With winter storm season approaching, it’s that time of year again for TeleDynamic to encourage you  to establish a business continuity plan for your telecommunications system.

Unfortunately, disasters are a part of life. Earthquakes, weather-related disasters, computer viruses, Internet attacks and carrier failures – to name a few.

The Importance of a Continity Plan for Telecommunications Systems

As we grow increasingly interconnected and more dependent upon a rich communications infrastructure, we also grow increasingly vulnerable to disaster.

Businesses invest a tremendous amount of time, money, and resources to make their ventures successful, and yet, while the importance of emergency planning may seem self-evident, it often gets put on the back burner in the face of more immediate concerns. Being prepared can make an impact on actually staying in business following a disaster. 

DID YOU KNOW?
An estimated 25 percent of businesses
DO NOT RE-OPEN following a major disaster!

A survey by AT&T shows that almost one-third of U.S. businesses do not have continuity plans and nearly 40 percent do not have off site backup or redundant systems.

This lack of preparation comes despite the fact that two-thirds of those companies surveyed admit to having lost business because of previous disasters.

Do You Have a Plan for Keeping Your Communications Up and Running in the Event of a Disaster?

Here are a few areas to consider:

• POWER: Do you have an adequate UPS (battery backup system) in place?
• ALTERNATE PATHS: If your T1 or PRI goes down, do you have backup lines?
• PBX BACKUP: Do you have a current data backup of your system?
• HARDWARE REDUNDANCY: Hard drives and power supplies fail. Are you prepared for restoring operations?
• EMERGENCY CALL RE-ROUTING: If your system or service fails, do calls automatically get routed to another number?
• ALTERNATIVE WORK SITE: Does your company have a plan in place to transfer calls to a secondary location in the event of a disaster?

The above points illustrate some of the methods to reduce the chance of telecom failure and speed recovery from disasters. A bit of good news on a bleak subject, many of the measures are inexpensive and easy to implement.