The phrase: “A world without wireless” probably conjures up images of a digital disconnect. It has a positive spin to it – time out from work to spend with family, friends, or even to travel solo. That would be a choice, a deliberate one. You’re the one switching off the button.
What happens when you’re not? When disconnection happens not by choice, but because someone else flicks the switch, or a system fault causes an outage. What then? For individuals, it’s at most frustrating, but for companies, organizations or cities, a world without wireless, or any form of connectivity, could be catastrophic.
The down side of connectivity
Modern smart cities run on connectivity. Everything from water and electricity services to transport are often managed remotely through IoT devices. Hospitals may have emergency backups for those in critical care, but how many other organizations do? What would happen if connectivity were lost and how many companies have contingencies for this?
Cybersecurity is on the radar of most business leaders. Even with the known and unknown methods that threat actors use to try breach defences, they know security is something to be vigilant about. But connectivity? Most people are used to resolving poor connectivity with a reboot, or moving locations. Fiber down? Hop onto 5G and hotspot.
Earlier this year a major power outage in Spain and Portugal brought cities to a grinding halt. People were stuck on trains, in elevators and on subways. Shops and businesses couldn’t operate. People couldn’t even communicate because networks also went down. The outage lasted hours and was reportedly the result of a fault that had a domino effect on energy infrastructure.
It was a wake-up call for business. The modern world may thrive on connectivity – speed, convenience, efficiency, but it can all be lost. And not even ChatGPT can provide an answer without a connection. Just something to keep in mind.
Keeping operational when connectivity goes down
It’s not that long ago that a business world thrived without the internet. It may not have been as fast or “efficient”, but it operated well enough to continue growing economies. Now maybe only those past a half century of age will actually remember working in those times. The fact remains that they existed. Businesses existed. It was just a different way of operating.
Is this something that companies should keep in mind when they’re looking to come up with ways to keep operational if wireless or all connectivity goes down? Can it really be as simple as looking in the rear-view mirror to past business operations?
The challenge is that unless it’s a major natural disaster (which are becoming more frequent), most companies will simply wait it out, expecting connectivity to be restored within a few hours at most. How many hours can a business afford to have an outage before starting to lose consumer trust? When their transactions drop, or functionality shuts down, and the chatbots or Google aren’t (obviously) available, how do companies maintain a channel of communication with their customers?
It’s worth asking those questions now and putting contingencies in place, because just like cyberattacks, the inevitability of outages is a growing possibility.
