BendTel, a locally owned business communications company, is preparing to offer Gigabit speed fiber optic internet through downtown Bend and the Old Mill District.
Now entering its eleventh year of operation BendTel was once an entrepreneurial startup. “We started with one customer, a router, and some big ideas and now we are embarking on fiber optic ring that will revolutionize our internet bandwidth delivery,” said Tom Barrett CEO of BendTel.
“Our latest evolutionary step is the construction of fiber optic cable facilities. Phase one includes a ring through downtown Bend and the Old Mill District. This fiber ring will allow us to offer very high bandwidth speeds, faster than what is currently available (Gigabit 1,000 Mbps to 10 Gigabit 10,000 Mbps up / down) to businesses and buildings along the route.”Barrett says they plan to utilize the new fiber facilities from day one to offer very competitively priced Metro Area Ethernet services with high burst speeds in excess of a Gigabit and no data transfer caps.
“We will also bundle bandwidth services with our high quality voice services and phone system services creating the total package.”“This will push the envelope of the speeds available and change the competitive playing field. This infrastructure will help Bend businesses do more at less cost.
It will attract businesses that otherwise wouldn’t locate here due to the limited bandwidth available today. There are also other providers in the area interested in using our network to extend their own service offerings. “In addition it will create startup-friendly locations and spur economic development and job creation.
High bandwidth industries such as healthcare, technology and schools already have large bandwidth requirements, and we see those same requirements expanding into the greater business community.” BendTel offers guaranteed bandwidth speeds for a flat rate and a bandwidth burstable component which allows customers to use more than two times their contracted speed for short durations without any extra charge.
In addition, the self healing ring-based design of the fiber backbone allows for a highly reliable network. Dark fiber will also be available for connections to carriers or data centers.“BendTel offers more than just bandwidth,” says Barrett.
“A few years after we started, BendTel was the only locally owned company with its own telephone switch and that’s still true today. BendTel also started installing and managing customer’s telephone systems and we’re now the local authorized NEC and Toshiba telephone system dealer.
Recently we expanded our telephone system and interconnect cabling business into Portland. This year we also expanded into the Redmond Central Office. “We’ve grown organically, step by step, non-stop since day one without any government or utility rate payer funding,” According to Barrett this cutting edge bandwidth technology will put the City of Bend on the IT map and create family wage jobs in a clean technology based environment.
www.bendtel.com 130 NW Greenwood Ave. 541-389-4020
