What an SLA actually guarantees
An SLA promises uptime and a target repair time, and pays out in capped credits you normally have to ask for.
What is your provider actually promising?
A service level agreement is your provider committing in writing to a level of uptime, a target time to repair a fault, and a credit if they miss. It does not stop outages. It defines what you are owed when one happens, and in practice that is a discount you have to claim.
What the numbers mean
| Uptime promised | Downtime allowed per month | Typically found on |
|---|---|---|
| 99.9% | About 43 minutes | Better broadband and entry-level business plans |
| 99.99% | About 4 minutes | Dedicated internet |
| 99.999% | About 26 seconds | Premium dedicated, often with a second route into the building |
| No figure quoted | No commitment at all | Consumer and most best-effort broadband |
The part people miss
What to check before you sign
- The uptime percentage, and whether scheduled maintenance is excluded from it
- Mean time to repair, the target for fixing a fault once reported
- How the credit is calculated, and the maximum it can reach in a month
- How long you have to claim, and who you claim to
- What is excluded: your own equipment, your power, anything beyond the network edge
How to actually claim one
Open a ticket while it is down
The ticket timestamp is the evidence. An outage you only mention afterwards is hard to prove.
Note when it came back
Keep your own record of start and end times. Your record will not always match theirs.
Ask for the credit in writing
Quote the ticket number and the SLA clause. Do not assume the ticket alone triggers the credit.
Check the next invoice
If the credit is not on it, chase it before the claim window closes.
What an SLA is not
It is not insurance. Credits are calculated against your monthly charge for the affected service, and they are capped. Some published business SLAs cap the monthly credit at as little as a single day of that charge. Even a bad outage typically returns a fraction of a month, nowhere near what the downtime cost you. If being offline is genuinely expensive, a second connection does more for you than a stronger SLA.
SLA terms differ by provider and by plan. If you are comparing on Telecom.live™, the SLA is listed on each plan, but the agreement you sign is what binds.
Last reviewed September 14, 2026
