Sho-Me Technologies, LLC

Your business will probably be approached, if it hasn’t been already, by several carriers, all claiming they can give you the “best deal”.  While some deals may sound good on the surface, be sure to consider more than just pricing when you make your decision.  

Here are just a few of the reasons why Sho-Me Technologies should continue to be your carrier of choice: 

• REC – Sho-Me Technologies is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sho-Me Power.  Nine Rural Electric Cooperatives own Sho-Me Power.  These Rural Electric Cooperatives are a part of the local community, staffed by people you know, and are a great point of contact for our customers. 
• Optical – Sho-Me offers an all-optical connection.  This is good for businesses because circuits delivered over fiber historically have much higher availability rates than those delivered over copper. 
• Scalability – Our Ethernet is scalable.  With just clicks of the mouse, we can increase the bandwidth on a circuit.  There’s no waiting on a tech to install new equipment. 
• Experience – We have years of experience in providing Ethernet.  Our first Ethernet circuit was turned up in 1998, long before it was even available in most metropolitan areas of Missouri.  This experience translates into superior service for our customers. 
• Consistent – Our pricing will not change during the term of your contract, so there are no unexpected surprises on your bill. 
• Trusted – Our customers, which include state government offices, hospitals, wireless carriers and educational facilities rely on us for their critical communications.  Sho-Me Power also uses our fiber to control substation activity.
• Service – Our network is monitored 24/7/365 by a network operations center (NOC) that is local, not several states away.  We are ready to help when we are needed.
• Local – We are a local, community based company.  All of our operations are in Missouri, so our values and culture come from the same common community.   
• Stable - We won’t be merging or selling.  This means our customers won’t have to face issues like discontinued service offerings, which may stem from mergers. 
• Focus – Fiber is our only business.  Our people are dedicated to making the network reliable for our customers.  They have the benefit of several years in the business as well as ongoing training on new technologies.   
• Connected – We work closely with many service providers, so we are able to offer you customized communications solutions for your voice, video and data needs.  

At Sho-Me Technologies, we are continuously working to improve our network.  One of our most recent improvements is the addition of a back-up Network Operations Center (NOC).  The new back-up site will house equipment identical to that found in our primary NOC.  This redundancy will allow traffic and operations to easily be resumed at the back-up NOC should anything happen to put the primary location out of service.

 The new back-up NOC is comprised of two 12 X 30 telecom shelters.  One building houses fiber optics and transport electronics/equipment and the second is used for personnel with computers and network management systems for operations.

 The backup site will add another level of resiliency to our already secure NOC.  While the outside of our primary NOC may look like a metal building, the interior is actually comprised of concrete block walls poured with concrete and capped with a reinforced concrete ceiling.  It is essentially a building within a building.  It is also equipped with a state of the art fire suppression system along with other protectors to guard our monitoring center.

 We are eager to bring the new facility online as it not only will provide continuity of service in case of a disaster for our commercial fiber customers, but it will also provide communications protection for our parent company, Sho-Me Power, and its customers.

It’s grade card time!  All current Sho-Me Technologies customers will soon receive an annual review of their network performance. 

We value the trust our customers put in us, and health reports are a way to show the superior service we offer to each of them.  Most circuits on our network have an availability of 99.999% or above.

The reports list total uptime for each circuit, along with any trouble tickets that were called into our NOC during the year.  Most of these reports are delivered in person, giving us a chance to go over any outages, their causes, and the solutions for each.

Health reports are just another way that we go the extra mile for our customers.

Submit your FY2010 Form 471 – either online or on paper – by February 19, 2010 at 11:59 pm EST.

Tornado season is fast approaching.  Now is the time to stop and think about what might happen if your primary location, along with all the equipment you have there, were carried over the rainbow.  Of course, you would immediately begin working to get that site up and running again so you can take care of your customers. 

 What about your other locations that were not hit by the storm?  You would want them to carry on with business.  But that may not be an easy thing for them to do.  Was your network made up of point to point circuits hubbing at your main location?  If so, the circuits your branches depended on for all their data are now circuits to nowhere.  Instead of losing one branch, you’ve just lost them all.

 While we can’t control the weather, here are a few ways we can help you prepare for it: 

• Ethernet Clouds – Convert your current point-to-point network to an Ethernet Cloud network.  This offers any-to-any connectivity.  If one location becomes unavailable, your traffic can point to a different location and business can continue. 
• Disaster Recovery Sites – Where you choose to put your DR site can make all the difference.  Sho-Me Technologies offers rack space in our own secure facility as well as connectivity to multiple underground facilities.
• Ringed Backbone Network – Sho-Me Technologies’ backbone network is made up of rings which provide a redundant path should one side of the ring become damaged. 
• Metro Ethernet Rings – By adding your location to our Metro Ring, the same ringed protection we employ on our backbone network can protect your circuit right up to your door.
• Superior Service – Our skilled technicians will be hard at work to restore connectivity to your damaged location in the shortest time possible.

 These are just a few ways Sho-Me Technologies can help your business succeed, even in difficult times.  Contact us for a personalized network plan to meet your needs.

There is no question that telecommunications have changed the world we live in.  High speed broadband has changed the way people learn, the way people communicate, and the way people conduct business.  Over the years, we here at Sho-Me have seen many ways that our network has impacted the community.  One of those benefits is the health care industry and the services now provided in small clinics around the state. 

Webster Electric’s General Manager Tom Houston is one person who is benefiting from these services. Tom and his wife Abby were at a loss when their young daughter, Addison, started breaking out with a rash that caused her pain and discomfort.  They started visiting physicians around the area.  After visiting several doctors, the Houstons were referred to specialists with the University of Missouri Health System.  The physicians made great strides with Addison’s health issue and offered treatment that remedied her condition.  The treatment was beneficial, but required the family to take a day off of work every couple months to travel three hours to Columbia for check-ups and consultation.  The trip was something the family was willing to take, but when the opportunity to have these treatments at a local clinic became a possibility, the Houstons jumped on it. 

This was all made possible through the Missouri Telehealth Network.  This organization works to provide health care services through the use of video conferencing technologies.  These services allow a patient to receive treatment from a specialized physician at a remote health care facility.  Services can include anything from monitoring a patient’s vital signs to transmitting x-rays to radiologists.  Patients are able to have a face to face conversation with their doctor via video conferencing equipment.  The conversation takes place just like the patient and doctor are in the same room. Now, the Houstons travel only twenty miles to a clinic located in Fordland where they are able to consult with a specialized physician, located in Columbia, through video conferencing.

 Sho-Me provides telecommunication services to MOREnet who offers services to schools, libraries, and health care institutions across the state.  Missouri Telehealth Network is one of the organizations that benefits from this partnership. We are glad to be a part of something that is improving the lives of the rural Missourians we serve.

For the past two years, the Sho-Me Technologies network operated with above 99.999% overall reliability.  While achieving five nines might seem impressive, we were not content to rest on our laurels.  Instead, we found another way to increase reliability and reduce our customers’ downtime through the installation of Metro Rings.

Sho-Me Technologies’ backbone network is made up of both SONET rings and Ethernet rings.  These rings provide a redundant path so that if one side of the ring is cut or damaged, the data can flow along the other side of the ring until the damage is repaired.  This helps avoid service outages. 

For most circuits, this ringed protection typically ended at our last POP, leaving your business more vulnerable to outages if the last mile of fiber, or the section between the last POP and your location, was broken.  

The decision to deploy switches at each customer location has enabled Sho-Me to build Metro Rings in many of the towns we serve.  Like the SONET rings and Ethernet rings on our backbone network, these Metro Rings bring redundancy to the last mile of fiber, making your connection more reliable than ever before.                       

As Sho-Me continues to improve our network, our customers benefit from the fast, reliable service we provide.  And should they ever have an issue on their circuit, we have trained technicians who are ready to help, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.  For more information, please contact us!

You might notice our techs installing a new piece of equipment the next time you order a new Ethernet circuit or renew your existing circuit.  We are now placing switches at each Ethernet customer location rather than using media converters as we have in the past.  Switches have proven to be more reliable than media converters, resulting in less downtime for your business.  Switches are also scalable, so adding more circuits doesn’t mean adding more equipment.

Do you have a business with multiple locations across the state?  Let us help you bring them all into one network without the hassle of point to point circuits for each one.  Using our extensive Ethernet network, our cloud product extends your data LAN to anywhere on our network and makes your remote locations look like there are under one roof.   This any-to-any connection allows you unparalleled flexibility when it comes to disaster recovery planning.  Contact any of our marketing team for more information about how an Ethernet cloud could benefit your business.

Sho-Me Technologies is always working to deliver the best service possible to our customers.  Sho-Me previously carried all Ethernet traffic over SONET rings, which are the basis of our network.  Recently, we installed Ethernet rings on top of the SONET rings.  Each of the new Ethernet Rings will bring increased functionality and make one Gig of bandwidth available for our customer traffic.  Three of the rings have been installed and are up and running with great results.  As customers are migrated from the SONET platform to Ethernet, the can expect to enjoy even more reliable service.