Business internet for healthcare & medical practices
Healthcare can't tolerate internet downtime. EHR systems, telehealth, and patient scheduling depend on consistent connectivity. Cable cuts to fiber for almost all medical practices.
Top concerns we hear from healthcare buyers
- • Multi-location consistency (consistent service across all clinic sites)
- • HIPAA compliance and security posture
- • EHR system performance under load (Epic, Cerner, eClinicalWorks)
- • Telehealth video quality (consistent uplink critical)
- • Outage cost — patient scheduling, RCM, prescription lookups all depend on connectivity
- • Trust gap: lowest baseline trust score in our focus group (5.0/10)
What you actually need
Dedicated fiber (DIA) with 99.99% SLA at every location. Symmetrical bandwidth for telehealth uploads. A managed firewall with HIPAA-aware policies. SD-WAN if you have 3+ clinic locations. Voice continuity (your phones must stay up if internet goes down — auto-failover to mobile or POTS).
Compliance considerations
HIPAA doesn't require any specific carrier or product, but it does require that any vendor handling PHI (protected health information) sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). Most major carriers will sign BAAs for managed security or hosted voice products. The internet circuit itself is generally considered a 'transport' that doesn't require a BAA, but talk to your compliance counsel.
Recommended solution
Primary: Lumen or AT&T DIA fiber with 99.99% SLA at every clinic. Secondary: Comcast or Spectrum cable as backup behind SD-WAN failover. Voice: hosted UCaaS with mobile failover (RingCentral, 8x8, or similar). Security: managed firewall with content filtering and threat detection — Fortinet or Cisco Meraki are common. Compliance documentation provided by vendors that sign BAAs.
Carriers we recommend for healthcare
Lumen
Best price-to-SLA on dedicated fiber in most markets. Strong national footprint for multi-clinic operations.
AT&T Business
Strong Southeast and Texas footprint. Will sign BAAs for managed security products.
Comcast Business / Spectrum Business
Cable as secondary/backup circuit only. Never primary for clinical operations.
📞 Voice considerations
Phone systems in healthcare are mission-critical (patient scheduling, prescription requests, urgent callbacks). When internet goes down, phones must keep working. Recommended: hosted UCaaS with auto-failover to mobile devices, or a small POTS line for incoming critical calls. Avoid VoIP-only configurations without failover.
🛡 Security considerations
Healthcare is the most-attacked vertical. Ransomware can shut down a clinic for days. Recommended baseline: managed firewall with intrusion prevention, endpoint detection (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne), email security, regular vulnerability scanning, and a documented incident response plan. SASE platforms increasingly attractive for distributed clinics.
Get a healthcare-aware quote
Tell Byte you're a healthcarebusiness and we'll route you toward carriers and configurations that match your industry's reliability and compliance needs.
FAQ
Does my internet carrier need to sign a BAA?
Generally no for the basic transit circuit (the carrier doesn't 'handle' PHI in transit if it's encrypted). For managed security services or hosted voice, yes — they're touching configuration and potentially metadata. Always confirm with your compliance counsel.
Can we run telehealth over business cable?
Reluctantly. The 35 Mbps upload cap on cable can become a bottleneck during multi-provider video sessions. For meaningful telehealth volume, get fiber.
What about outages — what's our liability?
If your EHR is unavailable when a patient needs care, that's a clinical risk. Best practice: redundant connectivity (fiber primary + cable or fixed wireless backup, with SD-WAN failover) and a documented downtime procedure for clinical workflows.
How fast can we get installed?
On-net fiber: 30-45 days. Near-net (build required): 60-120 days. Cable: 1-2 weeks. We can confirm building-level on-net status instantly.