BTnet SLA: availability, delivery and latency

What the BTnet SLA covers

Ordinary business broadband is sold on a shared basis. BTnet is different: BT's current service schedule for BTnet sets out three service levels, and each one comes with service credits, a reduction in your charges, if BT does not meet it. BT's help pages describe it as a 100% target availability SLA with money back if BT falls short, which also covers latency and installation.

These are BT's service levels, set by BT and measured by BT under BT's terms. BT's terms say it will use reasonable endeavours to achieve them, that they apply only to events within BT's service management boundary, and that credits are based on your monthly recurring site charges. They are not a promise from Forever Communications, and they do not mean a fault cannot happen. What they give you is a clear standard in writing and a defined remedy. The detail matters, because each credit has conditions and a deadline. The rest of this page goes through them in plain words, based on the version of BT's BTnet terms that applies to services bought from 18 July 2025.

If you already know you cannot afford to be offline, read this alongside resilient BTnet: the SLA compensates you for downtime, while a second access line is what keeps a site working through it.

Availability: the 100% service level

From the date the service is made available to you (BT calls it the Operational Service Date), BT's terms set a service level of 100% availability for BTnet. The wireless part of the service is excluded, so BTnet Wi-Fi coverage and throughput are not part of this measure.

How availability credits are worked out

If there is a qualifying incident, BT's terms provide availability service credits as a reduction to your regular (recurring) charges:

• One day's regular charges for the site for every hour of availability downtime on that service
• Part hours are rounded up, so 70 minutes of downtime counts as two hours
• Capped at 10 hours a quarter, which is the equivalent of 10 days' regular charges for the site
• Downtime runs from your report: BT measures it from when you report the incident until BT closes the ticket, in full minutes, within BT's support coverage period

Two practical points follow. First, the clock starts when the incident is reported, not when it began, so report a suspected outage promptly. Second, BT's terms ask you to report a qualifying incident to BT's service desk within two days of experiencing it; an incident that is not reported using BT's reporting procedures falls outside the service levels.

What counts as a qualifying incident

Not every interruption earns a credit. A qualifying incident is one affecting the service within BT's service management boundary. BT's terms leave out incidents caused by changes made to the service by you or on your instructions, by planned maintenance, by network configurations BT did not approve, incidents BT cannot confirm after testing, and test requests made when no incident had been detected or reported.

If you have a resilience option (failover, load balancing or a back-up line) and a qualifying incident occurs, BT applies the availability credit at the impacted site.

On-time delivery credits

When you order BTnet, BT arranges a site survey and then gives you a Customer Committed Date (CCD): the date BT provides on which delivery of the service is due to start. BT's on-time delivery service level is to deliver on or before that date. Delivery means BT has provided the dedicated circuit between your site and BT's point of presence and, where the service includes BT's equipment, that equipment configured.

If BT misses the CCD, the credit is a percentage reduction of your standard service introduction (connection) charges:

BT's terms say the reduction also applies where the circuit came with a free connection offer or as part of a three- or five-year contract. Some limits apply:

• If you and BT agree a revised CCD in writing, or BT revises it under its terms, lateness is measured from the revised date.
• The on-time delivery service level does not apply to upgrades or changes to the service unless each upgrade or change has its own CCD.
• If BT speeds up delivery, whether for operational reasons or because you asked, the original CCD stays as it was.
• Delays caused by you, or by a third party other than BT's own suppliers, such as not giving or delaying access to the site, are excluded.

Sites that need extra building work to bring the fibre in may face excess construction charges, which are agreed after the survey and can affect the timetable, so ask about them early.

Our guide to BTnet lead times explains how the CCD is set, and the installation process page shows where it fits in the order.

The network latency commitment

Latency is the time data takes to make a round trip. BT's terms include a network latency service level for BTnet, measured by BT on its own network:

• UK core: an average round trip of 20 milliseconds or less between BT's selected point of presence and BT's designated routers in the UK
• Transatlantic: an average round trip of 95 milliseconds or less between BT's selected point of presence and BT's designated transit routers at each end of the transatlantic link

The averages come from measurements taken every 10 minutes across a calendar month. If BT misses the commitment in two consecutive calendar months, the credit is one day's regular charges for the site. The commitment covers BT's network, not your office network or the wider internet beyond BT's designated routers.

We explain what latency means for calls, video and cloud apps, and how to check it yourself, on the leased line latency page.

How to claim service credits

Credits under BT's terms are claimed, so it pays to know the steps before you need them. In summary:

1. Report the fault promptly. BT's terms expect you to run your own helpdesk for your users and to report incidents to BT's service desk using the procedures BT gives you, which produces a trouble ticket. Report an availability incident within two days.
2. Keep the ticket and your reference. You need the trouble ticket number and your account or order reference for any availability or latency claim.
3. Claim within 28 days. Availability and latency credits are claimed within 28 days of BT verifying the incident, with the reason for the claim. On-time delivery credits are claimed within 28 days of the CCD, quoting your reference.
4. Check the invoice. Valid credits are deducted from your invoice within two billing cycles. If the contract has ended and no invoice is due, BT pays the credit within a reasonable time.
5. Raise disputes within two months. If a credit on an invoice looks wrong, BT's terms ask you to say so in writing within two months of the invoice date.

BT's terms say a claim not made in this way is treated as waived for that calendar month, and that only BT's own measurements are used to calculate credits. Your contract says where claims are sent. BT also publishes a short help article on how to make a claim against the BTnet SLA; if its wording differs from your contract, follow the contract and claim as early as you can.

If you buy BTnet from Forever Communications, we can help you put a claim together and follow it up with BT. See BT leased line support for how fault reporting works day to day.

What the SLA does not cover

BT's terms list situations in which the service levels do not apply. They are worth reading before you rely on a credit:

BT's terms also say a missed service level is not, in itself, a material breach of contract. And if you report a fault where BT finds no incident, or finds it is outside BT's service management boundary, BT may charge for investigating it. That is a good reason to check your own router, firewall and cabling first. With BT's router the boundary is the LAN port on that router; on BTnet wires only it is the network terminating unit (NTU) where the line ends.

How Forever Communications helps

Forever Communications is an Authorised Supplier for BT, so we can supply BTnet with BT's service levels in place and talk you through them before you sign. We cannot change BT's service levels, but we can help you get full value from them:

• Before you order, we explain what the SLA does and does not cover for your site and plan, so the decision about resilience is an informed one.
• At quote stage, we set out the CCD process, any excess construction risk and what that means for on-time delivery credits.
• After go-live, we can help you report faults in the right way, keep the records BT asks for and prepare SLA claims within BT's deadlines.

If you want to talk through BT's service levels for a particular site, contact us for a quote.