 268 0121Your broadband goes down. Card machines stop working. VoIP calls drop. Staff can't access cloud systems. Customers leave. Every minute of downtime costs money. Failover internet is the solution — here's everything you need to know.
Failover internet is a secondary internet connection that activates automatically when your primary connection fails. The switchover is seamless — typically within 30–60 seconds — and most businesses don't even notice it happening.
Think of it like a generator for your internet. You hope you never need it, but when the power (or in this case, the broadband) goes out, it kicks in and keeps everything running.
Failover internet is a secondary internet connection that activates automatically when your primary connection fails. The switchover is seamless — typically within 30–60 seconds — and most businesses don't even notice it happening.
Think of it like a generator for your internet. You hope you never need it, but when the power (or in this case, the broadband) goes out, it kicks in and keeps everything running.
A failover router (like our Assure X platform) monitors your primary broadband connection in real time. If it detects a failure — no signal, failed ping tests, loss of routing — it instantly switches all traffic to the backup connection. When the primary recovers, traffic switches back automatically.
A 4G/5G SIM-based connection is the most common failover solution. A small 4G/5G router is installed alongside your main router. It has a SIM card from a mobile network and provides instant internet access if your main line drops. Advantages:
Starlink makes an excellent failover because it is geographically independent from ground-based networks. A fibre cable cut affecting your whole street or town won't affect Starlink. Particularly valuable for:
For the highest possible uptime, some businesses install two separate leased lines on different physical routes into their building. If one is cut, the other continues. This is used by financial services, data centres and businesses with zero-downtime requirements. Expensive, but provides carrier-grade resilience.
The honest answer: most businesses do. Ask yourself these questions:
If you answered yes to two or more of these, failover internet is not optional — it's essential.
Failover only uses the secondary connection when the primary fails. Load balancing uses both connections simultaneously, splitting traffic between them for combined bandwidth. For most businesses, failover is sufficient and simpler. Load balancing is useful when you need more bandwidth than either single connection provides alone.
VoIP calls are particularly sensitive to connectivity. If your broadband drops during a call, the call drops instantly. Failover protects against this — the Assure X platform maintains the VoIP connection through the transition.
We configure all Telexico VoIP installations with automatic call divert as a second layer of protection. If internet failover takes more than a few seconds, incoming calls automatically divert to a mobile number — so customers always reach someone, even during an outage.
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"Switched our entire office phone system and broadband. The team handled everything, zero downtime. Saving over £200 a month compared to our old BT contract."
"Had failover installed after losing internet for a whole day. Assure X kicks in within seconds. Our team didn't even notice when the main line dropped last week."
"Our dental practice needed reliable phones and fast broadband. Telexico sorted everything in one visit. The AI receptionist handles after-hours calls brilliantly."
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