Viatel Orion: Automatic Internet Failover for Business

Almost everything a business runs on now depends on its internet connection: phones, card payments, cloud software, VPNs to head office. One line fault and all of it stops at once. Viatel Orion is built to remove that single point of failure — and Bellcom supplies and sets it up for businesses across the midlands and beyond.

What Orion does

Orion is an intelligent network auto-failover service. You run two diverse internet connections — a primary and a secondary on a different route — and Orion watches both. If the primary fails, your traffic switches to the secondary within milliseconds, automatically, with nobody touching anything. When the primary recovers, Orion switches back just as quietly. Both connections are monitored remotely by Viatel engineers, and failover events are logged and reported so you know what happened and when.

Why it matters more for VoIP than ordinary failover

Plenty of routers can fall back to a 4G dongle. The problem is what happens to live services when they do: the connection’s public IP address changes, so VPNs drop, phone registrations re-negotiate, and payment terminals can refuse to trade. Orion is different because it provides a static IP stream engineered for real-time applications like VoIP and VPN — your address stays consistent through the switchover. In practice that means:

• Phone calls keep working — your VoIP phone system doesn’t see a new network, so it doesn’t stumble.
• Card payments keep working — Orion is PCI compliant, so you can process payments as usual even during an outage.
• VPNs and cloud access stay up — “guaranteed cloud access” for the applications your team depends on.
• Nobody has to do anything — no IT involvement, no rebooting the router, no waiting for a callout.

Who it’s for

Any organisation that relies on constant connectivity — which, honestly, is most of them now. It’s especially valuable for:

• Retailers who can’t afford a till that won’t take cards (see phone systems for retail).
• Healthcare providers and clinics where the appointment line must stay reachable.
• Professional services firms living on client calls and cloud systems.
• Manufacturers and multi-site businesses with VPNs and sites that need to stay linked.

How it’s delivered

Orion is a managed service: the connections are monitored by Viatel engineers, failover is fully automated, and you get reporting on any events. Bellcom handles the business side — scoping which two connections suit your premises (fibre with a diverse secondary, or options like 5G broadband where appropriate), installation, and tying it into your phone system so calls, payments and cloud access are all protected together. It pairs naturally with a cloud PBX, and it’s the strongest answer to the “what happens when the internet goes down?” question in our buyer’s checklist.

Protect the connection everything depends on

If a dropped line would cost you calls, sales or a working day, Orion is worth a conversation. Talk to Bellcom — we’ll look at your current connectivity and tell you honestly whether, and how, it should be protected.