BendTel, a Bend-based business telephone and Internet company, has nearly completed a fiber-optic ring around the core of Bend that will expand available high-speed Internet bandwidth for businesses, company executives said Thursday. The system, which is 95 percent complete, is already providing gigabit-per-second data service to BendTel clients, said CEO Thomas Barrett. When the ring is closed, it becomes capable of sensing breaks and rerouting data transmission without interrupting service to the customers along the ring, a feature BendTel calls “self-healing.” “We’re building the ring through the denser business sections of Bend,” said Tim Howe, chief information officer for BendTel. “We’ll be connected to two different, independent fiber paths, so that if one were to be damaged … in any way, to where it goes down, the customers themselves would never notice that it happened because the equipment itself self-heals to go the other direction.” The ring has taken a year to build, with cable strung along power poles and laid underground, at a cost of about $750,000, Barrett said. “I’m careful with a dollar,” he said. The company bought leftover, unused fiber-optic cable from other companies, for example, but did not scrimp on cutting-edge equipment on the back end, Howe said. State-of-the-art routers and switches are at the system heart, along with layers of backup gear. “We really want to prove to people that this is really high-end stuff,” he said. The BendTel fiber-optic loop, with a 100-gigabit potential, could attract users who need high-capacity, fast data transmission for medical imaging, video and software production and website development, for example. Big data users such as schools, data centers and Internet service providers, already among BendTel clients, could find the system attractive. “It allows us to deliver the maximum amount of capacity to the maximum number of customers, so that everybody gets tons of bandwidth without any congestion issues,” Howe said. Roger Lee, executive director of Economic Development for Central Oregon, said the fiber-optic loop will answer the question that many businesses, looking to relocate, ask first about Bend. “They’re used to big bandwidth availability, at pretty low prices, coming from a large metro area, and that’s what BendTel is trying to offer,” Lee said. The price for data might be affordable, but the connection can be a big ticket that runs into thousands of dollars, depending on the client’s distance from the fiber-optic cable. The system is designed primarily for commercial use. Because of the cost involved, BendTel will wire a building, for example, only if multiple tenants want service, Barrett said. On the other hand, the loop configuration sets the stage for expansion. He said the ring concept lets loose bandwidth in amounts beyond the needs of most users. It could not only be a boon for economic development but also change the way people use the Internet, Barrett said. “What if you fully grasped the concept that scarce bandwidth was a thing of the past. What could you do that you couldn’t do before?” he asked. “And what things, products or applications or cloud applications might you get involved with that you simply couldn’t do today because of the limitations of scarce bandwidth. It’s almost like saying your car that goes maybe like 10 or 20 mph can now go 1,000 mph. Just think of the places you could travel to.”
Source: http://www.bendbulletin.com/business/2808365-151/bendtel-building-fiber-optic-ring#
