March 12, 2010

Optimum Lights Verticals

Optimum Lightpath may have an easier time in developing vertical businesses for its Ethernet service, given the population density of its footprint.

Like its parent company, Cablevision, Optimum Lightpath covers the New York metropolitan area. The company launched its Ethernet service delivery platform five years ago and now has roughly 3,900 route miles with more than 3,800 lit locations.

With its 100-percent fiber optic network, the company has garnered business in several verticals, including education, healthcare and finance, learning about each one along the way.

Education

Optimum Lightpath found schools have needs for archiving records, and they also like to have WiFi. Schools are having to maintain student records for longer periods of time and they need data center providers, said John Macario, Optimum’s SVP of product strategy and management.

“All of the big data centers in our footprint are lit by Optimum Lightpath,” said Macario.

Although Optimum serves both data centers and schools, “the strategy with data centers is to utilize their experience as more of a marketing partnership,” said Julia McGrath, SVP of marketing and development for the company.

As for WiFi, schools have two requests. One is for a secure local area network (LAN) that allows administrators to have access anywhere in their building. The second is for content-restricted Internet access for students - or managed WiFi.

Cablevision has been aggressively pushing it's Optimum WiFi. (For more, click here).

Healthcare

Having penetrated about 70 percent of all hospitals in the area, Optimum understands that serving this industry is more than just connectivity.
 
One of the problems with operator-provided telehealth is finding partners who understand the healthcare business and can provide specific applications and software to meet hospital's needs. (For more, click here).

To that end, Optimum is working with Bethesda, MD-based GetWellNetwork to provide some interesting services to its healthcare customers.

The partners have transformed bedside TV sets into healthcare tools.

“GetWell bolts into the hospital clinical care system and is deployed on top of Optimum Lightpath’s transport services,” said Macario.

Throughout the patient’s stay, the TV is used as a multi-function communications device. It may display a customized welcome screen soon after check-in, a schedule of nurse visits or meal times, pop-up messages about medications or prompts to watch a video on demand (VOD) show about a surgical procedure.

And the system is interactive, so the patient can send messages, as well.

“The remote goes away,” said Macario. “The interactive patient care system is provisioned with mouse and keyboard - uses TV as a monitor.”

Finance and Media

Given its proximity to both Wall Street and multiple data centers, Optimum provides super-fast, low-latency transport services for the financial vertical.

“We’ve got 10 Gig and 40 Gig,” Macario said.

The next vertical Optimum has its eye on is media. New York is home to the top broadcasters, numerous cable programmers, ad agencies and sports venues.

“(Their) need for bandwidth plays right into our sweet spot,” said Macario.

-Linda Hardesty