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The Impulse team has been working on something big for the last 18 months; our next-generation Internet network! We are finally ready to announce the first product resulting from these efforts, but I’d like to start by covering what it takes to bring next-generation Internet to Santa Barbara.

Internet access is primarily delivered via three different types of transport: coaxial cable (“coax”), fiber, or traditional copper pairs of wire originally used for telephone service. Coax is owned in Santa Barbara by the local cable company, Cox. Cox is in charge of these lines and controls the equipment used to provide Internet over their facilities. Fiber is a great option for high speed bandwidth but the cost of trenching all the streets in Santa Barbara and laying fiber to each customer premises is prohibitive. That leaves good old fashioned copper wires. The copper is controlled by Verizon in the Santa Barbara area, but since it was originally deployed through a government-regulated monopoly, all phone companies with the proper license can use this shared copper infrastructure to provide communications services.

For the last few years Verizon has stopped improving Internet offerings using their traditional copper and focused instead on deploying fiber to the home (FiOS) in areas of new construction where they can create a new monopoly on that fiber. T-1s and DSL are the only options and DSL has been stuck at 7Mbps x 768Kbps. Impulse decided it was time to change this. Eighteen months ago we received our Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) license which allows us to use Verizon’s raw copper wire between the customer premises and our electronics. All the copper in the area runs back to a Central Office (C.O.). There are six C.O.s from Ellwood to Carpinteria, and Impulse has leased space in five of them: Ellwood, Goleta, Los Positas, Santa Barbara, and Carpinteria.

There have been big advances in the equipment available to provide faster, higher quality Internet access using standard copper wires. Impulse has spent the last year deploying this next generation infrastructure and is ready to announce our first of a few new products: Impulse Broadband Ethernet. Impulse Broadband Ethernet provides dedicated symmetrical speeds of up to 40Mbps x 40Mbps. The product is designed for businesses in the Goleta to Carpinteria area that require quality dedicated bandwidth with fast upload speeds to connect to the Internet or to their other offices. Many companies have also moved their business software to the cloud and need much faster upload speeds than cable, T-1 or DSL can offer. Until now the only option for these companies was to work with companies like us to trench the streets and install costly fiber lines. While this is a great solution for a company with the budget, there are many other businesses that would benefit from these speeds but have not been able to justify the expense.

Impulse Broadband Ethernet is based on a technology called Ethernet over Copper (EoC) which involves bonding up to 8 standard copper pairs of wire (“loop”), and depending on the distance the copper wire travels from the C.O., can provide speeds up to 5.7Mbps per loop. This copper wire is connected to Impulse’s next-generation hardware at the Verizon C.O. and terminated at the customer premises via a managed device that provides a standard Ethernet connection to the customer. Impulse offers the following symmetrical bandwidth speeds of 5Mbps, 10Mbps, 20Mbps, 30Mbps, or 40Mbps.

For more information on this game changing business connection click here or give Impulse a call at 805-456-5800.  Also stay tuned for our next small business communications products coming soon…