Downtime will affect your comms for 10 hours per year

Europeans comms networks have better than 99.9 per cent uptime, according to research commissioned by the European Network and Information Security Agency (Enisa).

The survey, which is part of a wider Enisa programme aimed at bolstering network resiliency in the European Union, reveals a mere 10 hours' downtime per year. Network availability varied by type of operator, with mobile operators reporting lower availability on average than others, but the vast majority of fixed and mobile operators reported having business continuity procedures in place.

Top threats to networks are hardware failure, software problems and location incidents (such as fire or flood), according to Enisa.

However, the survey found there is a wide range of other risks that operators need to manage, including "personnel incidents", making network resiliency a complex and challenging task. Operators should therefore also be more willing to share information on threats with each other - an issue identified by Enisa as a weakness around resiliency.