Raleigh’s largest and tallest skyscraper relies on hosted america’s fiber and triple play
Customer Case Study
The PNC Plaza is Raleigh’s largest and tallest skyscraper – by design. Even though the bank only needed 130,000 square feet it wanted a tall building that would add to the Raleigh skyline so build 138 residential condos on top of the office building. This was enough to stretch the building to 33 floors making it taller than any other building in North Carolina outside Charlotte.
The Challenge
Highwoods Properties partnered with Dominion Partners to build the 138 residential units above the office space. Dominion approached Hosted America’s Founder and CEO Phillip Watkins to design the fiber infrastructure they wanted to deliver a near maintenance free services platform and future proof the site for their residents’ communication needs. After stints with 2 service providers the property ownership sought out Hosted America to solve their growing frustration with the inability of the providers to provide consistent service and responsiveness.
The Solution
Hosted America, a leading provider of IP voice, data, fiber and managed services for mixed use and residential high rise buildings, agreed to a 1 year agreement to assess the state of the current infrastructure and service delivery platforms. Hosted found over 80 different ONT (optical network terminals that delivered the service over fiber to each residential unit) configurations. The ONT’s had been reprogrammed over time as residents moved in/out or asked for changes. Hosted migrated the fiber service from active Ethernet Solution to GPON (gigabit passive optical network) and developed one standard configuration to clean up all outstanding issues and stabilized the quality of service across the units (which the ONT manufacturer actually offered to purchase from Hosted).
After the 1-year transition, PNC Plaza was so pleased with Hosted America’s efforts it rewarded Hosted with a 7-year agreement to provide bulk data and IP based subscription services to its residents. Residents report any service requests or trouble tickets to the front desk who then inputs a ticket into the Hosted America portal which automatically provides a service order or ticket number to track the request. PNC Plaza’s residents are also pleased with the improvement in service completion intervals with over 95% of all service orders and trouble tickets referred to Hosted America closed in 1 business day.
“By looking out for the customer’s best interest we’ve transitioned this account between three different providers. It just shows the importance of relationships with people you know, like and trust pay off”
– Phillip Watkins
CEO & Founder of Hosted America
The Impact
The PNC Plaza provides its residents with reliable, advanced telecommunications services, serviced in a reliable “on time” basis by a provider that has looked out for its best interests now for almost a decade. The property is now fully equipped to deliver state-of-the art technology to its residents on its “future proof” infrastructure, such as:
Cost and Reliability
Low maintenance and operating costs. Less power consumption than traditional copper networks. Fiber can carry all consumer services, multiple providers/lines are unnecessary. Reduced points of failure compared to traditional copper networks.
Future Proof
The PNC Plaza is positioned to take advantage of future innovations and will not need to upgrade building or property infrastructure for years to come. Only the electronics on either end of the fiber need to be replaced to take advantage of new products and higher bandwidth.
Fiber Optics
Immune from magnetic and electronic interference, Including lightning strikes. Data can be transmitted long distances without the need for additional equipment, 60+ kilometers, compared to a few hundred yards for copper.
Responsiveness
Service orders and trouble tickets are immediately assigned a tracking number, dispatched and worked 95% of the time within 1 business day. Open tickets are reviewed on daily Operations call and tickets in jeopardy of missing the 1 business day completion goal are escalated to management for attention and action.
Simplicity
Networks are logically assigned so no need to perform future cross connects once installed. A fiber bundle is far smaller and less intrusive than a comparable capacity bundle of copper. Fiber splitters are compact, can be placed anywhere in the network and require no heating or cooling in IDFs (intermediate distribution frame).
Account Management
A dedicated account manager monitors all account activity from technical and operational issues to billing. Access to Hosted America’s web portal and our flexibility to interface with their internal ticketing system facilitate seamless customer care.
Bandwidth
Next generation video services, 8k and beyond. The Gigabit solution of today, fiber wraps the globe and is the backbone of the Internet
Reliability
The carrier-grade infrastructure supporting PNC Plaza is designed for high reliability and is delivering continuous, uninterrupted, “always on” service.
Monitoring
The PNC Plaza’s network is proactively monitored around the clock and at the first sign of any issue sends alerts out to Hosted America’s NOC (network operations center) engineers and on-call personnel for immediate attention.