During a disaster, having a functional network with reliable ways to communicate and connect is critical to keep your business going. The human factor—ensuring yourself and those around you are safe—is the primary initial focus. Once you have confirmed everyone is safe, you turn to keeping your business functional. In many disaster situations, such as hurricanes, fires, and the events of the past week across most of the United States due to arctic weather, reliable Internet can be hard to find and sustain, as is the ability to communicate.
Enter LTE and unified communications.
By leveraging cellular-based LTE networks, businesses can stay connected. Add to that a unified communications solution, and now you can also effectively communicate—all without having to leverage the traditional technologies businesses rely on during non-disaster situations. LTE provides fast and reliable connectivity, and in disaster situations, because the cellular towers are used by first responders, they are among the first infrastructure components to have power and connectivity restored. This means the ability to quickly get back online. Most LTE endpoint devices don’t require a lot of power, so you can use solar or battery-based power options to keep your on-demand network up in the event of prolonged power interruption.
Unified communications runs on top of this LTE-based network to bring employees and customers together, replaces the need for a traditional phone, and enables businesses to use voice, video, and collaboration services in a convenient way.
When Hurricane Harvey hit the greater Houston, Texas area in 2017, Harris County saw LTE as one of the only networks that remained functional both during and after the storms. Despite heavy flooding, getting connectivity back up and running took hours, not days.
TPx provides managed network services that include LTE-based services through our MSx Managed Networks and MSx SD-WAN service offerings. Our UCx with Cisco WebEx platform allows us to connect people seamlessly through unified communications and collaboration. We have a strong and proven track record for helping our customers, and our neighbors, when disaster strikes.