I think he perhaps needs to look at a mobile dongle - hopefully his internet provider would agree to pay for it.

Yes, I have recently acquired a mobile hotspot with its own SIM card and account. I use it for events and trade fairs mainly, but it's also perfect as a back-up for if the local wired infrastructure should collapse.

They're not expensive (given that my provider gave it to me as part of a discounted package deal) and easy to obtain.

This is the one I use:

www.ebay.co.uk/.../402738783675

In reply to Robey:

Now my husband and I both work from home full time, we have a number of back up plans in case our internet goes down or something else happens that stops us working. As we are lucky enough to have a fibre to the house connection, we can quickly swap to a copper connection, just by agreeing it with our provider and moving the router to plug in to a different connection. Plan B is to go to my mum and dad's house. Plan C is buy a dongle and Plan D (reserved for the worst case scenarios such as if the neighbours decide to have massive amount of building work done) is to rent a small office space in a building about five minutes away. But I freely admit I tend to overplan for disasters. :-D

In reply to Jacqueline:

Something similar chez moi ;)

Oh, I suppose I should also mention co-working spaces as they've not come up yet. I don't know how rural Emma's employee is, but most cafes now offer free WiFi and you can use off-the-shelf VPN systems to protect your connection when using public WiFi. Larger towns and cities now invariably also have commercial co-working spaces where offices can be rented by the day, offering secure WiFi as well as access to the normal resources of an office.

I thought, on reflection, that we should also talk about this terminology of "the internet has gone down".

If it were accurate, it would be a global catastrophe. We need to get a bit more precise both to educate our employees and understand the degree of support they will need.

1. WiFi has gone down. WiFi is a local wireless network with a range of rarely more than a few tens of metres with the origin being a hub unit. You can purchase plug-in booster antennae so that, if your workspace is too far from the hub and keeps dropping out, you can establish a reliable connection. Most people use the hub provided as part of their supplier contract, but most supplier hubs are the cheapest they can get away with. More expensive hubs offer better security, longer ranges and more reliable connections. Alternatively, you can just get an ethernet connection installed. This bypasses the need for WiFi and is a physical, wired connection to the local exchange. It is more secure and more reliable but less flexible.

2. Local exchange has gone down. This is uncommon in urban and suburban areas and when it does happen is rarely a problem for more than 12 hours as it is a priority to fix. Rural exchanges are more likely to be down for longer. The best solution is a back-up wireless hot-spot that connects the user to the mobile network instead of the wired one. This is little help if you live somewhere with more mobile coverage. However, there are now very few areas of the UK with poor mobile coverage by *all* mobile providers. You can find coverage maps through Google that will show you the national coverage of major providers. If your default choice has poor coverage in a particular area, you should make an exception and buy a SIM card for a provider that offers the coverage you need.

3. Central server has gone down. If you have your own server exchange, it can fail. If it does, it will most likely affect *all* your employees who need to access the central database. Call an expert and get it fixed ASAP.

Three weeks is a long time for a local exchange to be down, which leads me to suspect that the employee either doesn't understand how their home connection works *or* they are working in a library to conceal the fact that they have been evicted and no longer have access to a domestic internet connection. Either way, perhaps now would be a good time for that home visit to check H&S and working conditions that we're supposed to do once in a while with remote working employees?

In reply to Robey:

Totally agree with Robey, other than to say that it is possible for internet connections to be down for a few weeks - local workmen digging up the road/pavement can cut through cables and sometimes it will take time for the infrastructure team to be available to repair it. So this *may* be that type of situation, but equally it may be something different as Robey describes. You definitely need an open conversation with your employee.

In reply to Jacqueline:

Jumping in on this rather than start another thread - what if the company's IT system is down and no home based/remote worker is able to work? What is a reasonable expectation for the company in asking employees to cover these days? Can the company request that all employees take annual leave?

In reply to Tania:

You can request anything but you cant make them. Generally, you need to give double the length of the leave as notice to enforce holiday (and even then its often a bad idea)

The Company needs to ensure its systems are up and running

So most things will come down to asking nicely and seeing where it gets you. But they are available for work.....so the default is you pay

Could there be a affordability/cost of living element for this person? Maybe it's been cut off? I admire his resilience in going to the library every day but not practical longer term.

This exact thing happened to me because of an absolutely useless internet provider during lockdown (I suppose must remain nameless here). It was a good two weeks of them saying I had full internet and it was only when I kicked up the biggest fuss they agreed it was down but then said it couldn't be fixed. Ended up sending a bloke from BT round to fix it when their fix it guy couldn't do it - even though we're not with BT! It was all very bizarre and eventually resolved. All to say, it could be a genuine wifi down moment for your employee.
Luckily I was able to work from our offices during this time because I was the only person in. I was pregnant though and spent most of the time throwing up because the offices smelt weird to me - so overall a horrendous experience! I ended up buying an emergency dongle in the end, if it hadn't been lockdown I would have worked from my parents house. Those are my back up plans now.