Embarq sells high speed Internet service, keeps security tight

Bell, Embarq general sales manager From Embarq general sales manager Patricia Bell's fifth-floor office in downtown Fort Myers, she can see the torn-up city street below, and the Embarq-owned manhole

covers on it. Below those, "underground

conduits" transport information to and fro across the web for this communication company's premier product: broadband Internet service.

"Underground is the most protected means to handle things," she said. "More expensive, but more protected."

The connection speed has a wide range, she said, and can vary from DSL to the mega-fast Ethernet connection and from copper wires to the fiber optic ones, which can carry more information.

"Obviously, if you're a hospital and you're trans-

porting CAT scans and MRIs, you're going to need a much larger bandwidth," she said.

It's like water pipes, she said. If you're taking 100 showers a day, you're going to need a much bigger pipe than if you only take two.

Homes and small businesses more often use copper wires and DSL, while a huge company like Lee Memorial Health Systems would use fiber optics and an Ethernet connection.

"Or in between," she said. "Depending on the information you transport. And you can always increase as your needs become greater."

The conduits below the streets are built to safeguard against service interruptions because of their "ring topology," she said. That means that those conduits are structured so that if one breaks, the information it's carrying will simply travel in a different direction, like taking a detour around a street under construction instead of being stopped completely.

"That's the key: continual hardening of our network using ring topography and generator back-up," she said, pointing to maps in a conference room, which show in red lines where Embarq's underground network is built up around Fort Myers.

The company was started 100 years ago in Abilene, Kan, where it was called "United Telephone." It added little local phone companies, and ultimately became Embarq and partnered with Sprint. But after Sprint merged with Nextel, and sought to create a hipper, wireless image, it split with Embarq.

"So they spun us off," Bell said. "And we kind of went back to our roots."

To Bell, who has worked for Embarq for 22 years, part of what the world is about is community.

"When I got to Fort Myers in 1996, I said 'This is home,'" she said. "That's because of the people. It's just a great community."

It's something Embarq supports for their employees.

"Everything from judging a science fair in Alva to the team in the breast cancer walk last October," Bell said. "We always have engagement in the community."

For example, candy bars were being sold to raise money for autism research on the first floor of the Embarq building Bell works in, near a security guard listening to a fuzzy radio channel. He gives anyone entering the building a required sticker stating their name, what organization they're from and the date of their visit.

Bell said the building has to be secure because all the information that is sent through Embarq - from Lee Memorial's CAT scans to everyday e-mails - travels through this building on its trip through the underground conduits to whatever computer it ends up on.