One of nation’s first cotton mills – now a mixed-use business / residential community – relies on hosted america’s fiber and triple play
Customer Case Study
The Rocky Mount Mills was one of the first cotton mills constructed in US – dating back to 1818. Today it’s a 150-acre live-work-play mixed use development on the Tar River including 300,000 square feet of office/multi-use space, over 50 acres for selected advanced manufacturing, and over 100 new and restored single-family homes and apartments.
The Challenge
While planning for developing Rocky Mount Mills, the Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC) was determined not to repeat the infrastructure experience they developed at another one of their developments – the American Tobacco Historic District next to the state-of-the-art ballpark for the Durham Bulls which they also own. The American Tobacco development had so many vendors pulling so many different cables within conduits that they became completely filled to the point every time a new tenant moved in installing their service meant an outage for an existing tenant due to the install.
The Solution
CBC wanted a fiber infrastructure to deliver a near maintenance-free solution and future-proof the site for all their tenants’ communication needs – and one vendor to hold accountable for servicing and maintaining the property. Hosted America, a leading provider of IP voice, data, fiber and managed services for mixed use and residential developments agreed to meet the challenge and partnered with CBC in order to do so. Hosted designed and installed a high-capacity fiber optic network system and developed/implemented an open-access fiber architecture.
“Hosted America’s customer service is second to none. They are responsive and answer the phone when I call.”
— Scott Roberts
GM of Rocky Mount Mill
The Impact
The Rocky Mount Mills provides its residents with reliable, advanced telecommunications services, serviced in a reliable “on time” basis by a provider that looks out for its 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 & 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. 99.999% up time.
Future Proof
Rocky Mount 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 Rocky Mount Mill’s is designed for high reliability and is delivering continuous, uninterrupted, “always on” service.
Monitoring
Rocky Mount Mill’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.