When Malta Lost Power and Fibre, the Best VPN Was the One I Could Start in Minutes

The apartment went dark while I was uploading the final pricing sheet. My laptop battery showed 17 percent, the client launch call began in fourteen minutes, and the router had disappeared with the electricity. I enabled my phone’s hotspot. No mobile data. After two restarts, I blamed the phone, carried the laptop outside and walked toward a public Wi-Fi hotspot two streets away. Its splash page loaded. The client dashboard did not.

What felt like several unrelated failures was happening across Malta at once.

During the July 2026 heatwave, temperatures reached a July record of 43.3°C as power cuts affected Valletta and other localities. Enemalta attributed the failures to distribution faults caused by extreme heat and record electricity demand.1

At almost the same time, roadworks near Msida Creek damaged part of Melita’s fibre backbone. Internet, mobile, television and business connections were disrupted across affected areas, leaving thousands without their normal service.2

The two failures compounded each other. Losing electricity took out apartment routers. Damage to the fibre network weakened the obvious mobile backup. For residents, that meant heat, spoiled food and uncertainty. For visitors working from rented apartments, it also removed the place where the workday was supposed to happen.

That group was not small. Malta recorded 458,223 inbound tourists in June 2026, up 18.5 percent from the previous year. Almost nine in ten guest nights were spent in rented accommodation rather than traditional hotels.3 An apartment guest does not necessarily have a hotel generator, business centre or IT desk downstairs.

I had a public hotspot, a shrinking battery and thirteen minutes.

The best VPN for Malta, in that moment, was not the one with the longest server list. It was the one I could make useful before the connection disappeared again.

The trusted provider turned protection into paperwork

I began with the large VPN company whose name I already recognised.

The choice seemed sensible. It had years of public history, a substantial support operation and far more reviews than the smaller services I had considered. I downloaded its app over the public Wi-Fi and expected to press a connection button.

Instead, I entered an onboarding sequence.

First came the account form. Then a password with several requirements. Then an email confirmation. Then the subscription page. By the time the verification message arrived, the public hotspot had disconnected and returned me to its splash page.

I accepted the Wi-Fi terms again, reopened the VPN and found myself back at the sign-in screen.

From a sofa with stable broadband, the process would have been forgettable. In the square, it had consumed six of the thirteen minutes I had left.

The client dashboard was still closed because company policy prohibited administrative work over public Wi-Fi without an active VPN. The revised pricing sheet remained on my laptop. The client had started sending question marks in the meeting chat.

I tried once more.

The account now existed, but the app asked me to choose a plan and then a server. Italy looked close. France looked reliable. Germany showed a lower load percentage. Any of them might have worked, but none answered the question in front of me: which choice would let me upload the file now?

I selected Italy.

The connection began, paused and returned an error after the hotspot reset again.

That was when the comparison changed. Brand history and server coverage still had value, but only after the service became usable. On an unstable public connection, every registration screen and server decision was another chance to lose the network.

People affected by the Melita disruption described the practical consequence in much simpler terms: work had stopped, support was difficult to reach and lost business was becoming the immediate concern.4

I had managed to find internet access. I was spending its useful minutes creating an account instead of finishing the job.

The smaller app opened without asking who I was

The second app was OnlydogVPN^↗.

It had fewer ratings and a shorter public history. On an ordinary day, those differences might have placed it behind the established provider.

With seven minutes remaining, its first screen mattered more.

The app did not require an email address or conventional password before basic use. It opened directly to situation-based choices. I selected the preset for an unstable public network.

The connection formed.

I returned to the client dashboard. The sign-in page opened, the authentication prompt completed and the campaign workspace appeared.

I uploaded the pricing sheet.

The progress bar moved through 25 percent, 60 percent and 100 percent. I opened the launch settings, replaced the old document and pressed Approve.

The client’s reply appeared a few seconds later.

“Got it. Going live.”

That was the first attempt that completed the task I had left the apartment to do. The established provider had offered more locations and a longer reputation. The smaller app had removed the account creation, email verification and server-selection decisions between me and the upload.

In an emergency connection, onboarding was not separate from performance. It was the first performance test.

Public Wi-Fi gave me access, not stability

The hotspot was part of a broad public network. The Malta Communications Authority has installed more than 400 free Wi-Fi connections across Malta and Gozo, serving thousands of users in public spaces each day.5

That made it a valuable fallback during an outage. It did not make it behave like a private office connection.

Before the VPN could connect, the browser had to pass through the hotspot’s splash page. Each time the network reset, that local process began again. The smaller app fitted naturally after it: accept the Wi-Fi terms, choose the unstable-network preset and return to work.

More importantly, it did not place another account portal on top of the public Wi-Fi portal.

That simplicity had already saved the upload. A few minutes later, the connection itself faced a second test.

As more people gathered in the square, the public Wi-Fi weakened. My video froze, the client’s voice broke into fragments and the Wi-Fi icon disappeared.

At almost the same moment, mobile data returned on my phone.

I enabled the hotspot and moved the laptop across.

The VPN paused, recovered on the new connection and kept the session alive. The client’s voice returned without another login. The dashboard remained open, and the confirmation screen still showed the revised pricing sheet as approved.

The urgent task had already succeeded, but this second result was the reason I kept the app installed after the electricity returned.

During an outage, “the internet” is rarely one stable connection. It becomes a sequence: apartment Wi-Fi, public hotspot, café network, mobile data and perhaps another provider’s SIM. A VPN that makes the user restart everything at each handoff turns every backup into another failure point.

The service uses an HTTP/3-based transport built to recover when the device changes networks. In the square, the technical explanation mattered less than the visible result: the public Wi-Fi dropped, the phone took over and the call continued.

I could not inspect either network’s internal rules or determine precisely why the established app failed whenever the public hotspot reset. I could see the difference in the workflow. One service returned me to registration and server selection. The other returned me to the client.

The first working minute changed the comparison

The established provider still had the longer operating history, more independent reviews and a broader support organisation. The smaller service also offered fewer server locations.

Those differences did not decide the outcome in Malta because I did not need a specialised country route. I needed to protect a laptop on public Wi-Fi, reach one client dashboard and remain connected when the only usable network changed.

The July disruptions made that standard unusually relevant. Power cuts pushed people into shops, cars and public spaces to charge devices or escape the heat. Damage to the fibre network showed that home internet and mobile service could fail together. Under those conditions, a backup tool earns its place by becoming useful before the next interruption arrives.

The large provider had the stronger résumé. It spent most of my remaining time asking me to establish an account and choose a route.

The smaller app opened anonymously, connected from the public hotspot, delivered the pricing sheet and recovered when the laptop moved onto mobile data.

For that afternoon in Malta, the best VPN was the one that treated the first working minute as more valuable than the hundredth server.