Outages and Backup Internet

We’ve had a few small outages in the last few weeks. Nothing unusual given that we have 600 plus radios spread over 400 square miles of rural New Mexico. And our volunteers got them fixed fairly fast.

But I do want to point out something that keeps coming up almost every time we have an outage. A call from one member or another exclaiming: “I run my business off this internet, you need to get this fixed fast!”

Business Owners Should Have Backup Internet

So here’s the thing. If you own a home business and rely on your internet connection to run your business and your livelihood, then you should absolutely have a backup source of internet. Nearly all real businesses do that—and you should too. All internet services go down at some time or other, even in metropolitan areas. And if your business access is critical, it’s just plain good business sense to be prepared for that.

Same if you rely on internet for your phone service and have critical phone access needs that cannot wait for our system repairs (again for your business, or say you are a critical-care provider). You also should have a backup source of internet in place.

Typical Backup Sources

Here are some typical backup sources to consider—any one of these can do (listed in order of relative cost):

• Cellular phone data plan if available that you can activate as a hotspot near your computers.
• CenturyLink DSL subscription, if available.
• Satellite internet service (many rural members can get this; get the lowest level and use it just for backups).
• A second rural-provider connection if available—again, their lowest level.

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Of course, these cost extra money, but a business owner or critical-care provider can certainly justify their costs and can even likely write them off. If you are avoiding doing this due to such costs, then you are doing so at your own risk.

If None Is Available

And we also realize that in some remote locations in our service area, none of these backup options are available. I guess this is the pleasure and the pain of living in such a beautiful location. So simply realize that you’ve made this choice and that it is pretty amazing that the LCWA volunteer-maintained network is even here. Read our recent article A Family of Members to put that in perspective.

For those of you without backup options, your contingency plan should be “where can I drive to with my laptop to get public internet service and operate my business.” I have a friend who has a favorite coffee shop in Santa Fe identified just for this purpose.

So please, if you consider uninterrupted internet access to be critical to your business, or to your job, (or to your well-being), then put a backup internet service in place if you can; or have other contingency plans in place. Like all other providers, LCWA will always have occasional outages and good businesses make plans for that.