“At Applied we’ve been using Bellcom for our phones and internet services for years and couldn’t be happier with the service provided. Everything has been reliable, professional, and handled quickly whenever we needed support. A special mention to Joe, who has always been fantastic with backup service and support. He’s always helpful, responsive, and goes the extra mile to make sure everything is sorted with minimal hassle. Highly recommend Bellcom to anyone looking for reliable phone and internet services along with excellent customer support.”
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.
What happens when the line drops
The same Tuesday-morning outage at a small business — a reception phone, two desk phones, a card terminal and a cloud diary — played out twice: once on a single connection, once with Orion in place.
| Time | Without Orion | With Orion |
|---|---|---|
| 11:40The main broadband line fails | Everything on the line stops at once. The desk phones lose their registration and callers hear ringing out. The card terminal declines the next payment. The cloud diary and email won’t load. | Orion sees the primary drop and moves traffic to the secondary connection within milliseconds. Because the public IP address doesn’t change, the phones never see a new network — calls carry on, the card terminal keeps trading, the diary keeps syncing. |
| 11:50Ten minutes in | Someone is on hold to the broadband provider from a personal mobile. A “phones are down, ring the mobile” post goes up on social media. Two people who rang out have booked somewhere else. | Nobody in the building has noticed. The failover is logged and reported, so the fault on the main line can be chased while the business carries on as normal. |
| 13:05The main line comes back | The phones re-register. Nobody knows how many calls were missed in the 85 minutes in between. Card payments taken on a phone app need reconciling. The afternoon starts with catch-up. | Orion switches back to the primary connection automatically, just as quietly. Customer-facing downtime for the whole event: none. |
A worked example, not a specific customer. Bellcom scopes the second connection to suit the premises — fibre with a diverse secondary route, or 5G broadband where appropriate — and ties Orion into the phone system, so both switches happen without anyone touching anything.
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.
Frequently asked questions
Orion switches your traffic to the secondary connection within milliseconds, automatically, and switches back when the primary recovers. No manual intervention is needed.
Yes - Orion provides a static IP stream engineered for real-time applications like VoIP and VPN, and it is PCI compliant, so phones and payment terminals carry on as normal.
Yes - a primary and a secondary on a diverse route. Bellcom scopes the right pair for your premises, which can include fibre with a different secondary or 5G broadband where suitable.
Both connections are monitored remotely by Viatel engineers, and failover events are logged and reported so you know what happened and when.
Any organisation that relies on constant connectivity - retailers taking card payments, clinics with appointment lines, professional firms, manufacturers and multi-site businesses using VPNs.