What to know about backup internet in Gilbert
The Town is digging, and buried lines get hit
The Guadalupe Road and McQueen Road intersection project began the week of August 31, 2026. It takes about 11 months and includes relocating SRP electric and irrigation lines. The Town's Streets page also lists current projects on Ocotillo Road, Lindsay Road, Higley and Pecos, Val Vista and Mercy, Higley Road north of Elliott, 148th Street and Somerton Boulevard, without dates. Any of them can put a trench near your service line.
Heritage District construction affects businesses
The Town runs a "Digging the District" page for downtown construction and says the work can significantly impact businesses. Its project updates list Heritage Park under construction and an OHSO duckpin bowling restaurant expected in spring 2027, and call those timelines tentative.
Arizona requires lines to be marked, but marks miss things
State law says no one may excavate in a public street, alley, right-of-way or utility easement before determining where underground facilities are. Operators must mark within two working days, and the markings are valid for 15 working days. Marks can be wrong, faded or missing, and lines on private property may not be marked at all.
A small satellite dish is allowed in every zoning district
Gilbert's Land Development Code permits over-the-air reception devices as accessory uses in all base zoning districts, though not in the front yard. The definition covers satellite antennas of one meter (39.37 inches) or less. A mast more than 12 feet above the roofline needs a building permit, and in the Heritage District the Town must be notified in writing first.
What takes a business offline
Most outages are undramatic. A crew cuts a buried line, a storm knocks out power to a neighborhood, a provider's equipment fails, or a construction project reroutes a line and something goes wrong. SRP tells businesses that monsoon storms can bring high winds, torrential rain and lightning that affect its system. It offers text or email outage alerts and an outage map on its business outage page.
A backup connection doesn't stop any of them. It keeps you open while the provider fixes it.
How failover works
A failover router watches your main connection. When the connection stops passing traffic, the router moves the network onto the backup, usually within seconds, and moves it back when the main line returns. Staff touch nothing. Registers, card readers, cloud phones and cameras keep running.
Starlink or 5G
The two backups fail in different ways from a cable, so a cut line doesn't affect either one.
- 5G is the easiest to install. It needs a good cellular signal at the building, and we test the signal before we pick it.
- Starlink is satellite and needs a clear view of the sky. We find a mounting spot on the roof or a pole and run cable to the router.
- Either can be speed-limited or data-limited, depending on the plan. We size the backup to what must keep working. Registers and phones need far less than streaming does.
Starlink questions we hear
Starlink works in the United States, and we check the building before we quote. It needs a clear view of the sky, it can slow during heavy rain, and plans and prices change, so we confirm current ones when we quote. How many TVs a connection can run depends on bandwidth, not on the TV count. For a backup, we ask which systems must stay online and size for those. Installation cost depends on the mount, the cable run and the router, and the quote comes after the walkthrough.
Install day and the unplug test
- On the walkthrough we look for a 5G signal, a Starlink view and a spot for the router.
- The plan names the backup type, the failover router and a battery backup, and comes with a written quote.
- We install and configure everything, then unplug your main line to prove the switch works.
- Your staff get a short lesson. Service runs Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 5 PM.
Often paired with
The backup connection keeps business phone systems, security cameras and business WiFi running. The rest of our local work is on the Gilbert page.
