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STS Telecom Urges South FL Business Owners to Hurricane-Proof Now2 May 2006
Stephen McWilliam, president of Florida State Realty Group in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was one of the lucky ones. A customer of STS Telecom, a technology based telephone company providing businesses with both state-of-the-art hosted voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and traditional telephone services, McWilliam’s business kept running during and after Hurricane Wilma hit, even though his main office was without power from FPL and broadband services from Comcast.
Thanks to services provided by STS Telecom, McWilliam simply unplugged his VoIP handset, temporarily relocated to Orlando, and plugged into a broadband connection there. “Even though phone service was down in Fort Lauderdale, my current and potential clients were able to reach me at my regular phone number as though it was business as usual. I didn’t miss one call.”
Others were not as fortunate.
One of the largest Halloween costume sites, Extremehalloween.com, is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Since Hurricane Wilma hit the local area just a week before Halloween, vice president Shari Maxwell scrambled to get more than 3,000 orders out prior to the storm.
“Obviously, Halloween is our busiest time of year. It’s normally when we do our biggest volume of business,” said Maxwell. “But once the storm hit we lost power. We used generators at our warehouse to run four FedEx computers to prepare shipments. We paid to upgrade all of our orders to Next Day FedEx delivery to get costumes to people in time for Halloween,” Maxwell said.
Unfortunately, it was not enough to prevent the storm from having a dramatic impact on business.
“We lost Internet and phone access and likely missed out on more than 5,000 additional orders due to Hurricane Wilma,” said Maxwell. “Business owners should not make the same costly mistakes this hurricane season.”
In 2005, Hurricane Wilma swept across Florida and left damage estimated to cost in excess of $10 billion. With telephone service, electric, cellular connectivity, and Internet access down for several weeks, Florida business owners learned valuable lessons the hard way. If time is money, then down time is missed opportunity for a business.
With the 2006 hurricane season beginning June 1st and with 17 named storms, South Florida businesses may very well see a repeat of last year’s disruption in power and Internet services all over again. Now is the time to prepare.
Thanks to a partnership with The NAP of the Americas (napoftheamericas.net), a premier disaster-proof telecommunications fortress that provides interconnection between global carriers, ISPs and others, STS Telecom is able to provide world class reliability to their clients using VoIP, a technology that allows phone calls to be transmitted via the Internet. With VoIP, voice information is sent digitally rather than over the public telephone network. Calls can be made from anywhere there is broadband connectivity. This means that when a storm threatens, businesses can literally pack up their IP phones and relocate to areas that are unaffected by a storm. The Nap continued to operate throughout Hurricane Wilma without any interruptions to its customers or critical infrastructure.
“Our clients’ business can function anywhere so long as they have a laptops and Internet access,” said Keith Kramer, executive vice president of STS Telecom. “Our service includes IP phones and a complete versatile and customizable phone system. Business owners are no longer dependant upon when the local telephone company can get the lines back up and running. Business owners are now able to take control of their own telephone system. It’s revolutionary.”
“Now is the time to protect your business. Don’t take an unnecessary gamble with your company’s future,” said Mark Amarant, chief executive officer of STS Telecom. “The cost of a business continuity plan and a secure technology infrastructure is minimal when compared with the potential financial loss during and after a disaster hits. IP offers significant protection.”
“Planning ahead is critical when a hurricane threatens to shut down a business,” said Jon Krutchik, president of STS Telecom. “As we brace ourselves for another hurricane season, now is the time for South Florida business owners to hurricane-proof their businesses,” said Krutchik.
About STS Telecom
Established in 1994 as a long distance provider servicing the Florida community, STS Telecom is a nationwide VoIP service provider. Through relationships with Cisco Systems and Level 3, and capitalizing on cutting edge industry leading hosted IP solutions, STS Telecom provides a full suite of software based communications products and services including voice over IP applications, dependable discounted local phone service, long distance service, as well as Telephony hardware. STS Telecom is not affiliated with BellSouth® or any other telephone company. STS Telecom serves Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach Counties. For additional information about STS Telecom, visit www.ststelecom.com.
Source: pr
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