The single fastest way to lose a remote job is to drop a meeting. The single most preventable cause of dropping a meeting is internet that you didn't think through. After enough sweaty afternoons frantically tethering off a phone in a hotel hallway, you build a stack. Mine looks like this.
The three-layer stack
You always need three layers of connectivity. Treat any single point as one outage from disaster.
- Primary: a fixed line you trust. Apartment fiber if you're on a monthly stay, or a coworking space if not. Test it within the first hour of arrival; do not trust the speedtest in the listing.
- Backup: phone-based mobile data. A local SIM with a real data plan, ideally from the carrier with the best coverage in the country (ask a local — it's not always the most famous brand).
- Backup-to-the-backup: an international eSIM or roaming SIM. Something you can activate from your phone in two minutes if both of the above die.
The phone is the bottleneck
Most nomads buy a phone for everything except this. Get a phone that supports dual eSIM plus a physical SIM, with a battery that survives a four-hour tethering session, and you've solved 80% of the problem.
What "fast enough" actually means
You don't need a gigabit fiber line to work remotely. The actual minimums for the things you do every day:
- Email, docs, code editing: 5 Mbps down/up is plenty.
- Standard video call (1:1): 2-3 Mbps up, low jitter matters more than peak speed.
- Video call with screen share: 3-5 Mbps up.
- Group video call: 5-8 Mbps up.
- Large uploads (video editors, big repos): 25+ Mbps up; otherwise plan around it.
Most "slow" cafes are perfectly fine for 80% of work. The reason they feel slow is that you're competing with 30 other laptops on the same router, not that the line is small.
Calls deserve a real environment
If your job involves more than one or two video calls a day, do not take them from a cafe. Take them from your apartment, a phone booth at a coworking space, or a quiet hotel lobby. The audio and reliability difference is enormous and the people on the call always notice, even if they're polite about it.
The arrival checklist
The 30 minutes after you land in a new city are your most important. Do this every time:
- Buy or activate a local SIM at the airport. Don't wait.
- Once at your accommodation, run a speedtest from your laptop, not your phone.
- Make a test call to anyone for two minutes.
- If anything fails, you have until tomorrow's first meeting to fix it. Use the time.
What to do when it all breaks
Hotels with business-class fiber. Airport lounges (a Priority Pass membership pays for itself the first time you use it for a real meeting). 24-hour McDonald's in most major cities. Public libraries. A neighbor who'll let you tether for an afternoon. Build the mental list before you need it.