Internet outage at home: a calm first-hour plan, and what still works offline

The internet drops. The streaming stops, the laptop shows a little warning, and the first instinct is to refresh everything ten times. Most outages are short and boring. A few aren't. Either way, a simple first-hour routine saves battery, stress and a lot of refreshing.

Minute 1 to 10: is it you, or them?

Start by working out where the problem is.

1. Check the power. If the lights are off, the router is off too, and the rest of this post's power section applies.
2. Check a second device. If your phone on Wi-Fi can't load anything either, it's the connection, not the laptop.
3. Restart the router. Unplug it, wait 30 seconds, plug it back in, and give it a few minutes to come back.
4. Check your provider from mobile data. Most internet providers post outages on their website or social accounts. If it's a known fault, there's nothing to fix at home. You just wait.

Sometimes the internet is fine and one service is down. An app won't load but everything else does. That's worth knowing, because there's nothing you can do at home to fix it.

The services can go down on their own

Every big online service runs on its own servers, and those have bad days too. OpenAI, for example, keeps a public status history for ChatGPT and its other services. When we read it on 1 November 2026, it listed several incidents in the last week of October, from elevated error rates on some features to degraded model performance. Each entry links to its own incident report.

That's normal for any large online service, and the status page is the honest place to check. Our AI Watch page collects the public status pages of the main AI and cloud providers in one place.

The useful takeaway isn't worry. It's that anything that lives on someone else's server can be unavailable while your own connection is fine, and anything that lives on your own laptop can't.

Minute 10 to 30: save your phone

If the outage looks like it will last, your phone becomes the main way to get news and reach people. Ready.gov's "Get Tech Ready" advice covers the basics:

• Switch on low power mode, or flight mode when you don't need the phone, to save battery.
• Text instead of calling. Ready.gov says mobile networks can become overwhelmed during emergencies, and text messages need less bandwidth, so they tend to get through more reliably.
• Keep a backup power source on hand, and charge devices fully before severe weather.

In New Zealand, Get Ready adds that the Govt.nz app can deliver Emergency Mobile Alerts and severe weather warnings over Wi-Fi, so a working Wi-Fi network somewhere else (a neighbour's, a library's) still gets you the alerts.

If the power is out too

Ready.gov's power outage guidance is short and practical:

• Keep the fridge and freezer closed. A fridge keeps food cold for about four hours. A full freezer holds its temperature for about 48 hours.
• Generators go outside only, at least 20 feet (about 6 metres) from windows, doors and attached garages. Never use a gas stove or oven to heat your home.
• Unplug appliances and electronics. Power can come back with surges or spikes that cause damage.
• Have a torch for each person in the house, so phones can save their battery.
• After the outage, throw out food that has been at 40°F (about 4°C) or warmer for two hours or more. In Ready.gov's words: "When in doubt, throw it out!"

Ready.gov also suggests finding out ahead of time whether your home phone works without power, and how long its battery backup lasts.

Minute 30 onwards: what still works offline?

This is the part most people only discover during an outage. Walk through your devices and see what still opens with no connection:

• Maps you downloaded beforehand. Anything you didn't download won't load.
• Documents and PDFs saved on the device, not just in a cloud drive.
• Music, books and films downloaded for offline use.
• Notes apps, if they store a copy on the device.

What usually doesn't work: search engines, cloud AI assistants, online maps, streaming and anything behind a login that checks in with a server.

That list is a good test to run on a calm day. Switch off the Wi-Fi and mobile data on your laptop for an evening and notice what you reach for. Those are the things to save locally.

Getting ready for next time

A short to-do list for after the internet comes back:

1. Print or save your provider's fault number and account number somewhere offline.
2. Download maps for your area to your phone.
3. Save key documents as PDFs on your laptop, not only in the cloud.
4. Charge a power bank and keep it charged.
5. Keep a reference library offline, such as Wikipedia through the free Kiwix reader.

The short version

• Check power, a second device, the router, then your provider.
• One service being down is different from your internet being down.
• Save your phone battery and text instead of calling.
• Before the next one, put the things you rely on onto your own devices.

The Offline Brain download is our version of that last step: offline Wikipedia, WikiMed for reference reading, a map pack and your own small AI on your laptop, all working with the wifi off. If AI or the internet goes down, you'll still have the answers. It's US$29 (NZ$49), one payment.