Emergency internet: connected when the network fails

Picture a small volunteer fire station on a stormy autumn evening. The village is holding its autumn fair, and the radio room is quiet. The screen on the wall shows the map with the positions of the vehicles.

In an ambulance, command vehicle or equipment vehicle, the connection decides whether telemetry, situation picture and voice reach the control centre. A bonding router such as the Peplink MAX BR1 Pro 5G or the MAX Transit Pro E is permanently installed in the vehicle: 12-volt on-board supply, ignition sensing, a fanless metal housing and an operating range down to minus 40 degrees Celsius. Two SIM cards from different carriers sit in the device, optionally complemented by a Starlink dish on the roof for areas without mobile coverage.

The antenna is the most important single item. A 7-in-1 roof antenna such as the Peplink Mobility 42G combines four cellular paths for 4x4 MIMO, two Wi-Fi paths and GPS in a flat housing and gives far more reserve than stub antennas on the router. The built-in GPS also delivers the position to InControl 2, so the control centre sees every vehicle on the map.

For police, fire brigades and aid organisations it also matters that data does not leave their own network: the SpeedFusion tunnel is encrypted with 256-bit AES and terminates at the Ascend VPN hub or in your own data centre. You can read more about fleet connectivity under Wi-Fi for vehicles.

At the fire station in our example, it is a branch that evening. A gust snaps it off, it falls onto the telephone line and tears it from the pole. Nothing else happens, but the fixed line is gone.

For branches, branch offices and warehouses it is rarely about a disaster, but about the Tuesday afternoon when the fixed line fails. Then the till stops, card payments are declined, inventory management reports no stock and the cameras go blind. A router with a built-in LTE modem such as the Peplink Balance 20X sits between the fixed line and the company network and switches to mobile data automatically when the line fails. With SpeedFusion hot failover (requires a valid PrimeCare plan), the point-of-sale system and VoIP phones even keep their session.

Banks and insurers need the same mechanism with higher confidentiality requirements: the backup path runs through the same encrypted tunnel as the main line, and address ranges and firewall rules stay identical. When a branch office moves or is renovated, the mobile router bridges the weeks until the new line is ready, without interrupting customer service.

In logistics, handheld scanners, conveyor systems and route planning depend on the distribution centre's line. Where fibre is missing, for example at transshipment sites or loading docks on the edge of town, we combine mobile and Starlink into a permanent connection. How to bring several sites into one shared network is shown on the page Location networking.

Inside, the screen in the radio room goes dark and the map is gone. On the shelf below it, the lights on the router change colour: it has noticed that nothing is coming in over the line any more and switches to the mobile network on its own. A moment later the map is back. Nobody has to replug anything or call anyone.

And the fire station in our example? The map is back on the screen, someone hands round coffee, and the evening carries on calmly. The network operator takes care of the torn line the next morning.

The fire station is only an example. The technology behind it is the same in a control centre, a branch or a warehouse: several independent paths and a router that switches over on its own. We will gladly work out with you what that looks like at your site.