When it comes to business, your internet is not just a utility. It is the foundation your operation runs on. Once everything goes down, work stops. Team members cannot work, clients cannot reach you, and every minute that passes starts to cost you. Many businesses only realize this after an outage, when they discover their provider's so-called guarantee was just a sales promise and not a written commitment.
This is exactly what a Service Level Agreement, or SLA for short, is designed to avoid.
What Is an SLA?
A Service Level Agreement is a legally binding document that sets expectations between parties. It is an enforceable commitment from your internet provider that specifies the reliability of your connection and outlines the process and remedies if the provider falls short of these standards.
At Cygnal, we commit to 99.5% uptime. That means your connection is guaranteed to be available 99.5% of the time each month. Not "most of the time." Not "we'll do our best." A specific number, in writing, that we are held to.
What the Numbers Actually Mean
99.5% may sound close to 100%, but in practice it defines a very specific ceiling. Here is what it looks like for a standard 30-day month:
The monthly math
- Total minutes in a month: 43,200 (720 hours)
- Guaranteed availability: at least 42,984 minutes (716 hours)
- Maximum allowable downtime: 216 minutes — 3 hours and 36 minutes
What that means in practice
- That 216 minutes is the ceiling, not the target
- A full day of downtime is 1,440 minutes — 6x the monthly allowance
- If that sounds familiar, your provider may not have a written SLA at all
What Is Covered and What Isn't
A good SLA is clear about what counts as downtime and what does not. SLAs typically cover an overview, service description, a breakdown of the parties involved, and metrics such as uptime, response time, quality indicators, and resolution time. Without these metrics, there is nothing to measure and nothing to enforce.
Covered under our SLA
- Equipment failures on our side
- Power interruptions affecting our network facilities
- Any unplanned outage within our infrastructure
Not counted as downtime
- Scheduled maintenance, announced in advance
- Power outages at your location
- Equipment you own — routers, switches, Wi-Fi devices
- Issues within your internal network
- Natural disasters and force majeure events
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If your office loses power and your connection drops, that is not on us. But if our infrastructure goes down and takes your connection with it, that counts, and we are accountable for it. SLA terms also vary by business type in their exclusions, protocols, and indemnification clauses.
Why This Matters for Your Business
Downtime is not just an isolated IT problem. It is a business problem.
For BPO firms and call centers across Mindanao and Visayas, every minute the floor is offline is a minute agents cannot work. Multiply that by headcount and the numbers become significant. A single unplanned outage can mean missed call targets, breached client contracts, and penalty clauses you are now on the hook for.
For network-dependent operations, the domino effect goes further. Your clients have their own commitments to meet, and when your connection goes down, their operations slow down too. That is your reputation on the line, not just your provider's.
When your provider does not have a written SLA, there is no floor, no accountability, and no recourse when things go wrong. A written service guarantee does not just protect your uptime. It protects your business. It tells you exactly what your provider is willing to stand behind, and that is information worth having before you sign anything.
How Cygnal Manages It
Meeting a 99.5% uptime commitment requires proactive effort, not reactive fixes. Here is what we do:
Our operational commitments
- Continuous monitoring. We use network monitoring tools to track performance around the clock. As a provider, we are usually aware of an issue before you are. Once we spot something, we are already investigating it.
- Swift response times. When issues are reported during business hours, engineers are already observing the line and move quickly to resolve them. For clients with active monitoring, feedback becomes immediate.
- Direct access to engineers who know your setup. When an issue occurs, you speak directly to the engineer managing your connection, not a general support queue. The person you reach already understands your network.
- Advance notice for scheduled maintenance. When maintenance is necessary, we give advance notice, typically a month or more. It never counts against your SLA and is always communicated clearly before it happens.
If downtime exceeds your monthly SLA allowance, the difference is credited to your next bill. The commitment is in writing, and so is the accountability.
Bottom Line
Understanding what a Service Level Agreement actually means is one of the most important things a business can do before choosing an internet provider. Not all SLAs are equal. What matters is whether the uptime percentage is specific, whether downtime is clearly defined, and whether there is an actual remedy when the provider falls short.
If you are evaluating a new connection, our guides on dedicated internet access and how to choose a business internet provider in the Philippines cover what to look for before signing anything.