Hotel 1000 Quenches Guests' Thirst for More Bandwidth with 100MB Connection

"We were seeing near total bandwidth utilization when our property is fully occupied in both the guest rooms and the banquet space. There was no doubt that the thirst for more bandwidth would only increase in the weeks and months ahead, so we needed to be positioned for that growth now. The demands on bandwidth per person are significant, and we needed to push beyond what is considered to be sufficient and even robust bandwidth for a property of this size," says Matt Hagerman, hotel manager for Hotel 1000.

To quench guests' thirst for bandwidth and to ensure that the hotel would be prepared for future demands, Hotel 1000 worked with XO Communications, a nationwide provider of advanced communication services for businesses, and several other technology partners, to install a fiber optics connection to the property, thereby enabling a 100MB connection to the already installed future proof internal fiber network. With this added connectivity, Hotel 1000's bandwidth has increased 20-fold and it is one of the first hotels in the U.S. to offer this type of broadband connectivity.

"We have used XO Communications for our data circuits from the beginning and are happy with the services they provide," says Hagerman. "As bandwidth-intensive Web apps become more feature-rich and commonplace, we felt we needed the 100mb fiber connection to be able to provide excellent service and uptime for our guests well into the future. The continued march toward Web-based systems, increasing mobile devices, and multiple systems being integrated are all impacted by the upgrade today and with future needs. This upgrade was a necessity to maintain our brand and out-impeccable â╬Ëå"wired to serve' environment.

Hagerman describes the installation as a relatively smooth process, although it did take some time to complete. XO had to install the fiber between 2nd Avenue and the building, so permitting from the city took some time. After the physical installation, Hotel 1000 met several times with XO to devise a plan of action to ensure that the process would run smoothly and to test the equipment. "The circuit was actually live before we did the cutover, so the dominoes fell into place as expected on our "go live" date," says Hagerman, who also notes that the end result has been extremely positive.