Stormproof Your Internet Connection with the DataRemote 90X1

When the internet goes down, business stops

When severe weather or a similar emergency hits, it’s all too common for the internet — and sometimes the power — to go down, bringing operations to a halt. Point-of-sale can’t process payments, cloud apps go dark, VoIP phones stop ringing, and staff lose contact with customers and each other. For many organizations, an hour offline is measured directly in lost revenue.

The DataRemote 90X1 is built to prevent that. It’s a business-grade router packed with features to keep your organization online when your fixed-line internet — and even the power — goes down.

Flexibility during fiber failures

During hurricanes and similar emergencies, fixed-line internet outages are routine. The 90X1 keeps your internet — and your business — connected thanks to built-in 5G cellular failover.

When your fixed line goes down, the 90X1 automatically, instantly, and seamlessly switches to its 5G cellular connection, so you stay online even during a fiber outage. Because the switch happens without manual intervention, active sessions typically survive and users keep working. This is the same cellular failover and internet-backup capability enterprises use to guarantee business continuity — and it doubles as a fixed wireless access primary connection where wired service is poor or unavailable.

How failover actually works

1. Continuous monitoring. The 90X1 watches the health of your primary fixed-line connection.
2. Instant switchover. When the primary degrades or drops, the device fails over to 5G cellular automatically — no reboot, no reconfiguration.
3. Seamless restore. When the fixed line returns, the 90X1 switches back, keeping cellular data use to only what was needed during the outage.

Bullet-proof battery backup

The 90X1 includes an 18-cell backup battery so power outages don’t take your internet with them. When storms hit or the power fails, the 90X1 automatically fails over to its internal battery.

What does failover mean here? When the main power source goes down, the 90X1 automatically switches to its internal battery until mains power is restored. Thanks to its robust capacity, the 90X1 can keep employees and business connected to internet and voice for up to 48 hours — which can make all the difference in an emergency, when staying in contact with authorities, customers, and stakeholders is critical.

Threat	Without the 90X1	With the 90X1
Fiber/cable outage	Business offline until carrier repair	Instant 5G cellular failover keeps you online
Power outage	Router and modem go dark	Up to 48 hours on internal battery
Prolonged storm	Extended downtime, lost revenue	Continuous internet + voice, monitored remotely

Manage your device like a boss

DataRemote puts device management at your fingertips through Ara, DataRemote’s device management platform. Ara handles provisioning, troubleshooting, monitoring, and organizing your DataRemote devices, giving you complete control over your 90X1. Key visibility includes:

• Full device health information
• Internet and cellular service status
• LTE/cellular signal strength
• Power status
• Battery life status

During an emergency, that means you can see exactly how your connection is holding up — remotely, in real time — rather than guessing.

Delegating access in Ara

For larger organizations, Ara offers role-based access, so an owner can give a regional manager or facilities lead visibility into their own sites’ device health without handing over administrative control of the whole fleet.

What “up to 48 hours” actually depends on

Battery figures deserve an honest reading, because runtime is a function of load rather than a fixed number.

The 48-hour figure is a standby rating. A 90X1 keeping a couple of analog lines alive and reporting status draws far less than one simultaneously serving as the site’s active internet connection for a floor of staff on video calls. Both are legitimate uses of the same appliance — they just consume the battery at very different rates.

What this means practically:

• Size to your actual outage profile. If your location’s typical outage is four hours, you have generous headroom either way. If you’re in a region where multi-day outages follow storms, plan around the load you’ll actually place on the device during one.
• Decide in advance what matters at hour 30. If a long outage is likely, know which lines are the priority — the alarm and emergency circuits almost certainly outrank the office Wi-Fi — and be prepared to shed load rather than discover the trade-off at 3 a.m.
• Check the battery’s health, not just its presence. Batteries age. A unit installed four years ago and never verified is a plan, not a protection.

Test your failover before you need it

Failover is the one feature guaranteed to be exercised at the worst possible moment, and misconfiguration is silent until then. A misconfigured failover looks identical to a working one right up until the primary link drops.

Before storm season, run the test deliberately:

1. Pull the primary connection on purpose. Physically disconnect the fixed line during a low-traffic window and confirm the switch to cellular happens automatically, without a reboot — and time it.
2. Confirm what survived. Check that the things you care about kept working through the transition: payment terminals, voice lines, alarm circuits. A failover that drops active sessions on a critical system needs to be found now.
3. Verify restore behavior. Reconnect the fixed line and confirm the device switches back, so you aren’t unknowingly running on cellular for weeks after an outage.
4. Test on battery too. Run the same check with mains power removed. Network failover and power failover are separate mechanisms, and passing one says nothing about the other.
5. Confirm the alert reached a human. Ara reporting an event is only useful if someone receives it. Check that the notification lands with a person who is on duty, and that the contact list is current.

Record the results with a date. An untested failover is an assumption; a tested one with a timestamp is a control you can hand to an auditor — or rely on during a hurricane.

After the storm: the review nobody schedules

The most useful hour of a resilience program is the one spent right after an outage, while the details are still fresh. Four things to capture:

• How long the outage actually lasted, versus how long you had assumed it would. This is the number that should drive your battery sizing next season.
• What the device reported and when. Compare Ara’s record against what people experienced. Gaps between the two are usually alerting problems, not connectivity ones.
• What failed that shouldn’t have. Any critical line that dropped during the transition is a configuration finding, not bad luck.
• What you had to do manually. Every manual intervention is a candidate for automation before the next event.

Feeding that back into the plan is what turns a device with good specs into a site that reliably rides out weather. Resilience isn’t a purchase; it’s a loop — size it, test it, use it, then adjust what you learned before the next season arrives.

More than internet backup

It’s worth emphasizing: the 90X1 isn’t only an internet-backup box. It’s a full POTS IN A BOX® appliance, so the same device that stormproofs your internet also keeps analog voice, fax, and alarm lines alive through the outage — a single resilient point for both data and critical analog services. For the connectivity side specifically, see our fixed wireless access and internet backup & cellular failover solutions.

Stormproof your business today

Unplanned fiber and power outages are a matter of when, not if. The DataRemote 90X1 delivers the resilience to ride them out — automatic 5G failover, up to 48-hour battery backup, and real-time visibility through Ara.

For related reading, see Transforming Retail Communications with POTS IN A BOX® and our overview of copper retirement across the telecom industry. When you’re ready, contact our team or explore the 90X1 product page for full technical details.