30-second briefing
The briefing in three points
- Source-published evidence: in DHSC's voluntary 2025 survey, 70% of responding residential providers reported infrastructure for internet access from all locations in their homes; 14% said no and 10% were unsure.
- Care Circle analysis: speed, Wi-Fi coverage, connection continuity, local power and cloud-service availability are separate failure layers; strength in one does not compensate for failure in another.
- Editorial priority: define each care function's tolerable outage, test proportionate alternatives and preserve essential information or safe manual work when connectivity is unavailable.
A care service can have fast broadband and still be fragile. If digital records, eMAR, internet telephony, access control and monitoring ultimately share one circuit, router, power supply or cloud identity service, normal performance may be excellent while one fault removes several functions at once. A second connection helps only when it escapes the failure that disabled the first.
The government's What Good Looks Like framework already treats secure connectivity as a foundation of digital social care. It asks providers to have reliable internet of suitable speed, plan broadband capacity, provide robust Wi-Fi across care settings and equip staff with sufficient mobile connectivity in domiciliary care or where residential broadband is limited. Those are foundations for connection; they do not by themselves prove continuity.
Care Circle's thesis is deliberately narrower than a mandate for duplicate circuits. Resilience is the tested ability to keep priority care safe through disruption and to restore normal service. Sometimes that requires a genuinely diverse network path; sometimes stronger Wi-Fi, power back-up, offline information, a supplier escalation route or a rehearsed manual process delivers more value. The design must follow consequence, not fashion.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Yes | 70% |
| No | 14% |
| Unsure | 10% |
| Other | 6% |
Percentages are rounded. DHSC says the survey's findings should not be used to determine planning for adult social care as a whole; responses may refer to a single location or a wider organisation.
Fast is not the same as resilient
Source-published fact: Ofcom's Network and Service Resilience Guidance, issued on 16 June 2026, defines its regulatory concern through availability, performance and functionality. It explains that technology evolution can improve reliability while creating new risks through complexity and dependency, and it tells communications providers to assess criticality, minimise significant single points of failure and test failover in representative conditions.
Editorial boundary: that guidance is directed at communications providers under telecoms law; it does not impose its network-engineering measures on a care home. Care Circle uses the principles as an analytical lens. A provider should know which care functions share a failure point, how quickly loss becomes unsafe, what alternative exists and whether staff have seen it work.
The national survey shows progress – and a material assurance gap
Source-published evidence: DHSC's survey was completed voluntarily by 1,085 registered managers and nominated individuals in February and March 2025. Of responding residential providers, 70% said they had infrastructure or equipment allowing devices to connect from all locations in their care homes; 14% said they did not, 10% were unsure and 6% selected other. Across all respondents, 40% selected availability of good internet connectivity as a barrier to care-technology adoption over the next five years, while 41% selected improved Wi-Fi or broadband infrastructure as support they needed.
The official caveat is decisive: responses may describe a single location or a multi-location organisation, and DHSC says the findings should not determine planning for the sector as a whole. The figures are therefore signals from respondents, not prevalence estimates for every provider. Care Circle's interpretation is still useful: connectivity condition is not uniform, and uncertainty itself is an assurance problem when more care activity relies on the network.
Test three layers: premises, connection and service
The premises layer covers electricity, cabling, switches, routers, Wi-Fi coverage and the devices staff actually use. Strong Wi-Fi bars show only the local radio link; they do not prove that the external circuit or cloud service is available. Conversely, an excellent fibre service cannot repair dead zones, overloaded access points or local equipment that loses power.
The connection layer is the route from premises to outside services, including any fixed and mobile alternative. The service layer includes cloud applications, identity, telephony, monitoring platforms and supplier operations. This three-layer model is Care Circle analysis. It helps leaders place investment where it changes the care outcome and prevents a second circuit being sold as a cure for a failed local network or unavailable application.
Resilience begins with the care function, then follows every layer on which that function depends.
A backup route is useful only if it is sufficiently independent
Ofcom's guidance recognises common-mode failures, diverse connectivity, physical separation, redundancy and failover as material network-design questions. For a care provider, two branded services may still share duct, local exchange, wholesale network, router, power supply or configuration. Mobile back-up may avoid some fixed-path faults but can introduce indoor-coverage, capacity, power and device-configuration dependencies.
Care Circle's practical test is to ask the supplier to disclose the known failure domains, then interrupt the primary route in a controlled exercise and observe what happens under realistic demand. Record which devices move automatically, which require staff action, what remains unavailable and how the primary service is restored. Do not claim full physical diversity unless the supplier can evidence it; describe the actual protection achieved.
Continuity may be offline before it is online again
CQC's digital-record principles say providers should have contingency plans that make essential information available if the digital system is inaccessible. Its care-home business-continuity guidance includes power cuts, IT-system failures and cyberattacks among disruptions that require practical arrangements. These sources support an outcome – continued safe operation – not a universal technology specification.
Providers should decide which current information staff need through an outage, how it stays accurate and confidential, who authorises manual records, and how changes are reconciled when systems return. A connectivity fault and a cyber incident can initially look alike, but restoration decisions differ. NCSC guidance links cyber response with business continuity and notes that leaders may deliberately take systems offline; automatic reconnection must therefore sit inside an incident plan, not outside security control.
The same principle produces different answers across care
Residential services can influence internal networks but inherit very different buildings. In the survey's large-residential subgroup, 33% answered no to all-location infrastructure, but large providers represented only 4% of all survey respondents and the table does not publish the subgroup count; the result should prompt site checks, not a sector-wide conclusion. A group-level contract cannot show whether a particular bedroom, medication room or lift lobby is connected reliably.
Home care reverses the ownership model. Sixty-eight per cent of responding domiciliary providers said people they support arrange their own Wi-Fi, compared with 13% of residential respondents. The relevant response may be well-configured mobile devices, applications tolerant of intermittent connectivity, safe offline information and clear escalation. Supported living adds landlords, residents, councils and telecare suppliers; someone must retain an end-to-end view even when no single organisation owns every component.
Procure an assured outcome, then monitor it
Begin with a business impact assessment: which care activities stop, the maximum tolerable outage, the minimum safe information and communications required, and the point at which leaders must restrict activity or escalate. Ask suppliers for service boundaries, support hours, incident contacts, recovery objectives, maintenance notice, monitoring, evidence of path diversity and a live failover demonstration. Availability percentages are useful only when translated into the outage pattern the service can tolerate.
Operational assurance should then record primary and backup availability, failover activations, short recurring interruptions, cloud incidents and time to restore. It should also rehearse a combined loss of network and power, and a cyber scenario in which systems remain intentionally isolated. The board does not need router expertise; it needs a clear view of dependency, consequence, control, evidence and residual risk.
Questions leaders should ask now
- 01
What stops first?If the primary connection fails now, which care functions are unavailable immediately, which degrade, and which can continue safely offline?
- 02
Is the alternative independent?What physical, wholesale, router, power, identity or cloud dependencies does the backup share with the primary path?
- 03
Has failover been observed?When was the last controlled test, what load and devices were present, what did staff have to do, and what evidence was retained?
- 04
Can safe care continue offline?Which essential information and manual processes remain available, for how long, and how are confidentiality, updates and later reconciliation controlled?
- 05
Who coordinates the incident?Is there one escalation route across connectivity, managed IT, cloud applications, telephony and cyber response when frontline staff cannot know the cause?
The Care Circle view
Care Circle view: resilience is an operating discipline, not a product bundle
The evidence does not support a claim that every care home needs two fixed circuits. It does support closer attention to connectivity: government describes it as a foundation of digital working, DHSC respondents report both infrastructure gaps and uncertainty, CQC expects continuity when digital systems are unavailable, and Ofcom's network work shows why single points, dependencies, power and tested failover matter.
The mature question is not whether broadband is good. It is whether the provider understands what care now depends on it and can demonstrate a proportionate response to loss. That response may combine stronger local coverage, a diverse alternative path, power, offline capability, supplier recovery and trained staff. One connection can be an excellent service; resilience is the evidence that care can withstand its failure.
Continuing coverage
Follow the question into the later editions.
The January telecare transition is a care-continuity test · 9 October 2026
Develop the analysis
Read the connected flagship reports.
Digital continuity: can the care service depend on its systems?
Operational assurance: suppliers, equipment and resident voice
Sources, method & limitations
How to read this analysis
This rebuild audited quantitative and policy claims against DHSC's published 2025 survey findings, current GOV.UK digital-working guidance, Ofcom's June 2026 resilience guidance, CQC continuity and digital-record pages, and NCSC incident-planning guidance. The survey data are reported only for respondents and all interpretive architecture and procurement recommendations are labelled as Care Circle analysis.
- The DHSC survey was voluntary and collected responses that may refer to either a single location or multiple locations. DHSC explicitly says its findings should not determine planning for adult social care as a whole.
- The published table gives rounded percentages, not all subgroup bases. In particular, the exact number behind the large-residential 33% result is not published on the findings page.
- Ofcom's network-resilience guidance regulates communications providers; its design principles are used here by analogy and are not presented as direct duties on care providers.
- Availability data, supplier descriptions and contract terms cannot prove installed-service performance, internal Wi-Fi, mobile signal, power duration or failover at an individual care location.