MARCH 2019CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM 19Hospitality Bandwidth: Two-lane Road or A Superhighway?ospitality bandwidth is usually a delicate balance of resource conservation and business needs, with the guest experience always pulling between the two. The answer is quite simple: we need more bandwidth. The challenge, of course, is that a simple answer is not always easy to execute. My goal was to move from my sub 1 Gig ISP to a multiple Gig redundant network ready for anything I could throw at it. I worked through this challenge for just over a year before overcoming all the hurdles. The technology is not the issue. Most of us can source and purchase large pipes. It's the costs that kill the initiatives. The ability to truly partner with your vendors can turn an impossible vision into a funded project with a delivery date.To reduce cost, I held countless meetings with vendors advising them of my lofty goals; big pipes at an affordable price. Eventually, I found a partner in Hotwire Communications. They had service in my area and we immediately started the design. We quickly realized that the price per Gig is very attractive on 40 Gbps circuits. As the redundancy design progressed, we discovered that the hotel is right in the center of two independent service loops terminating to different data centers. This gave me the redundancy, size, and the speed I was looking for. In return, my ISP was able to cross-connect their two loops through my property. It was the perfect win-win scenario and needless to say, we signed the deal and I upgraded to dual entry 10 Gig circuits for a total of 20 Gbps. Our bandwidth increased by 2977 percent and my monthly costs decreased by almost 40 percent. We now have hospitality's largest bandwidth on the nation's fastest ISP.We're all constantly approached with challenges; many are straightforward. We all understand SaaS for standard volume applications. But building a foundation with the acquisition of large pipes has a ripple effect, providing a myriad of options in how we approach other challenges. Recently, we were working through a dead zone issue with a wireless carrier. They mentioned, reluctantly, the ability to provide LTE hotspots, but that unfortunately all the LTE traffic would have to use our bandwidth. I simply mentioned that we have redundant 10 Gig pipes. When can we start? At a 1600 room luxury hotel, our guests have high expectations for service levels in all aspects of their stay. This certainly includes bandwidth, where it is very common to cxo insightsHCRAIG CORBIN, DIRECTOR OF IT, FONTAINEBLEAU
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