Hartford Business Journal

10 Hartford Business Journal • November 26, 2018 • www.HartfordBusiness.com EXPERTS CORNER How to have zero network downtime By George W. Kudelchuk III I ncreasingly, there is an expectation and a need for businesses in a va- riety of industries to have uninter- rupted connectivity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This, of course, is not to say that em- ployees should be working around the clock, but the company's systems should. It's no longer acceptable for a company's website to go down, or for emails to employees to bounce back because a server crashed at night or over the weekend. In addition to main- taining appearances and relationships, companies rely on software-as- a-service applica- tions to such an extent that con- nectivity is often a prerequisite for productivity. Even during a major weather event such as a hurricane or blizzard, business is continuing as usual in other parts of the country and world, and technology can help companies affected by the weather event minimize lost revenue. In fact, with planning and without a huge bud- get, it's entirely possible for the IT sys- tems of a business of virtually any size to stay up and running no matter what. How many internet connections do you have? This might seem like a silly ques- tion. Most companies rely on a single internet service provider. There are major advantages to having two. Where it's available, high-speed fiber is usually the first choice of businesses because it offers the fastest speeds. As a service delivered over physical infrastructure, fiber can be subject to outages. If someone takes out a tele- phone pole, your company could lose its internet connection for hours. Most companies have a firewall on-site that processes and filters their cable or fiber internet connection. LTE carriers (the same ones that power the data connection on your smartphone like Verizon and AT&T) offer antennae, which feed an additional wireless inter- net connection into that same firewall. Today's firewalls are smart enough to switch from one connection to the other without interruption if the first connection goes down. In addition, the two feeds can be ag- gregated for super-charged connection speeds. This can be very appealing for FOCUS: Telecommunications George W. Kudelchuk III By Natalie Missakian Special to the Hartford Business Journal W ith businesses looking for faster internet speeds and families increasingly using the internet to run everything from home security systems to video doorbells and smart refrigerators, area cable companies are racing to expand ultra-fast networks across Connecticut to stay ahead of consumer demand. In recent months, Cox and Comcast have announced major rollouts of gigabit internet service, which offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, for residential and business customers in their territories around the state, including Greater Hartford. Frontier announced in early October that it was introducing gigabit service in its FiOS and Vantage Fiber markets, the latter of which includes parts of Connecticut. Meanwhile, a small, Rochester, N.Y.-based internet startup, GoN- etspeed, is hoping to compete with the big guys, introducing a slightly lower-priced gigabit service through new fiber-to-the-home networks it is building in West Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport, with plans to expand statewide if there's enough demand. While cable companies have long offered speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second for large business customers, they've been slower to bring gig inter- net to residential and small business consumers. But that's changing. A November report by cable indus- try consortium CableLabs said about 63 percent of homes nationwide now have access to gigabit speeds, up from just 4 percent in Dec. 2016. The report said access has increased by 7 percent in the last three months. "In any business, you want to make sure that you're building the best mouse- trap. Some customers want the fastest speed possible, and right now that's the gig," said Brian Ferney, regional vice president of sales and marketing for Comcast's Western New England region. Comcast, which is leading the pack both in Connecticut and nationally, last month announced an expansion of gigabit access to nearly 100 percent of households it serves in Greater Hartford. The move followed a similar rollout of gig internet throughout the company's Greater New Haven footprint last April. Nationwide, the cable giant says it now offers the super-fast internet to virtually all 58 million homes and businesses it passes through in 39 states and Washington, D.C. At Cox, Jim Reed, executive direc- tor for corporate marketing, said the company began upgrading its plat- forms to support gig internet during the middle of last year and now offers its "gigablast" service to 83 percent of Connecticut customers. "We've got a big push on to make sure that we're getting gig to all of the households we pass through," he said. He said the company, which serves 16 cities and towns in Connecticut, is on track to offer gig speeds to everyone in its footprint by the end of 2019. GoNetspeed, which just began building its Connecticut network last summer, currently provides gig access to roughly 15,000 homes in the state, said Chief Operating Officer Thomas Perrone. The company, which also serves the Pittsburgh, Pa., area, plans to add another 200 miles to its fiber optic network in Connecticut by next year, bringing gig access to an additional 40,000 homes, he said. "We want to get to the point where the residents tell us where to go next" based on inquiries on the company's website, said Perrone. "We like to see about 15 percent interest (in a commu- nity) before we build." While standard high-speed internet plans typically offer speeds up to 100 Gig Buildup As demand increases, Cable companies rush to rollout ultra-fast internet speeds in CT Comcast has built about 151,000 miles of fiber around the country — enough to wrap around the earth nearly six times. That allows Comcast to add internet speed, which individual and business customers increasingly are demanding. PHOTO | CONTRIBUTED

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