Standard Form of Agreement – Section B: 4G Backup Service

The 4G Backup Service is a mobile broadband Service supplied on a SIM card, designed to keep a premises connected to the internet while the fixed internet Service at that premises is unavailable.

It is a data-only Service. It does not include a phone number for making or receiving calls, and it is not itself a telephone service. Where a phone service runs over your internet connection, that service may continue to work while you are failed over — subject to the limits described in How failover actually behaves below.

Your Critical Information Summary sets out the Charges for your 4G Backup Service, its data allowance and any add-ons. The rest of this Section explains how the Service works, what it is for, and the things you should understand before you rely on it.

These terms apply in addition to Section A (General Terms), Section C (Common Terms) and the policies in Section D.

We supply the 4G Backup Service over the Optus mobile network. This is a different network from the one our mobile Services use — those are supplied over the Telstra Wholesale Mobile Network.

We are telling you this plainly because it matters. The wholesale terms on which we buy Telstra mobile services do not permit those services to be used as a back-up or failover connection, so we built this product on a different network rather than sell you something that could be barred later. See Mobile Services must not be used for machine-to-machine or back-up connections in our Acceptable Use Policy (Section D).

The practical consequence is that:

(a) coverage, signal strength and performance at your premises may be different from what you or your staff experience on a Telstra-based mobile Service at the same address, and sometimes on the same desk; (b) a site with excellent Telstra mobile coverage can still be a poor site for this Service, and the reverse is also true; and (c) during a regional or network-wide event, the two networks may be affected differently.

We do not own or operate the Optus network, and we do not control its coverage, capacity, technology or the timing of its upgrades or maintenance. See Our network and our Suppliers in Section C.

The 4G Backup Service is only supplied together with an active Lightning IP internet Service at the same premises. We do not sell it as a standalone connection, and it is not a substitute for a fixed internet connection.

This means:

(a) if your internet Service at that premises is cancelled by you or by us, transferred to another provider, or otherwise ends, your 4G Backup Service ends at the same time, and we will stop charging for it from that date; (b) if you move premises, the 4G Backup Service moves with the internet Service it is coupled to — tell us, so we can check coverage at the new address before you rely on it; and (c) we cannot leave the 4G Backup Service running on its own after the internet Service ends, even if you would like us to.

If you need a standalone mobile data connection, or connectivity at a site where no fixed Service is available, talk to us before you order. There are other products for that, and we would rather put you on the right one.

The 4G Backup Service is supplied month to month with no minimum term. You can cancel it at any time without cancelling your internet Service — see Ending your Agreement (by you) and After your Service ends in Section A.

The purpose of the 4G Backup Service is failover — carrying your traffic while your fixed internet Service is unavailable because of a fault, an outage, planned works, or damage at or near your premises.

While you are failed over, use the Service for whatever you would ordinarily use your internet connection for. That is the point of it, and we do not police what you do with it during an outage, beyond our Acceptable Use Policy (Section D).

What the Service is not designed for is ordinary day-to-day use while your fixed Service is working normally. It runs on a shared mobile network, it carries a modest data allowance, and its speed and consistency will not match a fixed connection.

If we can see that the Service is regularly carrying your site's normal traffic while the fixed Service is available and healthy, we will contact you and talk about it — usually it turns out to be a router configured to prefer the mobile path, or a fixed Service with an intermittent fault we should be fixing. We will work through it with you before we take any other step. See Fair use and network management in Section C and Charges, and use outside a genuine outage event below.

You must not use the 4G Backup Service for machine-to-machine (M2M) or Internet of Things applications — for example telemetry, remote monitoring, alarm or lift lines, EFTPOS or vending terminals, digital signage, fleet or asset tracking, or SIMs embedded in equipment.

The Service is supplied as internet failover for a premises. M2M applications have different requirements, different supply arrangements and different support expectations, and this product is not permitted to be used for them.

To be clear about what this restriction is not about: devices on your own network that use the internet during an outage — a printer, a security camera, a point-of-sale system, a building controller — are simply using your site's connection, and that is ordinary failover use. The restriction is about supplying the SIM as the connection for a machine or a fleet of machines in its own right.

If you need M2M or IoT connectivity, talk to us before you order or repurpose this Service. See our Acceptable Use Policy (Section D), which sets out how we approach restricted use across all Services.

The SIM for your 4G Backup Service may be used in equipment we supply, or in your own equipment — typically a router or firewall with a SIM slot or an attached 4G modem.

Where you use your own equipment:

(a) you are responsible for its compatibility, including whether it supports the network bands used at your location, and for its configuration, firmware and security; (b) you are responsible for how failover is configured — what the equipment treats as a failure, how quickly it switches, whether it fails back automatically, and what traffic it sends over the backup path; and (c) we will give you the connection settings you need, including the APN, but we do not warrant that your equipment will work with the Service.

This also sets the boundary for support. We support the SIM and the carriage service — whether the SIM is active, whether it can establish a data session, and whether there is a fault or outage on the mobile network. We cannot troubleshoot your router's failover logic, your firewall rules or your local network for you, and a problem caused by your equipment or its configuration is not a fault in the Service. See Faults and service assurance in Section C, Equipment and customer cabling in Section C, and What we are not responsible for in Section A.

Equipment supplied by us is covered by our Equipment Warranty and Returns Policy (Section D).

The SIM card we supply for your 4G Backup Service remains our property. You may use it only in connection with that Service, at the premises the Service is supplied for.

You must not:

(a) use the SIM in another service, or transfer, sell or lend it to anyone else; (b) resupply or resell the connection it provides; or (c) continue to use the SIM after the Service ends.

Keep the SIM and any account credentials secure, and tell us as soon as you can if the SIM is lost or stolen, or if you believe the Service is being used without your authority — see Keeping your account and Service secure and You are responsible for use of your Service in Section A.

If a SIM is lost, damaged or faulty, we will replace it at no charge. When your 4G Backup Service ends we will deactivate the SIM. We do not normally ask for it back, but if we do, please return it to us within 21 days.

Mobile coverage information, including any coverage map we or our Supplier publish, is a prediction based on modelling. It is not a guarantee that you will get a usable service at a particular place or time.

Coverage and performance at your premises are affected by how far you are from the serving cell, terrain and obstructions, building materials, insulation and window coatings, how many people are using that cell, and the time of day. Indoor coverage is usually weaker than outdoor coverage at the same address, and data services generally need a stronger signal than voice calls.

Because this Service runs on the Optus mobile network, do not judge it by the mobile phone in your pocket unless that phone is also on Optus. Good Telstra coverage at a site tells you very little about how this Service will perform there.

We strongly recommend that you test the Service before you rely on it:

(a) activate it and confirm it can establish a usable data session in the exact position the router or modem will live in — not at the front counter or outside the building; (b) run a real failover test, by disconnecting the fixed Service, and check that the things you actually need still work; and (c) repeat the test occasionally, and after you move equipment, renovate, or change your router.

Where signal is marginal, an external or directional antenna often makes the difference. If coverage at your site turns out to be unusable, tell us — we will work through it with you, and if we cannot make it work you can cancel the Service. Nothing in this clause limits your rights under the Australian Consumer Law. See also our Coverage and Service Availability Disclosure (Section D).

We would rather tell you this now than have you discover it during an outage.

When your fixed internet Service fails, your equipment has to detect the failure and then bring up the mobile connection. That takes time — usually seconds, sometimes minutes, depending on your equipment, how it is configured, and how the failure presents itself.

Failover is also not lossless. When traffic moves to the mobile network, your public IP address changes, so connections established over the fixed Service will drop. In practice:

(a) many applications reconnect on their own within a short time, and you may barely notice; (b) voice calls in progress, including calls on a hosted phone system, will usually drop and need to be redialled; (c) VPN tunnels normally drop and re-establish, and may need to be re-authenticated; (d) remote desktop sessions, large file transfers and video meetings typically drop and must be restarted; and (e) anything that relies on a fixed or known public IP address at your site will not work while you are failed over — the mobile Service uses carrier-grade NAT, so inbound connections, port forwards, site-to-site VPNs terminating on your static IP, and services you host at the premises will not be reachable.

A degraded fixed Service — one that is slow or dropping packets rather than fully down — may not trigger failover at all, depending on what your equipment is configured to treat as a failure.

When your fixed Service comes back, switching back causes a second, similar interruption.

If your site cannot tolerate this, the answer is usually a second fixed Service over a different access technology rather than a mobile backup. Talk to us about it.

We do not offer a service level, availability, speed, latency or restoration guarantee for the 4G Backup Service. It is not covered by an enhanced service level agreement, and the Customer Service Guarantee does not apply to it.

The Service may be unavailable or degraded because of mobile network congestion, a fault or outage on the mobile network, planned works or maintenance, insufficient coverage at your location, a power failure at your premises, or a fault in your own equipment.

Where there is a fault on the mobile network, our role is to report and escalate it to our Supplier and keep you informed. We do not control how quickly our Supplier restores it. See Faults and service assurance in Section C and What we are not responsible for in Section A.

Please treat this Service as what it is: a way of substantially reducing the impact of an outage, not a guarantee of continuous connectivity. If your site genuinely cannot be offline, talk to us about a second fixed Service on a diverse access technology as well.

Nothing in this clause excludes or limits any right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law.

The 4G Backup Service is a data Service. It does not provide a telephone service, and you cannot call the Triple Zero (000) emergency call service using it directly.

The Service also depends on mains power at your premises. Your router, modem and any antenna need power, and so does the equipment on your local network. If there is a power failure at your premises, the 4G Backup Service will not work — and in a widespread power failure, nearby mobile cells may also lose service once their batteries are exhausted.

Where you use a phone service that runs over your internet connection, that phone service may keep working while you are failed over, provided everything it needs still has power and the mobile coverage is adequate. It will not keep working in a power failure, and any calls in progress at the moment of failover will usually drop.

You should always keep an alternative means of contacting emergency services, such as a charged mobile phone. See Calling Triple Zero (000) in Section C. If anyone at the premises depends on a working telephone service for medical reasons, please read our Priority Assistance and Vulnerable Customers Policy (Section D) before you rely on any internet-based phone service.

Your 4G Backup Service includes a data allowance of 10 GB per billing period, unless your Critical Information Summary says otherwise. Usage is measured in both directions, uploads and downloads.

This is a soft limit. We do not automatically bar, shape or disconnect the Service the moment you reach it, and we will not leave you stranded mid-outage because a counter ticked over. The Service keeps working.

The allowance is sized for what a typical site uses across the outages it experiences in a month. It is not sized to be a full internet plan, which is why using the Service as your everyday connection will run through it quickly.

Unused data does not carry over to the next billing period, and this Service does not have data banking.

We will let you know as you approach and pass the allowance, using the contact details on your account. Usage information we show you is indicative and may not reflect all usage immediately. See Usage information and spend management in Section A.

If you exceed the 10 GB allowance because your fixed internet Service was genuinely unavailable, we will waive the excess usage Charges for that billing period. That is what the Service is for, and charging you extra for using it during an outage would defeat the purpose of selling it to you.

By a genuine outage event we mean a period during which your Lightning IP internet Service at the premises was unavailable, or so degraded that it could not carry your normal traffic, because of:

(a) a fault in the fixed Service, in the access network, or in an upstream network; (b) planned works, maintenance or an upgrade affecting the fixed Service; (c) physical damage at or near your premises, including a cable cut or damage to network infrastructure; or (d) a wider disruption such as a storm, flood, fire, or a Force Majeure Event.

You generally will not have to prove any of this. We can usually confirm an outage ourselves from our own fault records, our Suppliers' outage information, and the state of the Service. If we cannot see it from our side, we will ask you what happened, and a short explanation from you is enough — in the ordinary case we will take your word for it.

We apply this generously and at the level of the billing period. We are not going to itemise which gigabyte belongs to which hour of an outage, or argue about the tail end of a bad week.

What is not a genuine outage event is traffic that went over the backup while the fixed Service was working and available — for example because of a router configured to prefer the mobile path, a test that was left running, or the SIM being used in another device.

The Charges for your 4G Backup Service — the recurring Charge, and the rate for any excess data — are set out in your Critical Information Summary and our price list, not in these terms. Charges are billed and payable in accordance with Charges, billing and payment in Section A.

Where usage exceeds the soft limit and it is not attributable to a genuine outage event, we will contact you before we charge you for the excess. We will tell you what we have seen and when, and give you a chance to explain or fix it. We do not put unexpected excess data Charges on a bill without talking to you first.

Depending on what we find, we may:

(a) waive the excess anyway, particularly the first time it happens; (b) help you identify and correct the configuration that is sending normal traffic over the backup path; (c) suggest a plan or a product that suits how the connection is actually being used; or (d) charge for the excess usage at the rate in your Critical Information Summary, where the use continues after we have raised it with you.

If the Service continues to be used as a primary connection rather than for failover, we may manage it under Fair use and network management in Section C and our Acceptable Use Policy (Section D). We will follow the escalating approach in How we apply our rights to restrict, suspend and cancel in Section A, we will act reasonably, and we will do no more than is necessary to deal with the issue.

If you think a Charge on your bill is wrong, you can dispute it — see If you think your bill is wrong in Section A. There is no time limit on raising a billing dispute with us.