By Mike Ligouri, Director, Customer Experience

Bad things can happen to anything that has power sent to it. It’s that simple. Technology is wonderful, but at times, it breaks. When your business’ phone or internet connection is interrupted, getting service restored becomes one of the most important things to you.

At times like these you want a service provider that knows your name. You’re not client 28461, you’re Smithtown Real Estate or Jonesbridge Medical Services. A large service provider, with millions of customers, is unlikely to be able to do that. Your small business means more to a local provider than it would to a huge provider.

Your Neighbor

In addition, a local provider will more easily understand your local business. The local provider is your neighbor. Its staff lives and works near you. And its employees shop at the same grocery stores as you; eat at the diners and restaurants that your family enjoys. They may even be your customers.

As such, they’ve also been battling the same gale force winds plaguing your area. They understand communications can be disrupted under such conditions. And they know how important it is to restore your phone and internet connection as quickly as possible.

A Culture of Preparedness

Most important, though, is culture. Most service providers offer similar products and use similar or the same technology. What makes one provider better than another for small business customers is culture.

You want a provider whose culture emphasizes avoiding interruptions. A provider that plans ahead to minimize possible interruptions.

Fiber’s Benefits

By the way, only providers that offer you voice and internet via fiber can make that claim with respect to power. That’s because older cable-supplied internet needs power (and backup power) at multiple locations. With fiber, power is needed only at the provider’s data center and at the client’s site. So as long your power is working, there’s a 99% chance you will have internet service, even during a storm

But, as we said earlier, since disruptions happen, you need a provider whose culture emphasizes an all-hands-on-deck approach when issues occur.
You also want a provider with a make-it-happen culture. Where top executives are involved when there’s an issue that needs solving. And a supplier where executives’ priority is to provide what the staff needs to make solutions happen: more resources, trucks, whatever is needed to get your business’s communications back up and running.

24/7 Monitoring

And you want a provider whose network is watched 24/7 in an operations center, or NOC. So when a squirrel has a hankering for fiber and its nibbling cuts a fiber line, those monitoring the network spot the issue quickly. Signals immediately are sent on the provider’s emergency notification system (ENS) to its staff. At that point, it’s no longer business as usual. A good provider goes into a high-alert level. Priority One becomes restoring service as fast as possible.

Fortunately, a prepared provider has diagnostic tools that can find the squirrel’s dining spot. It can then tell technicians in trucks, “The break is 38,231 feet from here.” A permanent fix can come later, but, as we said, Priority One is to bring service back up asap, so your small business’ internet and phone are working again. Fast.

That’s the sort of provider you want. And that’s the type of provider Summit Broadband is – a local service provider with a robust fiber-optic network and US-based support. When you’re looking for a communications provider for your business, check out Summit Broadband’s Business Services and let us be part of the conversation.