Summit County is Healthier with FairlawnGig!

The Summit County Public Health Department, located in Akron, made the decision early on in FairlawnGig’s existence that better broadband from FairlawnGig was imperative to help with its daily operations, most of which involve keeping county residents healthy.

Despite being a little outside of FairlawnGig’s footprint, the Summit County Public Health Department decided to invest in connecting the mile it would take to tap into FairlawnGig. Explains Donna Skoda, Outgoing Health Commissioner, “…we paid a little bit to connect in 2018 and it didn’t take long for the savings we were receiving to more than pay for that investment.”

Skoda says that while saving money was and is a priority, the reliability was also key in making the investment decision.

Donna Skoda, Outgoing Summit County Health Commissioner

Specifically, Eddie Mink, IT Supervisor, says that “FairlawnGig’s fast, reliable internet service saves us approximately $600 per month, and their co-location services for disaster recovery provide an additional savings of $1,000 per month. FairlawnGig has been a vital partner in helping us reduce administrative costs and streamline operations.”

 The county health department, explains Skoda, is heavily reliant on connections to state servers in Columbus, “Without a reliable connection we can’t print birth certificates or work on death certificates. We can’t do anything without the state system, so we must have that connectivity.”

Skoda goes on to explain that the state’s web-based system only receives information versus being a cloud solution that operates in real-time, transmitting data as well. “We must have a reliable internet service on our end to communicate with Columbus, and their systems are old. You can’t do anything if you can’t connect to their system, so FairlawnGig has been a lifesaver.”

Cars line up for assistance during the 2020 pandemic.

Prescient Decision

The county health department made the decision to connect to FairlawnGig long before the word ‘pandemic’ entered our everyday lexicon. Of course, the health department and its medical professionals knew what one was, even if they couldn’t predict one was on the way.

Upon the arrival of the pandemic, the health department’s offices at 1867 W Market St in Akron (along with its 175 employees) quickly became a literal lifeline for Summit County.

Mink says that connecting to FairlawnGig “ensures that we are prepared for any unexpected events [like a pandemic].”

Beyond the traditional roles the health department needed to fill (including the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children or WIC), came the line and lines of cars carrying Summit County residents in need of COVID tests or vaccinations. Hot spots and connectivity in the parking lots were critical for the county medical staff. All this is going on while the health department was also in need of the heavy bandwidth required for the county’s contact tracing ‘engine.’

“We needed a robust and reliable internet connection in the pandemic more than ever, and I’ll tell you I can’t remember a time we were down because of FairlawnGig, says Skoda. “FairlawnGig saved us. Literally saved lives. With the volume of people that we had to help, I cannot imagine being able to do that without FairlawnGig. The volume of information that went through this place, I can’t imagine doing it with lesser download/upload speeds.”

Skoda recounts that this country ‘was not ready for a pandemic,’ but that thankfully to FairlawnGig, the Summit County Health Department was “…one of the few health departments that could provide very reliable service, because we weren’t dependent on anybody else.”