Recommendations on a back device in case of internet outage

[luistoro]

Hello everyone,

As the high volume retail season heats up I'm looking for ways to ensure my shop doesn't miss out on sales. We have had a couple of spotty internet days at the shop and I'm looking to set up a back up router or hotspot device that can pair well with Square Terminal.

Can you provide any recommendations on devices and providers for this cellular back up?

Thanks,

Luis

[Candlestore]

@luistoro ;

I have no idea how big of an area you need to cover or how many devices you have to support.  Also how easy do you want to switch internet providers.

What I can tell you I do is, I have a Hotspot on a Tablet up by my Square Stands.  The hotspots signal is picked up by a WiFi repeater that has some ethernet ports, I need that for my Receipt printer to print.  So when my inter net goes down, all we need to do is unplug my receipt printer from my normal Internet provider, and plug the cable to my Hotspots Repeater, then on the Square Stands instead of my cable wifi we press choose Hotspot wifi.  That is how we do it for internet related problems.  The hotspot tablet, was plugged in and on charger in 2019 and does not move, unless we change the password for the wifi.

So near my checkout area I have 2 Wifi signals at all times, 1 for my cable internet and the other through my Tablets Hotspot which is rebrocast by a Repeater / range extender.    Only issue I have had is when I or someone else has Stand 1 on Cable and stand 2 on Hotspot.... then the receipt printer does not work for Both stands.  

I use the same hotspot cell signal from my current cell provider, since when I signed up for a business account I was able to get a free tablet with a cell signal, so I did.  

I can not recommend which cell provider works best in your area.  Since I am out in the mountains of PA, I get spotty signal with all the top providers.  My customers even have the same problem in my store.  Some get great coverage in my store others get no signal or dropped calls.  I say welcome to the mountains.  I loose signal 3 times on my way home.

As long as you can have a Hotspot with a strong WiFi signal it should work with your terminal.  Just depending on the size of your store, you may need a different device than what I use with a Hotspot on one tablet.  My other thought if I needed to cover my entire stores Network with internet, I would probably go with a Internet box from my cell provider, then unplug ethernet from  internet modem that is down and switch it to the one that is up.