It’s old news to some, but 4G/LTE and LTE‑Advanced are making our rural and even metro business customers very happy.
Why?
It still seems to be a secret to many businesses that the technology to harness 4G failover solutions is now available to a vast majority of the United States (roughly 95%).
By pairing Cradlepoint routers and other 4G products (like boosters and antennas) with sound installation procedures, a strong integrator’s deployment tactics can enable businesses to utilize cloud applications far more reliably than ever before.
Take this example:
Alleyton Resource: A Case Study
Wired Networks had a recent deployment for Alleyton Resource Company, an integrated aggregates and ready-mix concrete company based in Richmond, Texas. Alleyton Resource owns and operates plants in rural and metro areas in and around Houston. When Alleyton came to us, they were experiencing major network downtime issues.
Due to the remote nature of some of their sites, broadband cable or DSL wasn’t an option. They had nowhere else to go — or so they thought.
We suggested that Alleyton Resources experiment with 4G‑as‑a‑Service. The solution not only worked for that team, but Alleyton Resources also decided to utilize 4G as a failover backup to all other available locations.
One common myth that we dispelled in the Alleyton case study is that 4G isn’t reliable in an office environment. Often, 4G is wrongly compared to cell phone usage and how signals fade.
The biggest difference between enterprise 4G and the 4G available on your smartphone is that 4G modems don’t move. They are fixed devices with fixed pointed directional antennas or omni‑ directional antennas enabled with boosters to enhance the signal or power gain. The power gain is significant and significantly better than 4G on a cell phone.
How much better exactly?
In experiments, our 4G failover solutions were up to 63 times more powerful than traditional cell phone coverage. What’s more, the latency is tolerable and download/upload speeds tend to be above 10Mb/3Mb.
Alleyton’s Director of IT, Virginia Lopez, described our solution as a “life‑saver” for their business‑critical applications, and “one‑of‑ a‑kind” with the ability to purchase both the primary, backup, equipment, and network monitoring as a single solution — not to mention an uptime guarantee of 99.99%.
“Offering the customer a predictable way to consume telecom is very empowering,” said Lopez of Alleyton Resources. “Why would we purchase a single connection when we can get a predictable outcome with two connections and eliminate most downtime?”
You can read the entire case study here.
The Wired Networks Difference
According to Jeremy Kerth, president of Wired Networks:
“We are seeing a major need in the mid‑markets for a better way to consume and purchase telecom solutions. Our system, Cloud Assurance, takes the guesswork out of the traditional telecom sale and install by providing two separate circuits, terminated to two separate devices from two different providers, configured and installed by our team, while managing both for the customer with our 24/7/365 NOC services — all on a single invoice.”
There’s been a major shift in how business customers consume telecom, but it seems to make sense to them and to us, for the sake of the uptime that it generates. 4G and Cradlepoint are a big part of this strategy as a backup as 4G is quite reliable, and oftentimes more reliable than even terrestrial broadband solutions.
The 4G Revolution with 5G on the Horizon
When deployed properly, 4G for businesses is a gem. And according to Small Business Trends, 5G is just around the corner. With speeds approaching 400Mb and higher, it seems like in the near future almost everything will be connected to the cloud.
Wired Networks and others predict 5G will turn the table on traditional terrestrial services. When 5G is fully deployed, nationwide wireless will become the de facto standard for broadband services. The reliability will be similar to that of satellite TV, which is up and operating most of the time and backed up by fiber services.
According to Intel, there will be 10 times more bandwidth thanks to 5G, 100 times as many connected devices, and 1,000 times more mobile data volume. The future of 4G has been getting brighter by the day and 5G is like a new sun that will be gracing the sky.
It’s a game‑changer. Contact us if you’re ready to harness 4G for business continuity and higher profits.
