Business internet in Austria: fibre, leased lines, 5G and the providers, compared

In short: In Austria, “business internet” covers three product classes: best-effort access over fibre or cable, dedicated access with an SLA, and mobile 5G. What counts is the service description, not the tariff name. The large carriers run several of these classes side by side, and the pages we checked state no price for dedicated access. Which class fits depends on the address, the cost of downtime and the upload requirement.

What “business internet” means in Austria

Carriers sell business internet under similar names with very different commitments. Three classes can be told apart.

Best-effort access over fibre, cable or DSL. Bandwidth is offered up to a maximum and shared with other users. There is usually a minimum bandwidth, an availability commitment and repair times, but no reserved capacity. The price is normally in the public tariff.

Dedicated access. Depending on the carrier the product is called leased line (Standleitung), Dedicated Internet Access, Corporate Internet Access or TopInternet. Bandwidth is reserved, the SLA includes a repair commitment, and the price is set in a quote for the specific address. What that means in detail is covered in the guide to the leased line for business.

Mobile with 5G or LTE. Quick to put into service, no digging, no fixed bandwidth. Suitable for temporary sites and as a second path, see 5G backup and failover.

The table simplifies: the service description of the product is what counts.

Fibre rollout in numbers: where it is available

The RTR Internet Monitor 2025 (published 5 July 2026) counts about 14.9 million broadband connections in Austria. Of these, 81.5 percent are mobile and 18.5 percent fixed, about 2.77 million. Of the fixed connections, 75 percent have more than 100 Mbit/s and 60 percent more than 300 Mbit/s. By infrastructure, about 48 percent are DSL including hybrid products and 37.5 percent cable. Fibre to the home (FTTH) grew 19.5 percent year on year to 453 thousand end-customer connections.

For the availability question a different figure is more telling: according to RTR, 38.0 percent of potential connection objects could be served with FTTH, up 7.3 percentage points. That is a rate across all objects in Austria. It does not say whether your address is among them.

Other RTR tables show 2.6 million fibre connections that can be supplied, mostly FTTH and to a smaller part FTTB, where fibre stops at the building. That is coverage, whereas the 453 thousand are active FTTH end-customer connections. The figures cannot be combined.

The Breitband-Evaluierungsbericht 2024 (September 2025) reports gigabit-capable broadband for 75 percent of households. More than 99 percent of companies have broadband, and 78 percent use fixed connections with a download speed below 500 Mbit/s. These are national figures, not site data.

Availability is therefore a question about an address, settled before the lease is signed. National carriers, open fibre networks, and regional energy and cable operators can deliver, depending on the building.

Reading a service description: the five lines that count

For every customer site we read the service description before an offer is passed on. Most surprises sit in a few lines. Example: A1 Business Glasfaser Internet 1000/1000 (VX/IKB), valid from 1 October 2025. This is a variant on the open fibre network of Innsbrucker Kommunalbetriebe (IKB) and can only be used at certain sites. The values below apply to this variant.

“1000/1000” means best-effort bandwidth of at least 550 and at most 1,000 Mbit/s in each direction. Availability is 98.5 percent per quarter, with the Wednesday maintenance window from 1 to 6 a.m. excluded. Response time is at most 2 hours and fault duration at most 8 hours. Technicians work Monday to Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and outside those hours the clocks pause. Faults in the domain of the network operator IKB also stop the clocks. The minimum term renews automatically for 12 months, with 3 months’ notice according to the service description, or 1 month for small and micro enterprises.

Two calculations on top, derived from those values and not statements by the provider. 98.5 percent per quarter is roughly 32 hours of permitted downtime over 2,160 hours. And if a fault is reported on a Saturday at 6 p.m., the clocks run until 7 p.m., pause, and resume on Monday at 7 a.m.

These are the five lines we check in every service description:

1. Minimum or maximum bandwidth. “Up to” is a ceiling. Count the minimum.
2. Availability and measurement period. 99.5 percent per year is about 43.8 hours, 98.5 percent per quarter about 32 hours per quarter. The percentages are only comparable when the period is the same.
3. Response time, repair time and service hours. Response means someone starts work. Repair means it runs again. Both count only within service hours.
4. Static IP address and IPv6. Whether, how many, and at what cost.
5. Term, renewal, price indexation. In the A1 example the minimum term renews automatically for 12 months. Whether renewal is automatic, for how long, and whether prices are indexed decides when you can negotiate again.

The hours arithmetic behind availability percentages is in the SLA section of the guide to the leased line for business.

What the carriers document publicly

The list below reproduces what the vendors publish themselves, with access date. It is alphabetical, contains no ranking, and uses the vendors’ own product names. All statements come from the vendors’ published documents. Where we have not evaluated a vendor, it says so.

• A1: Business Glasfaser Internet 1000/1000 (VX/IKB) as a best-effort product with the values described above. We found no public service description and no public price for dedicated access at A1. (Source: cdn22.a1.net, service description valid from 1 Oct 2025, accessed 29 Sep 2026)
• Colt: IP Access or Dedicated Internet Access, symmetric up to 100 Gbit/s. Colt states up to 99.99 percent availability with high-availability options, a repair commitment “from 4 hrs” and service credits. (Source: docs.colt.net, IP Access datasheet, accessed 29 Sep 2026)
• Deutsche Telekom: We have not evaluated an Austrian product page. We collect offers per site.
• Drei: TopInternet as dedicated access from 2 Mbit/s to 10 Gbit/s over copper, fibre or radio, with an individual SLA, its own service operation center and a mobile backup add-on. TopInternet Lite is asymmetric up to 1 Gbit/s. The page states no price. (Source: drei.at, TopInternet, accessed 29 Sep 2026)
• Magenta: Corporate Internet Access from 2 Mbit/s to 10 Gbit/s with a 99.9 percent availability guarantee, optional 5G backup and an individual contract term. The page states no price. Magenta also lists Ethernet Private Line and SD-WAN. (Source: magenta.at, Corporate Internet Access, accessed 29 Sep 2026)
• Plusnet: We have not evaluated an Austrian product page. We collect offers per site.

Regional network operators such as Energie AG, Salzburg AG or kabelplus run their own line products. Salzburg AG documents 99.50 percent availability per year for Fiber:LAN, an Ethernet product for site networking and not internet access. kabelplus states 100 percent guaranteed bandwidth up to 10 Gbit/s for Business Glasfaser Pure Internet (sources: salzburg-ag.at, kabelplus.at, accessed 29 Sep 2026). Anexum also works with regional carriers such as Citycom, Energie AG, Salzburg AG, kabelplus and LIWEST, in addition to the carriers named on the Managed Business Internet page.

There is no best carrier, there is the right one per address: who has fibre in the building, which commitments you need (SLA, symmetric, static IP) and what the contract costs in total over its term. We compare several offers per site, disclose the options compared, and base the recommendation on availability, service description and total cost.

Fibre, leased line or 5G: the decision per site

Assigning a class by site type is our practice, not market statistics.

What decides is what a day of downtime costs at the site.

Leased line or fibre?

A leased line reserves bandwidth and commits to a repair time. Business fibre often delivers the same speed without the reservation and with softer commitments. For many branches and offices, business fibre with a 5G second path is enough, and we say so. A leased line pays off where downtime hours are expensive or servers must be reachable from outside.

Cost drivers and the decision aid are in the guide to the leased line for business.

5G as the primary connection?

It works for temporary sites, rural areas without fibre and quick openings, with limits on upload, static IP and data volume. See construction site internet and, for the second path at fixed sites, 5G backup and failover.

Anyone looking for the cheapest tariff will find it in a best-effort product for consumers or very small customers. For a business, what counts is the tariff plus what the outage it permits costs. We do not name prices here.

Several sites: one carrier or several?

One carrier for all sites means one contract and one SLA. Availability still differs per address, and an outage at that carrier hits every site at once.

Several carriers fit the individual addresses better and give resilience across providers, at the price of more contracts, portals and hotlines. That is where provider management comes in.

When several lines carry one shared network, SD-WAN can combine them. Anexum supplies and manages the lines underneath, while the overlay comes from the SD-WAN vendor or IT partner. How SD-WAN and MPLS differ is covered in SD-WAN vs. MPLS. For linking several sites see managed connectivity.

In practice: provider management for a construction group

An Austrian construction group has us look after most of its sites. We keep an inventory of all managed lines and contracts and provide provider management with proactive monitoring and reactive support. On top come regular check-ins and a service portal we tailored to the customer’s needs. The basis is described on our provider management page. The case in detail: construction group reference.

How Anexum selects

This is how we handle a site:

1. Record the address and requirements: bandwidth, upload, static IP, cost of downtime.
2. Query availability at the carriers.
3. Compare the service descriptions along the five lines.
4. Calculate total cost over the term: one-off costs, monthly fee, indexation, hardware.
5. Plan backup and monitoring together with the line.
6. Review the contract.
7. Coordinate the rollout.
8. Take over operations.

Anexum is not a network operator but is listed with the RTR as a reseller (entry 5265). You sign the contract with Anexum, Anexum is your contact and provides first-level support, and the carrier delivers and operates the network. When selecting, we compare several offers per site, disclose the options compared, and base the recommendation on availability, service description and total cost. Details of the offer are on the Managed Business Internet page, and how we compare carriers is set out in the benchmark methodology.

Want to know what is available at your address? Have a site checked.

Checklist: ten questions for every provider

1. What is the minimum bandwidth, not just the maximum?
2. What is availability in percent, and per year or per quarter?
3. What are the response and repair times, and in which service hours?
4. Are there static IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, and how many?
5. Is the connection symmetric?
6. How long are the minimum term, the renewal and the notice period?
7. Is there price indexation?
8. What one-off costs apply, for example house connection and router?
9. Is there a backup option over a different network?
10. Who is the contact in a fault, and how is it escalated?

Frequently asked questions

Which business internet providers exist in Austria?

There are national carriers, regional energy and cable operators, and international carriers. Anexum works with A1, Magenta, Drei, Deutsche Telekom, Colt, Plusnet and other carriers, and with regional carriers such as Citycom, Energie AG, Salzburg AG, kabelplus and LIWEST. We give no ranking. What the vendors document is listed above.

Who is the best business internet provider in Austria?

There is no best one, only the right one per address and requirement: availability in the building, commitments in the SLA, total cost over the term.

What is the difference between business internet and a leased line?

Business internet is an umbrella term. Best-effort products share bandwidth and give softer commitments. A leased line reserves bandwidth and includes an SLA with a repair commitment. Details are in the guide to the leased line for business.

What does business internet cost in Austria?

Best-effort tariffs are public, dedicated access is priced by quote, and the vendor pages we checked state no price. The price is set by access type, bandwidth, distance to the nearest network node, redundancy, SLA tier and term. More in the guide to the leased line for business, section on costs.

How do I find out whether my building has fibre?

Only with a query for the address. According to RTR, 38.0 percent of potential connection objects in Austria could be served with FTTH, which says nothing about your building. Ask the landlord or property manager about fibre in the building and have availability queried at the carriers. Anexum queries the carriers and tells you what is possible.

A1, Magenta or Drei: which provider is right for my company?

It depends on who can deliver in the building, which product class you need and what the service description commits to. We compare several offers per site and disclose the options compared.

Is 5G enough as a primary business connection?

For temporary sites and rural locations without fibre often yes, with limits on upload, static IP and data volume. At fixed sites with high downtime costs, 5G is usually the second path next to a fixed-line connection, see 5G backup and failover.

Have a site checked

Give us the address, bandwidth and desired date and we check availability. Have a site checked. If you already have contracts, the provider audit is the better starting point.

As of 29 Sep 2026. Vendor details can change.

Sources, all accessed 29 Sep 2026:

• RTR Internet Monitor annual report 2025: rtr.at/TKP/aktuelles/publikationen/publikationen/m/im/RTR_Internet_Monitor_Jahresbericht-2025_ua.pdf
• Breitband-Evaluierungsbericht 2024: data.breitbandbuero.gv.at/Publikationen/Breitband-Evaluierungsbericht-2024.pdf
• A1 service description Business Glasfaser Internet 1000/1000: cdn22.a1.net/documents/37417/187135/LB_A1BusinessGlasfaserInternet_VX_IKB_1000symm.pdf
• Magenta Corporate Internet Access: magenta.at/business/internet-festnetz/corporate-internet-access
• Drei TopInternet: drei.at/de/business/grossunternehmen/loesungen/top-internet/
• Colt IP Access: docs.colt.net/datasheets/connectivity/ip-access
• Salzburg AG Fiber:LAN: salzburg-ag.at/internet-tv-telefon/fuer-business/datenleitungen/fiber-lan.html
• kabelplus Internet: kabelplus.at/business/produkte/internet