Yesterday, the ISP I use, Brighthouse Networks, had a major outage. And wow, was it a doozy. There was not only zero internet connectivity but nobody could contact customer service on the phone either to even report the outage as they were down as well. On top of that, even the main brighthouse.com web site was having problems. Like I said, it was a doozy. And yes, it’s all fixed now.
I do have a backup for internet, that being my smartphone. In a pinch, I have it ready should I need it and yesterday was one of those times. What I can do is only the basics such as checking email and other important accounts I have, but it works. I suppose if I were really desperate I could write blog articles from the phone, but wow what a chore that would be. Blogging from a phone is not advisable because your hands will stiffen up to the point of being unusable in less than 5 minutes, guaranteed. If you don’t believe me, try "typing" 250 to 500 words in a single sitting on one; this is assuming you can get through the ordeal without going cross-eyed and/or your neck hurting from craning from staring a small screen for an extended length of time.
My question to you is, what’s your backup internet connection? Is it a smartphone? A free wi-fi hotspot down the street? A dial-up connection? None?
If you do have one, how often have you had to use it?
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Rich…being in Tampa I felt your pain, but why not tether to your phone? Though I have Tmobile …and its only utmost/hspa (3g) speeds it is more than adequate enough to use as a modem to transfer data (such as blog posts, emails and low Res streaming).
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I have none.
Backup? A good friend, half-hour away. It is a nice walk, and I only take it if I absolutely have to. Helps sorting out priorities.
Either a local restaurant using a VPN connection, or at work. In a pinch, I live close to work and could go in to use my PC there.
I have wifi at a couple of cafes close by, plus work is 15 mins if needs be. For a longer outage I also have a mobile USB modem which I can connect to if I need it
Starbucks, McCafe, the local library, but in truth any free wifi hotspot will do.
At present none at all. In the past I had DSL and with it came a dial-up account which *was* the backup. I used it just a bunch of times because the DSL service was very reliable. Two years ago I switched to cable Internet and my backup continued to be the same dial-up account I had with DSL which for some reason never was removed. Last April I installed Windows 7 and my old PCI winmodem is no longer supported so I ended up physically removing the modem and now I have no backup. I still think the dial-up account would work because the e-mail account associated to the old DSL service is still live.
Before you get that desperate, see if there is an option for your smartphone to turn it into a wi-fi hot spot. I have a phone that runs android and I have a free program that turns it into a wi-fi hot spot. I did this so when I need to get things done online and I am on the road, I can just boot up my laptop and use my phone’s hotspot to get it all done. For simple stuff I just use the phone but if it is going to be more involved, I boot the laptop.