The tragedy that destroyed New York’s World’s Trade Center knocked out a nearby central office run by Verizon Communications, disrupting phone service for much of lower Manhattan.
This has caused many businesses to seek alternative service, and several have ordered lines from Focal Communications, a Chicago-based competitive carrier that specializes in serving large business customers.
“Within hours of the tragedy, we started hearing from people who wanted service,” said Robert Taylor, Focal’s chief executive. “We had them up and running within hours.”
New customers and a leap in volume over existing lines has boosted Focal’s operations significantly, Taylor said. The situation harks back to 1988 when a fire at a central office in Hinsdale knocked out service to many customers in Chicago’s western suburbs for about a month.
Back then, there were few alternatives to the local Bell companies, but the ones that were in business, including Metropolitan Fiber Systems and Teleport Communications, enjoyed healthy growth among businesses seeking to diversify their communications. At that time, Taylor was working for Illinois Bell, the Ameritech subsidiary that was crippled by the Hinsdale fire.
“The Bells use a hub-and-spoke architecture so you have these choke points where any damage can have far-reaching effects,” he said. “The Hinsdale fire called attention to that and taught many businesses the importance of communications diversity. You want to have carriers with lines that don’t go through the same buildings.”
In light of recent terrorist attacks, many businesses and municipalities are reassessing their communications systems, he said.
Fast Web, sort of: Some computer users may love the lightning speed of having a broadband connection, but not enough to spend $50 a month or more for the service. But maybe those folks would spend $30 a month to have a pretty high-speed Internet connection–a sort of broadband.
At least that’s the reasoning behind a new technology being weighed by cable TV operators. The new technology enables cable operators to sell different flavors of computer connectivity for different prices, guaranteeing that those who buy the high-end service will always get top speed, even if all their neighbors use their computers at the same time.
A local company, Cadant Inc., has designed equipment necessary to offer this second generation broadband connectivity over cable TV systems. It recently supplied equipment for a small system in Lawrence, Kan., and has equipment in various stages of testing in several other markets, said Tim Doiron, Cadant’s marketing director.
Getting its products designated as qualified by CableLabs, the industry’s standards body, was seen as a coup for the Lisle-based start-up.
It is one of only two vendors right now that has gotten the industry seal of approval for its second generation gear, beating much larger competitors like Motorola and Cisco Systems.
“This marks our transition from the development stage to the revenue stage,” Doiron said.
The firm is working on developing other technology that will meet the cable industry’s new standards for delivering packetized voice over cable systems, a task seen as vital before most cable operators consider offering phone service over their systems.
Smart software: With most businesses downsizing and worried about a recession, local start-up SmartSignal Corp. pulled a rabbit out of the hat last week not only by raising $12 million in its second round of financing, but by being oversubscribed in the process.
“We’re hiring,” said John Kerastas, the firm’s marketing communications manager. “We have 32 folks on board, and we’ll double that within the next year.”
The Lisle-based firm has developed software created at Argonne National Laboratory for use by industry to predict when equipment is likely to fail so that it can be maintained in a smooth fashion. It has targeted the power and transportation industries.
Even with the recent aviation downturn, there is still interest in avoiding unscheduled failures of jet engines that can cost an airline $50,000 or more per incident. The firm’s initial airline customer, Delta Air Lines, has been pleased that more than half a dozen identifiable failure incidents have been averted, Kerastas said.
Argonne scientists created the software to help nuclear power plant operators avoid problems related to faulty sensors and other troubles common to their industry.
The software scans information provided by sensors throughout an operating system, looking for general patterns in the data’s relationships when everything is running properly. Using these patterns, the software can anticipate when problems are likely and determine when trouble signals stem from faulty sensors rather than real equipment failures.
Turning Argonne’s software into a product has taken a lot of time, but SmartSignal’s engineers have made a lot of progress, Kerastas said.
“Now we can get an airline up and running with this product in a day. It used to take two months.”
