Backup Internet for Business: What Retailers Should Plan Before Black Friday

Preparing for the upcoming holiday season for most retailers means stocking inventory and scheduling enough staff. But there's a critical task to add to peak-season prep: building network resiliency to ensure backup internet for business is in place when it's needed most.

Amid the rush of peak season, retail network traffic spikes dramatically. Payment processing, customer WiFi use, incoming calls and connected store tools keep the network in high demand. When all that activity depends on a single Internet connection, however, an outage can interrupt several essential operations at once and take down critical employee- and customer-facing services at the worst possible time.

Relying on a single circuit or carrier path leaves your stores exposed when revenue is highest. But, by planning for backup Internet before Black Friday, you can make sure you're ready for a primary connection failure in advance of the busiest selling weeks. If an outage occurs, properly configured backup Internet for POS systems and other critical devices can help keep services online.

For retailers operating multiple locations, even a brief connectivity disruption at a single store can impact customer experience, employee productivity, and revenue, making network resiliency an important part of peak-season planning.

Avoid a Single Point of Failure in Your Retail Network

Preparing for peak season in terms of network readiness means asking two questions:

1. Can the network handle increased activity for sustained periods of time?
2. What happens if our Internet connection goes down?

The first is a question of bandwidth (capacity to carry network traffic). The second is a question of business continuity. More capacity helps retailers support additional checkout lanes, more customers on WiFi and more connected store tools and systems, but it can't ensure that connections remain available during an outage.

An independent backup eliminates concerns about a single point of failure by providing redundancy. If primary Internet service is unavailable, circuit diversity ensures that a second path is ready to support essential operations.

What Is Circuit Diversity and Why Does It Matter for Retailers?

Circuit diversity pairs a primary Internet connection with a failover connection that uses a different access method, such as cellular connectivity. This reduces reliance on a single wired connection and provides another way for selected business critical devices to stay connected if the primary Internet service becomes unavailable. The two connections use different connectivity paths, reducing dependency on a single access method, and helping maintain connectivity if the primary Internet service becomes unavailable.

Define What Your Retail Internet Backup Needs to Support

The backup connection isn't meant to duplicate everything the primary connection supports but to help employees complete sales and serve customers temporarily. This means retailers need to design their backup connectivity plan based on the select devices and services they need to support during an outage, including:

• POS systems and payment terminals to complete sales
• Employee computers and tablets to check inventory and product availability
• Order management systems used to retrieve and fulfill online orders
• Devices used to manage BOPIS (buy online, pick up in-store) orders
• VoIP phone systems
• Customer WiFi service

Once those requirements are defined and prioritized, practical ways to add a separate path can be evaluated.

Add Backup Internet for Retail Stores with Business Connection Backup

Wondering how to protect WiFi and POS during an outage? Optimum Business Connection Backup provides automatic failover connection that offers retailers a practical way to add circuit diversity without redesigning or replacing their primary Internet service. It adds a separate path alongside a store's primary Optimum Business Internet service that uses cellular connectivity instead of a wired connection, acting as a complement to existing Internet service.

If the primary connection goes down for any reason, the service automatically switches over to cellular backup. While the wired connection is down, the wireless path supports the essential services configured to use the backup. Once the primary connection is restored, network traffic automatically returns to that connection.

Support Sales and Customer Service During an Outage

Business Connection Backup is designed to connect business-critical devices that support sales and revenue-generating activity. This layer of added resiliency can help your store remain available to shoppers when competitors without backup connectivity can't. It supports continuity by:

• Reducing the amount of time spent troubleshooting during an outage
• Providing up to eight hours of backup Internet connectivity
• Maintaining a way for customers to reach the store and complete purchases
• Reducing the risk of abandoned purchases due to interrupted payment processing and delays
• Avoiding transaction backlogs that build up during even a short outage

Pair Your Backup Connectivity with Built-In Security

Connectivity outages aren't the only disruptions retailers need to prepare for. Online threats can also affect sales, customer service and day-to-day operations. While Business Connection Backup helps address the loss of a primary Internet connection, Secure Internet helps protect your stores against online threats. Together, Secure Internet and Business Connection Backup add layers of security and continuity to the connectivity that your employees and customers depend on.

Plan Network Redundancy Before Black Friday

The busiest selling periods of the year are the worst time to discover a single point of failure in your network. Planning network redundancy before Black Friday gives you time to address vulnerabilities before the holiday rush.

If you start now, you have time to confirm coverage, test your setup, and resolve configuration problems that testing reveals. Whether you're a single site or a multi-location retailer, your automatic failover connection plan should be built using a consistent checklist that helps account for each store's requirements in terms of circuit diversity:

• Pinpoint the devices and systems that must stay connected, such as POS systems and payment terminals
• Review the setup of each store’s connections, including its primary and backup Internet connection setup and whether those connections share any dependencies
• Work with your Optimum Business Account Executive to determine which devices and services should use Business Connection Backup
• Make sure critical devices work over the backup connection and that traffic returns to the primary connection as soon as service is restored
• Track any unresolved issues through to completion and confirm readiness

Your Optimum Business Account Executive can help you review your connectivity strategy and build the circuit diversity and backup connectivity you need to keep transactions, customer experiences and operations running during peak season.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is backup Internet for business?

It's a second, separate Internet connection that takes over when your main service goes down. It keeps critical devices, like POS systems and payment terminals, online during an outage.

2. What is circuit diversity?

Circuit diversity pairs your main wired Internet connection with a failover connection that uses a different access method, such as cellular. Because the two connections don't share one path, a problem on one doesn't take down both.

3. Why should retailers set up backup Internet before Black Friday?

Peak season puts the heaviest load on payments, store tools, and customer WiFi. An outage then costs the most. Setting up early leaves time to check coverage, test failover, and fix any setup problems before the holiday rush.

4. Which devices should be connected to a backup Internet connection?

Start with the devices that bring in revenue: POS systems and payment terminals, order management and BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) devices, employee tablets used for inventory, VoIP phones, and customer WiFi. A backup doesn't need to support everything your main connection does.

5. How does Optimum Business Connection Backup work?

It adds a cellular connection alongside your Optimum Business Internet. If the wired connection goes down, traffic switches to the backup automatically. When service is restored, traffic switches back to the main connection on its own.

6. How long can Business Connection Backup keep my store online?

It provides up to eight hours of backup Internet, so the store can keep taking payments and serving customers while the main connection is restored.

7. Is more bandwidth the same as having backup Internet?

No. More bandwidth helps your network handle more traffic, but it doesn't help if the connection goes down. Only a separate backup path keeps you online during an outage.