Internet Backup Plan…
There is a blog that I read on a regular basis called Chicago Carless. The premise is that he writes about his life as a 39 year old who has yet to own a car or even learn how to drive. Instead he has stuck to walking, busing and subwaying his way around New York City and Chicago.
Recently, he has been going through a bit of a rehab in his digital life: he dumped his Mac OS, jailbroke his iPhone, and moved way from AT&T internet and got Clearwire instead. Apparently most of it has been clear sailing, but recently, the Clearwire portion has not been good.
The growth of telecommuting for those in the corporate world, blogging as a business, and remote working for freelancers has turned the internet connection that most of us think of as a convenience and a treat, into a commodity. Without a solid internet connection, workers end up wasting a vacation day or losing out on business opportunities.
What are the solutions? We’ll cover a couple of ways to protect yourself from missed opportunities when your internet is temporarily not available.
Free WiFi
If you live near a library, coffeeshop, or other establishment that has free WiFi, you might try to take advantage of that. This is very cost effective (depending on how much coffee you drink while hanging out). The rather large drawback is that you have venture out into the world of loud-cellphone-talking guy, grimy tables, and limited seating. Being at your home in your normal, quiet working environment is the best place to be.
On a temporary basis, you may be able to piggyback off of a neighbors internet net connection assuming you can get a signal from them and they do not have a passcode set up. If you do this, it really is a form of stealing and common courtesy might dictate that you ask your neighbor if he would mind you jumping on his connection the next time yours gets flaky. Chances are, if he doesn’t have a password in the first place, he probably isn’t going to care.
Getting mobile
I’ve posted in the past about finding internet while traveling, including using your phone as a modem. Connecting to the internet via your phone can be very effective. You already have a cellphone, so hooking it up as a modem would be trivial if you are already doing so on the road.
Unfortunately, this is also a very cumbersome process. You have to activate it when you want it by calling your cell phone carrier, otherwise you are charged each month, even if it goes unused. You also have to carry a cord around or deal with slow Bluetooth connections. Not to mention, you might not even be able to tether your phone if you have an iPhone, Palm Pre, or any number of other smartphones.
The next option is to have a USB mobile broadband modem. If you go with the traditional USB stick, you will end up typically paying $60 a month plus you have to sign a two-year contract. A simpler way to go is to get a prepaid solution: Virgin Mobile allows you to purchase a USB stick for $99. You can then load prepaid minutes on in increments from 100Mb up to 1Gb. UPDATE: Virgin Mobile also added a WiFi Hotspot router as an additional option for those with WiFi connected devices such as laptops and the iPad. They have also included a new 5gb plan for $60 if you need plenty of data. No contract required but you have to pay full price for the device ($149.99).
For basic web browsing and writing a blog post, 100Mb should be sufficient for one day of work. If you are going to be downloading large amounts of data, you may want to bump that to 250Mb.
As an added bonus, once you have this USB modem, you can then take it with you when traveling and enjoy the convenience of the internet on the road.
Extreme measures
For those who absolutely must have a connection at all times, the above solutions may not be coverage enough. As a final step to ensuring you have internet when you need it, you can simply pick two unrelated internet service providers and purchase internet from each. Each will act as a back up to the other.
The obvious drawback to this method is the cost. However, if you business relies on your being on line or things simply don’t get done or you don’t make money, then perhaps an extra internet bill is a small price to pay.
Do you have any tricks you use if your internet goes down? Do you fill your internet downtime with other activities (running, putting together puzzles, training to be a ninja)? Tell me about it below.
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