Extreme weather patterns have become a reality of life. Just look at the numerous high category storms that have hit the U.S. this past year — Harvey, Maria and Irma, to name a few — or the bomb cyclone that recently hit the east coast, bringing with it snow, wind and general inconvenience. The devastation that these storms can cause to lives and property should not be underestimated, and businesses should prepare themselves by taking measures to mitigate such damages, should they occur. Futureproofing your connectivity is essential.

At the same time, it is a truth universally acknowledged at this point that the internet, and access to it, have become necessities for virtually every business. Access to the internet is like access to electricity, a utility, but it’s not just a matter of having broadband access in the here and now — what about in the future? What happens if there’s a water main break and the streets are flooded? Or if there’s another hurricane on the scale of Hurricane Sandy — what then?

Should this happen, one way to prevent massive outages and ensure that 100% of your broadband uptime is maintained is to have broadband diversity. Not only is this important to keep businesses running, it’s also a necessary precaution to take to protect employees in times of crisis.

Fiber in places like Manhattan is delivered to the building through one conduit — meaning that even if there are multiple carriers, they all rely on the same “pipe” or conduit to deliver the connectivity. What if there’s a fiber cut on the street? If the conduit is damaged for some reason, all the fiber carriers in the conduit will be down. For any businesses that rely on those carriers, it means their business is essentially put on hold until the fiber cut is repaired. The internet would be down, phones wouldn’t work and employee productivity and morale would take a big hit. Today’s modern businesses rely on the internet as a utility and simply can’t afford these types of delays, which are often made worse by slow response times for repairs.

It’s no surprise, then, that many businesses today seek broadband diversity to insure against outages. Despite what fiber providers might have you believe, having two different broadband carriers delivering internet through the same “pipe” into the building is not true diversity. True diversity might be achieved by having a fiber path through the basement from the street and a fixed wireless connection on the roof, or by having a fiber network in conjunction with Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) or broadband via satellite. With these precautions in place, a fiber cut or flood, like the one that happened during Hurricane Sandy, wouldn’t bring down business operations because other connections would be fully functional. As long as the throughput and the quality are the same for both forms of broadband, businesses really don’t care how the internet is delivered — they just want it to work, period.

As the effects of climate change begin to be felt around the world, building owners, businesses and broadband providers need to be prepared. This doesn’t necessarily mean cutting out fiber entirely, but it should at the very least involve having a viable alternative that isn’t reliant on having a physical connection in the ground, especially when there are alternatives such as DSL, wireless or satellite broadband available. In places like New York City, there are still significant areas where access to fiber is either limited or non-existent.

It’s all about future-proofing your connectivity and being prepared for what the future might bring. You may be lucky and never experience flooding that takes out your Internet access — but what if that day comes and you’re trapped without an alternative method of accessing the Internet? What if there’s a fiber cut on the street and no providers are able to supply service? What if your business is located in a “digital desert,” where broadband access is hard to come by under normal circumstances? Fiber providers have presented themselves as the only solution to these problems, which is simply not the case. The fact of the matter is that, in times of crisis, it’s good to have options and diversity. Being without broadband is an untenable situation for today’s businesses, which rely on high-speed broadband in order to carry out most corporate functions. Why take that risk if you don’t have to?