• A LightSpeed Networks survey found 45% of UK business connectivity buyers had encountered faults where responsibility between suppliers was disputed or unclear
  • Poor outage response was cited by 56% as a reason to change provider, ahead of price at 51%

The Fact

Almost half of UK business connectivity buyers surveyed by LightSpeed Networks said they had experienced a fault where responsibility between suppliers was disputed or unclear. The survey covered 401 full-time connectivity decision-makers between 21 July and 22 August. A further 34% said responsibility for resolving faults across their connectivity supply chain was not clearly defined.

Poor outage response was cited by 56% of respondents as a reason to switch provider, compared with 51% for price and 48% for poor customer support. The research was commissioned by LightSpeed, which operates its own fibre network and therefore has a commercial interest in promoting infrastructure ownership.

The underlying problem is not limited to that survey. Ofcom recorded 616 reportable resilience incidents across UK fixed and mobile networks between September 2024 and August 2025, affecting 12.7 million customers. Around 14% involved third-party failures, including cable damage from street works and failed backhaul supplied by wholesale providers.

The assessment

A business connection can pass through several companies even when the customer receives one service. The retail provider may depend on a wholesale fibre operator, while another supplier manages the router, firewall or wider corporate network. When the connection fails, finding the fault can therefore require work across several organisations.

That arrangement does not make a service unreliable by itself. Problems arise when nobody is clearly responsible for coordinating the repair. A business should know which provider will take the fault, contact the other suppliers and remain responsible for the case until service is restored. Those responsibilities are easier to settle in the contract than during an outage. For BTW readers, resilience depends on more than having a backup circuit. Businesses also need a clear owner for the incident when several suppliers sit between their site and the network.

What to watch

Watch whether business connectivity contracts put more detail around fault ownership, escalation and repair times. Provider disclosures on restoration performance would give buyers better evidence than general resilience claims. Also watch whether managed connectivity providers increasingly offer one incident-management point across access networks, equipment and other suppliers.