e-building e-ssentials.

Modeling agencies. Accounting firms. Hospitals. These businesses - a many others - use electronic data exchange every day. Digital photographs, financial models, plan visualizations and diagnostic images are large computer files, best transmitted using high bandwidth communications. Building owners need to provide tenants access to broadband services that will support their data communication needs.

I own small buildings and my tenants are not on the cutting-edge of technology. Why would they care about advanced communications services?

As the web offers new services and opportunities, it is being used on a daily basis by small to medium-sized organizations that were previously "low-tech." Examples include:

* Two small PR firms that use an "always on" web connection to create a virtual partnership and go after bigger clients.

* A not-for-profit agency that uses the web to make business purchases, search professional literature, pull down brochure graphics and exchange emails containing large grant application files.

* A small career counseling organization that download articles publicizing the firm and performs web research on companies.

* A realtor who lets clients screen properties via web video.

These users have or will soon need broadband capabilities to handle more elaborate web sites and growing data files.

Since there are far more telecom vendors than I want to have serving my buildings, how do I know when my tenants have enough telecom services?

Your tenants differ in the amount of broadband capability they need and the services (e.g. videoconferencing, data transfer, web hosting, and network management) they want. Your building should provide access to a range of service/price options. Assuring competition within service categories will hold prices down and keep your buildings at the technological edge. Many tenants will want choices that give them service redundancy in the event of a line failure.

Term of the Week: Route Diversity - The ability to send telecom signals using different routes (whether cable or radio-frequency), providing redundancy if one route is disrupted. It is essential that the secondary route not use the same local phone loop as the primary route to avoid simultaneous disruption of both routes by construction or other accidents.