BellSouth Helps Business Customers Prepare for Natural Disasters with 'Smart' Fiber Optic Service
19 Novembre 2004 - 2:00PM
PR Newswire (US)
BellSouth Helps Business Customers Prepare for Natural Disasters
with 'Smart' Fiber Optic Service --Self-Healing Connections Provide
Additional Assurance of Business Continuity, According to Florida
Customers-- ATLANTA, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Unaccustomed as they
are to discouraging students from attending class, officials of
Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., were thankful to have that
capability recently. Due to careful planning and communication
services from BellSouth, the school was able to get messages out in
the midst of a natural disaster. When Hurricane Frances roared
through central Florida, she toppled 100- year-old laurel oak trees
and left floodwater standing inside buildings on the 165-acre
Stetson campus northeast of Orlando. With no commercial electrical
power, power lines lying on the ground and limbs spread across
roads, Stetson cancelled classes. But the question administrators
were left with was how to communicate their decision to students
and faculty and how to tell them when it was safe to return to
campus. They turned to e-mail and their Web site, which, despite
the devastation throughout the area, remained functional for the
entire nine days the campus was without power. Bill Penney,
director of technology at Stetson, Florida's first private
university, credited BellSouth(R) SMARTRing(R) Service for the
school's ability to keep communications flowing. "It made the job
of the Emergency Management Team easier and saved us a tremendous
headache," said Penney. "There was no power on campus, but we were
able to send e-mail and to post pictures of the damage on the Web
site so students and parents knew we weren't kidding when we said
it was bad around here." SMARTRing Service is a dedicated,
high-capacity network designed to provide increased reliability and
functionality among multiple sites. The backbone of SMARTRing
(Self-healing, Multi-nodal Alternative Route Topology Ring) Service
is its ability to heal itself based on its redundant architecture.
SMARTRing Service can be described as two paths of fiber providing
a protective moat around an area such as the Stetson campus. If a
single fiber is cut, the signal will travel over the second fiber.
If both fiber circuits are cut, the signal reverses and travels
around the remaining arc of the loop. SMARTRing Service also made
life easier for government officials and residents of Seminole
County in central Florida during the recent hurricanes and tropical
storms. Seminole County added SMARTRing Service technology several
years ago as its requirements for telecommunications services
continued to grow. "When BellSouth first came to us with this
technology, we were looking for ways to accommodate future growth,"
said Greg Holcomb, information technology manager for Seminole
County. "But one of our criteria was also making sure we could
handle major catastrophic events. If we were shut down, we wanted
to make sure we could quickly reroute and bring our connectivity up
at another location." Holcomb and other government officials may
not have envisioned a series of events like the recent storms, but
they are thankful they were prepared. As a result of the services
in place, Seminole County experienced no outages. "Business
continuity plans that incorporate communication systems give
customers piece of mind that they can effectively operate, even
under stressful conditions," said Joan Kratz - vice president of
marketing, BellSouth Business. "BellSouth's voice and data
solutions, with proper planning, greatly reduce the impact of
natural disasters on an organization's ability to communicate to
customers, suppliers and partners." About BellSouth Corporation
BellSouth Corporation is a Fortune 100 communications company
headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and a parent company of Cingular
Wireless, the nation's largest wireless voice and data provider.
Backed by award winning customer service, BellSouth offers the most
comprehensive and innovative package of voice and data services
available in the market. Through BellSouth Answers(R), residential
and small business customers can bundle their local and long
distance service with dial up and high speed DSL Internet access,
satellite television and Cingular(R) Wireless service. For
businesses, BellSouth provides secure, reliable local and long
distance voice and data networking solutions. BellSouth also offers
online and directory advertising through BellSouth(R)
RealPages.com(R) and The Real Yellow Pages(R). More information
about BellSouth can be found at http://www.bellsouth.com/ .
DATASOURCE: BellSouth Corporation CONTACT: Todd Smith of BellSouth
Corporation, +1-404-226-8918, or Web site:
http://www.bellsouth.com/ Company News On-Call:
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