TeleContinuity offers survivable communication solution

operation. In cases of harsh hurricanes and earthquakes, however, power may be interrupted for several days or even several weeks. In a major disaster it is often the case that power plants, central offices, or cell towers in the affected areas may be inaccessible for most of that time, making it impossible to change spent batteries or refuel generators.

Telecontiniuity

We are intrigued by a new communication continuity solution from Rockville, Maryland-based TeleContinuity. TeleContinuity’s solution aims to allow a company’s managers and key staff to continue to operate the company from remote locations or from their homes. By “continuing operations” TeleContinuity means that these staff members will continue to have uninterrupted access to company’s records, clients, suppliers, vendors, production facilities, and other staff members. As importantly, calls made to the company would arrive at the company’s regular numbers and extensions, obviating the need for secondary PBX. The TeleContinuity solution also avoids one of the major communication problems during disasters — congestion. The solution does this by routing calls around central office and PSTN outages and by reallocation bandwidth to cope with increased traffic.

TeleContinuity manages all this through a patented technology which allows calls to be moved between the PSTN and the Internet for delivery at any location over any network and on any device (landline phone, cell phone, IP phone, laptop, computer, or PDA).

There are other attractive aspects to the TeleContinuity solution. Organizations subscribe to the service on a per-user basis fee (see below) with no need to change current service plans or carrier, buy any hardware, or install any software. The service resides in the background and is always “on” — subscribers may activate it if they suspect a disruption is about to occur, or is already underway. The service may be activated through a Web browser, e-mail, text message, or telephone call. Once the service has been activated, subscribers, regardless of where they are, may continue to make and receive calls using their regular phone numbers and extensions.

The company describes its solutions as meeting the five requirements of a reliable and robust emergency communication system: Location independence (staff must be able to make and receive calls regardless of their location); network independence (the emergency service must move call through any and all surviving operating networks ��“ PSTN [landline, cell] or IP [softphone, VoIP, laptop, PC, PDA]); device independence (executives and staff must be able to communicate by using