For the second time in the past few weeks, Verizon has suffered a nationwide outage of its wireless data services. Find out how you can ensure business continuity in such cases.
Business users who make use of PC remote access and remote
administration tools often rely on wireless data services to access remote
systems.However, according to a recent report published by ZDNet, the Verizon
LTE data network has suffered a nationwide failure of its services on December
21st 2011.Even though Verizon has built a reputation as being the provider with
the biggest LTE coverage in the United States and the most reliable wireless
service, this is the second time the company has seen such a failure in the
past couple of weeks.Now many business users are asking themselves the
question: what should they do to ensure better reliability of their operations?
Tools such as Remote Control Software require a reliable data connection to
work properly.One thing that wont solve the problem would be looking at other
service providers.Every company that provides wireless service has suffered
this kind of problem at some time in their history.In general, wireless data is
very reliable, assuming youre not on the fringe of the coverage area.Having a
good backup communications strategy would be far better.The good news is that
in major cities, finding a Wi-Fi hotspot, either free or paid, is not difficult.Coffee
shops, hotels, business centers, shopping centers, etc.all provide Wi-Fi coverage
which isnt dependent on the cellular data network.While using remote access
software is good, it is not a replacement for good human to human
communications in a business environment.A company should have a procedure in
place when some part of the communications services they are using become
temporarily unavailable.Instead of sending some data through the internet,
users could, for example, call someone in the office and give them the details.Though
this may not be too convenient, it is still a good thing to do if you are
unable to send a status report or other simple document.There are some options
if having data on the road is critical to your companys mission and you couldnt
tolerate more than a few hours of down time, such as having a portable
satellite modem that uses satellite internet rather than the terrestrial
wireless network.Be aware, however, that mobile satellite internet, although
quite reliable, is very expensive (both in terms of equipment and subscription
costs), is relatively slow when compared to 3G or LTE and has bandwidth
limitations.This explains why it is used as an option only in places where
continued communications are essential for security and business continuity,
like news companiesArticle Search, diplomatic missions and mining companies.