Business View Magazine | May 2020

23 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE MAY 2020 where possible, separated our workforce into multiple locations throughout our serving territories, and created more space between employees working in our main office. We regularly communicate with our residential and business customers through emails, phone calls, social media and on our website at southslope. com/coronavirus. Success Stories BVM: What key moves have you made during the crisis that have given you leverage in your industry? South Slope: As so many of our customers have moved to working and learning from home, we have redistributed internet traffic onto multiple fiber-optic rings to minimize the risk of network congestion. We have also increased our backhaul capacity almost three times as the need for connectivity and faster transmission of data increases daily. When COVID-19 began spreading, South Slope was already in a multi-year process of moving our network traffic to a Cisco 200 Gigabit transport ring for delivering the fastest internet speeds available combined with maximum efficiency. This technology positioned us to be ready for the increased traffic that has come from the changes people have had to make during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a local cooperative with 82 employees, we are able to quickly adapt and implement change. We connect with our members who are also our friends and neighbors. It’s because of those connections that we are able to see what our community needs and quickly implement solutions. For more information, visit southslope.com or southslope.com/business. Photo credit: Photography by Rebecca Daren Gengler, Multi-Function Plant Worker, working with customer