Why is backup power so important in the telecommunications industry? Is monitoring battery state-of-health in these systems worth the extra cost? To determine this, it’s important to look at how much it will cost you if your network goes down.

1. Short-term loss of revenue

Loss as a result of service level agreements with customers (most high-value, enterprise users) is estimated at $11,000 per minute, per server. If each server is down for the average downtime of 526 minutes per year, that’s an annual cost of $5,786,000 per server! Multiply that by how many servers you have on site and the cost is astronomical.

2. Long-term loss of revenue

If you think the short-term loss of revenue is bad, the long-term loss can be worse. If customers are unsatisfied with the level of downtime that they experience, they will switch to a new service provider. That means losing entire contracts and the revenue that each brings in.

3. Diminished employee productivity

Employee productivity will diminish. In the event of an outage, employees will have to focus their efforts on troubleshooting during the outage and catching up on normal work after the outage is over. Also, after the outage, some employees will have to devote time to figuring out why it occurred and how to prevent it from happening in the future. Again, taking time away from their normal responsibilities.

4. Damage to equipment and other assets

The hardware used in many telecom environments is fragile and the software corruptible. If downtime occurs, the hardware can break and the software can become corrupt. Neither of these is a cheap or easy fix and leads to longer downtime.

5. Diminishment brand reputation

They say you’re only as good as your reputation. If you have downtime that results in a loss of data, your reputation will diminish. This will affect your public brand persona, making it difficult to gain new customers. This is extremely costly and has a long-term effect on the health and growth of your network.

Although downtime is not completely unavoidable, you can ensure the best possible operating environment by making sure your UPS system is always ready to operate at a moment’s notice. Regular maintenance and monitoring of UPS batteries are a must. You can learn more about our battery monitoring options by clicking here.