Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Fire Takes Down Fixed Wireless for Days: A lesson in Multi-Carrier Reach

Last Friday, a team of utility workers in Madison, Wisconsin started their day with a simple job: patch up some paint on the water tower. In fact, even the excitement of an unexpected fire breaking out seemed relatively inconsequential once it was extinguished. That is until they discovered the fire had destroyed a fixed wireless antenna and a cluster of fiber cables leading to it.

A local t-com company serves customers in the area--both business and residential--with a fixed wireless broadband solution. The end-users, undoubtedly, enjoy the same wireless local loop perks that Accel Networks offers. But that local loop went down last Friday... and, according to Channel 3 News, is still down today. Five days of no broadband: could your business survive?

This highlights two key questions you must ask yourself when weighing the benefits of a fixed wireless broadband option for your business location:

Is it redundant? That means, is my connectivity dependent solely on one local antenna that my local broadband company supports, or do I enjoy the vast grid from major carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint?
Is it redundant? Yes, I know, I'm being redundant. But the second factor to redundancy is the ability to provision a totally separate backup network with a distinct route to the network--presumably a second carrier altogether.

The ability to offer the first redundancy described is a must-have for any viable wireless broadband solution. Dependency on a local ISP can mean huge risks for broadband-dependent businesses, as the Madison-area customers are now discovering. The ubiquitous coverage provided by major carriers, especially in urban areas, is a resource worthy of tapping into.

Second, however, the back-up system in the unlikely event of a carrier failure is just as important. No matter how much more reliable major carriers are than local ISP's, tragedy can still strike. Solutions like Accel's Gemini product offer truly diverse paths to the network, which means if you primary goes down, the backup will likely not be affected by the same outage.

Imagine yourself in the shoes of the business owners in the affected area of Madison. Do you have the redundancy to survive? If not, don't wait for tragedy to strike. Be prepared. Be redundant.

Labels: backup network, Fixed Wireless Broadband, ISP