Healthcare Industry Still Stunted in the Paper Age

05/22/2012 by Leave a comment

Healthcare Electronic Medical Records (EMR)Recently, TechCrunch posted an article on the Healthcare industry pertaining to its’ slower migration towards the electronic age. This week, in response, one of our Sunlight bloggers reflects on this curbed cycle.

In the early 90s, a major insurance carrier in NYC converted their paper files to WORM optical disk, reducing 3 floors of cabinets to 25% of the space. Each insured individual was given a unique barcode, printed on an insurance card. This way documents could be scanned in and associated with that patient’s barcode and additions could be made automatically, eliminating the need for paper handling. Read more of this post

Filed under Dark Fiber, Fiber Optics, Telecom, Bandwidth, Managed Services, Healthcare, Technology, Security, Reliability

An Education Outlook: Indirect Benefits of a Private Fiber Network

05/08/2012 by Leave a comment

Schoolboy in Library In a past post, we discussed the distinctions amongst private and traditional wide area networks (WANs). While it is frequently easy to spot some of the direct advantages of a private network, the indirect outcomes often go unnoticed. This week we bring to you inside insight from the education sector regarding these “indirect” benefits.

When asked to write a blog on K-12 districts and our WAN service, I spent some time reflecting on the numerous deals we’ve completed and our reasons for success. After taking some Aleve for my headache, I decided to recount a conversation I had with an IT Director who recently retired from one of the earlier and larger school districts that we service. I met him at another function where he told me of his recent retirement party and some of the accolades he received from his peers. I thought he was going to wax poetically that with the new capacity our network provided, the district was able to enhance the school’s distance learning capabilities, improve efficiencies of the administrative staff and teachers’ information systems, and provide more applications for the students. Understandably, I was a little thrown when he told me of the sincerity and well wishes he received from the staff of the Attendance Office and how they had thanked him for his efforts. Read more of this post

Filed under Customer, Education, Erate, K-12, Managed Services, Technology, Telecom, WAN, Wide Area Networks

Least Cost Alternative for your Private Fiber Wide Area Network

04/24/2012 by Leave a comment

You’ve compared traditional and Private Fiber WANs, choosing Private Fiber. Now you must decide between purchasing a managed private line Ethernet service or licensing dark fiber, which requires managing the services yourself. Dark fiber may be viable if your bandwidth requirements remain fairly stable for a period of years and you can leverage your existing network support resources. But, will it really cost less from a purely financial perspective? Each case is different.

One way to decide is to prepare a total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis. TCO is a financial estimate of all direct and indirect product costs. Although useful for financial analysis, it doesn’t address the philosophical questions. TCO accounts for all capital expenditures (Capex) made at the beginning of a service period as well as the direct and indirect operating expenses (Opex) foreseen during the period.

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Filed under Business, Dark Fiber, Managed Services, Telecom, WAN, Wide Area Networks

The Juggle between Dark vs. Lit

04/10/2012 by 1 Comment

Dark vs. Lit FiberThere are not too many of us left. The Metro Dark Fiber providers are a dying breed in many markets across the country.

Through industry consolidation and evolving business plans, many of our peers have shifted their focus to lines of business that have taken them away from the model of consistently selling dark fiber to other carriers. This has opened up opportunities for those of us still willing to offer metro dark fiber to carriers; while at the same time, pressuring us to highlight our private line Ethernet offering to prevent high bandwidth enterprise customers from evolving away from our network. Read more of this post

Filed under Carriers, Customer, Dark Fiber, Managed Services, Telecom, WAN, Wide Area Networks

Distributed Antenna Systems in the OSP: What You Need to Know

03/27/2012 by Leave a comment

Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS)Recently, I had the opportunity to write an article for the BICSI News Publication on the engineering perspective of Distributed Antenna Systems.  The full article is available in the January/February issue of the magazine but here is a quick recap in case you missed it.

With an ever increasing array of wireless devices on the market, the need for improved wireless networks has also increased.  Many new networks have used distributed antenna systems or DAS in place of the traditional towers to reduce the costs and regulatory hurdles that are involved. However, DAS have their own considerations including radio frequency (RF) and outside plant (OSP) engineering, permitting requirements, and of course construction and testing.

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Filed under DAS, Distributed Antenna Systems, Engineering, Fiber Optics, OSP, Outside Plant, Wireless

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