Offline Means Out of Business: The Crucial Role of Backup Internet Connections

Think beyond your mobile phone?hotspot

What do you need in a crisis? In my view, you need three things:

1. Food and water
2. Energy
3. Information

As a private person, if you have two of the three things, and if you’re well connected in your local community, you will be able to somehow get access to the third.

What about businesses??

Food and water storage are often disregarded in business?—?hey, your employees are responsible themselves for their food. Correct, but they won’t last very long if they are starving and thirsty.

Businesses are still overwhelmingly dependent on the electricity grid, and backup plans are still a thing for idealists and preppers ?—?hey, this will cost you, and therefore impact your bottom line. Correct, but your bottom line will be impacted much more if you’re affected by serious power outages than by installing some backup capacities.

What about information? Even if you have backup electricity capacities, an internet outage affects most businesses just as severely as a power outage. In contrast to installing backup electricity capacities, installing a backup internet connection is surprisingly cheap and easy.

On a sunny summer morning in July 2022, I felt it was time to call my internet service provider to ask about their contingency plans.

Me:

“Hi, I wanted to ask about your redundancies in the fiber internet network.“

Them:

“How do you mean, redundancies?”

Me:

“Well, can you tell me what happens to your internet network in case of power rationing, or even a power outage?”

Them:

“Hm, I guess we have preparation plans. But I don’t know exactly to be honest.”

I stopped asking any further questions. I understood from that call that I would have to look for options myself.

Option 1: Rely on mobile?hotspot

In normal times, when my internet connection occasionally breaks off, I just switch to the mobile hotspot for a while, and all is good. But given that my mobile subscription is from the same provider as my broadband internet connection and that this provider doesn’t know much about its redundancies, I’d rather not rely on the mobile hotspot for extended periods during an energy crisis.

Option 2: More of the?same

I am using a Ubiquiti UDMpro Firewall with two WAN ports, so I can easily connect two routers from two different internet providers. So it would be easy to order a second broadband internet subscription from a different provider.

There are two problems with that.

First, the fiber network in Switzerland is shared by competing providers. This is the result of political meddling, going back to the beginnings of the privatization of the state telephone company back in the 1990s. Specifically, it means that the entire internet traffic uses that single, non-redundant fiber network. So adding a second internet subscription would just add cost, but not increase redundancy.

Second, besides the fiber network, there is also a widely available cable TV network in Switzerland. This network can also be used to patch a broadband internet connection. But given that this network is way older than that non-redundant fiber network, I don’t even dare call them to ask about redundancy.

Option 3: Break free of the?cable

With all the limitations of cable-bound internet, the best option is to break free of the cable.

Enter Starlink. I agree Elon Musk has gone nuts, but Starlink is a good product at an affordable price.

It is completely redundant from those non-redundant cable networks provided above. And since it can be connected to that second WAN port on the Ubiquiti UDMpro Firewall, failover between the cable-bound internet connection and Starlink is seamless.

Conclusion

Weaving resilience into the design of your company is a long, step-by-step process. Instead of arguing that Elon Musk is nuts, Starlink is for preppers, or placing the dish on your office building is impossible: Just get started today, and go step-by-step: Order that dish, get it installed, and connect it to your router.?

It won’t cost you a fortune, and add a significant amount of internet redundancy.

Growing a company ?? in troubled times ???? is a marathon.

As a tech entrepreneur ??, active reserve officer ??, and father of three ??????, I can help you with ?? practical entrepreneurship and resilience advice for all aspects of life. To the point ??, no fluff, because entrepreneurs are busy.

When I’m not busy, I get my rest and inspiration in the beautiful mountains ??? around Zermatt ????.

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