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Your NBN Goes Down. Then What?

Why Every Australian Business Needs a 4G/5G Backup Internet Connection

YOUR INTERNET IS THE BACKBONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. SO WHY DOES IT HAVE A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE?
Most Australian businesses run everything — phones, payments, cloud software, emails, video calls — over a single NBN connection. When it goes down, everything stops. A 4G/5G backup connection changes that. Here’s why it’s no longer optional.

The July 2024 CrowdStrike outage caused an estimated AU$1 billion loss to the Australian economy. The October 2025 AWS outage disrupted thousands of businesses globally within hours. But you don’t need a headline event to feel the pain, a cut fibre cable, a faulty node, a NBN maintenance window at the wrong time can take your business offline just as completely.

Australian businesses experience an average of 86 IT-related disruptions per year. That’s almost two per week. And with downtime costing small businesses between AU$137 and AU$427 per minute — and mid-market firms up to $5,600 per minute, even a short outage adds up fast.

The question isn’t whether your internet will go down. It’s whether your business will be ready when it does.

86
average IT disruptions experienced by Australian organisations per year		$427/min
maximum downtime cost per minute for small Australian businesses		80 min
global average Mean Time To Restore (MTTR) after an outage		AU$1B
estimated cost to the Australian economy from the 2024 CrowdStrike outage alone

What actually happens when your NBN goes down

It’s easy to think of an internet outage as an inconvenience. The reality is more brutal. Here’s what stops working the moment your primary connection drops:

  • Your phones — if you’re on a hosted VoIP or cloud PBX system, all inbound and outbound calls die instantly
  • Your EFTPOS and payment terminals — most modern terminals require internet connectivity to process transactions
  • Your cloud software — Microsoft 365, Xero, MYOB, Salesforce, your CRM, your booking system — all inaccessible
  • Your email — no internet means no sending or receiving
  • Your video calls and Microsoft Teams — client meetings, supplier calls, internal standups, all cancelled
  • Your staff — unable to do their jobs, sitting idle on your payroll

The average NBN outage restoration time is 4 hours for business-grade services. For best-effort residential-grade NBN plans — which many small businesses are unknowingly on — there is no guaranteed restoration window at all. You are simply in a queue.

Real scenarios where 4G/5G backup saves Australian businesses

💳  Retail — the Saturday payment meltdown
It’s 11am on a Saturday. Your busiest trading hour. Your NBN drops. Your EFTPOS terminals go offline. You can’t process a single transaction. With a 4G/5G backup connection, your payment terminals automatically failover within seconds. Your customers never know anything happened. Without it, you’re turning people away and losing sales you’ll never recover.
�UDFE5  Healthcare — the appointment system blackout
A medical centre or allied health practice with no internet cannot access patient records, cannot process Medicare or private health claims, and cannot confirm or book appointments. For a practice billing $3,000 per hour across multiple practitioners, even a two-hour outage is a $6,000 hit — plus the goodwill damage of turning away patients.
📦  Logistics — the warehouse goes dark
An Australian manufacturer or warehouse losing internet connectivity loses visibility of stock levels, cannot process orders, cannot print shipping labels, and cannot coordinate deliveries. Research shows Australian manufacturers can lose up to $260,000 per hour during an outage. A 4G/5G failover means operations keep running while your primary connection is restored.
💻  Professional services — the client call that never happened
A law firm, accounting practice, or consultancy mid-way through a client video call or document review when their NBN drops loses more than billable time — they lose confidence. A 4G/5G backup automatically picks up the slack. The call continues. The document uploads. The client never needs to know.

How 4G/5G backup internet actually works

A 4G/5G backup connection — also called a cellular failover or mobile broadband failover — operates on the mobile network independently of your fixed-line NBN or fibre connection. It connects to a different physical infrastructure entirely, which means a problem with your NBN node, a cut cable in your street, or a carrier-level outage has zero impact on your backup connection.

Here’s how the failover process works in practice:

Step 1:  Your primary connection is monitored in real time

Your router or SD-WAN device constantly checks the health of your primary NBN or fibre connection — measuring latency, packet loss, and connectivity. This happens continuously, every few seconds.

Step 2:  A fault is detected in milliseconds

The moment your primary connection degrades or drops, your failover device detects it automatically. No human intervention required. No phone call to your IT team. No waiting.

Step 3:  Traffic switches to 4G/5G instantly

Your internet traffic — phones, cloud apps, payments, email — is automatically rerouted over the 4G/5G connection. With SD-WAN technology, active sessions (including phone calls and video meetings) can continue without dropping.

Step 4:  Your team keeps working

From your staff’s perspective, nothing has changed. Their apps still work. Their phones still ring. Their payments still process. The outage is invisible.

Step 5:  Primary connection restored, traffic switches back

When your primary connection comes back online, your failover device detects the restoration and automatically switches traffic back — again, without any human intervention.

✔  KEY POINT
4G/5G backup is not a permanent replacement for your primary connection — it’s insurance. Mobile broadband is subject to congestion and has different speed characteristics to fibre or NBN. But for keeping your business operational during an outage, it is more than capable of handling all critical business traffic.

4G vs 5G backup — which does your business need?

Both 4G and 5G work as failover options. The right choice depends on your location and your requirements:

  • 4G backup — available virtually everywhere across Australia, including regional and rural areas. Sufficient bandwidth for most business operations: voice calls, email, cloud software, video meetings. Lower cost than 5G.
  • 5G backup — available in metropolitan and major regional centres. Significantly higher speeds and lower latency than 4G. Better suited to businesses with higher bandwidth demands — multiple concurrent video calls, large file transfers, or high-volume cloud operations.
  • Dual SIM failover — some businesses opt for backup connections across two different carriers (e.g. Telstra 4G and Optus 4G) for maximum redundancy. If one mobile network experiences a localised outage, the second takes over.

Broadconnect will recommend the right configuration based on your location, your business type, and your primary internet setup. In most cases, a single 4G backup connection is sufficient for small to mid-size businesses. Larger operations or those in data-intensive industries may benefit from 5G or dual-carrier failover.

What to look for in a 4G/5G backup solution

Not all backup internet solutions are equal. When evaluating options, ask these questions:

  • Automatic failover — does it switch automatically without human intervention, or do you need to manually flip a switch during a crisis?
  • Failover speed — how quickly does traffic switch to the backup connection? Seconds matter when EFTPOS terminals are involved.
  • Session continuity — can active phone calls and video meetings survive the transition, or do they drop and need to be re-established?
  • Carrier diversity — is the backup on a different carrier to your primary? A Telstra NBN outage affecting a Telstra 4G backup is not a backup.
  • Monitoring and alerts — will you be notified when failover activates, and when your primary connection is restored?
  • Managed or self-managed — does your provider manage the device and connection, or are you on your own when something goes wrong?
⚠  WATCH OUT
Some “backup internet” solutions require manual intervention to activate — meaning someone needs to physically plug in a device or change a router setting during the outage. In a real outage scenario, this defeats the purpose entirely. Always confirm your solution provides automatic, zero-touch failover.

How Broadconnect delivers 4G/5G backup for Australian businesses

Broadconnect’s 4G/5G backup internet solution is designed to be completely invisible until you need it — and completely reliable when you do.

  • Automatic zero-touch failover — no human intervention required when your primary connection drops
  • Compatible with all primary connection types — NBN, fibre, ADSL, and fixed wireless
  • Carrier diversity available — we can deploy backup on a different carrier to your primary for maximum protection
  • Fully managed service — we monitor, maintain, and support your backup connection so you don’t have to
  • Pairs with our Hosted Phone System — your calls continue uninterrupted during an outage
  • Pairs with Microsoft Teams Phone — Teams Direct Routing stays live on the backup connection
  • Australia-wide coverage — metro, regional, and select rural areas supported
  • 100% Australian-based support — when something goes wrong, you reach a person, not a ticketing system
Don’t wait for an outage to find out you needed this.

Talk to our team today. We’ll assess your current setup, recommend the right backup configuration, and give you a transparent quote, no obligation.

Call 1300 880 330  |  broadconnect.com.au

Frequently asked questions

How fast does 4G/5G backup internet activate when my NBN goes down?

With automatic failover configured correctly, traffic switches to your 4G/5G backup connection within seconds of your primary connection failing — often faster than staff even notice. With SD-WAN technology, active sessions including VoIP calls can survive the transition without dropping.

Will my EFTPOS terminals still work during an NBN outage if I have 4G backup?

Yes. Your EFTPOS terminals will continue processing transactions over the 4G/5G backup connection as if nothing has changed. This is one of the most critical use cases for backup internet, particularly for retail and hospitality businesses.

Is 4G/5G fast enough to run my business during an outage?

For most business operations — voice calls, email, cloud software, video meetings, and payment processing — yes. 4G delivers typical speeds of 20–50 Mbps, which is sufficient for most small to mid-size business operations. 5G delivers 100–400+ Mbps in covered areas. Your provider should assess your bandwidth requirements before recommending a solution.

Does 4G/5G backup work with my existing phone system?

Yes. Whether you’re on a Broadconnect Hosted Phone System, Microsoft Teams Phone via Direct Routing, or another VoIP system, your calls will continue over the 4G/5G backup connection during an outage. Inbound calls still ring through. Outbound calls still connect.

What’s the difference between 4G and 5G backup internet?

4G is available virtually everywhere in Australia and is sufficient for most business operations. 5G offers significantly higher speeds and lower latency but is currently available primarily in metropolitan and major regional centres. Your Broadconnect consultant will recommend the right option based on your location and business requirements.

How much does a 4G/5G backup internet connection cost?

Pricing depends on your location, carrier, data requirements, and whether you need managed hardware. Broadconnect offers backup internet as part of our broader business connectivity solutions — contact our team for a tailored quote. In most cases, the cost of backup internet is a fraction of the cost of a single hour of downtime.

Statistics sourced from Gartner, Pingdom, Uptime Institute, NinjaOne, and publicly reported incident data. This article is for informational purposes only. Broadconnect is an Australia-wide business phone and internet provider — call 1300 880 330 or visit broadconnect.com.au.