If you’ve never heard of it before, the term “OSP” means an outside plant. Some companies like to have this kind of a setup. However, others prefer not to.
If you want an OSP for your company, you will need to find the best OSP construction contractor in your area who can make that happen. In this article, we’ll talk about OSPs in detail. We will cover the benefits of having one, and we also explain what kinds of companies usually want them.
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What Does Someone Mean When They Use the Term “Outside Plant?”
If you operate a company with an OSP, that means you have a telecommunications network set up as a physical infrastructure. It exists outside of the building in which your business operates.
In other words, if a company has an outside plant, that means somewhere not far away, they’ve set up enclosures, poles, conduits, cables, and anything else that composes their primary telecommunications setup.
Why Might a Company Want This?
If you have an outside plant for your telecommunications, then that can act as the backbone that connects different network elements that your company needs to function. Your telecommunications network will presumably connect to things like central offices and nearby cell towers.
You want to have unrestricted access when it comes to telecommunications and what provides them for you. You’re the end user in this scenario, and the telecommunication service you reserve will essentially power your whole company. Without having that access, you can’t communicate either internally, with your fellow workers, or externally, with your customers and clients.
In the telecommunications world, you will usually have both inside and outside components that allow you to communicate smoothly via the internet, phones, etc. The inside component gets the designation “ISP,” meaning inside plant. That’s the opposite of an outside plant setup.
The Benefits of OSP and ISP
If you’re running a company, and it has physical offices from which you do a lot of your business, then you know that you always want excellent telecommunications capabilities. If you ever lose any of these services, your company will completely grind to a halt until such time as you can get them back online.
You could make the argument that having an ISP setup makes more sense in some ways. That’s because, if you have components making up your telecommunications network inside your facility, you can get to them easier. That also means that repairing and servicing them becomes simpler.
However, if you have an OSP setup, that also grants you some distinct advantages. For instance, in the modern world, it’s almost always better if you can have fiberoptic internet cables. They allow you to have lightning-fast internet speed and better smartphone reception.
What a Company Can Do with OSP
Ideally, you don’t want to have a telecommunications setup that’s 100% OSP or ISP. Finding a happy medium in between the two concepts should benefit you.
We’re already explained how it’s easier to access the parts of your telecommunications setup if you have ISP areas of it. If you have the OSP section of your company’s telecommunications mainly set up as underground, fiberoptic cables, though, that gives you the dual capability of having great internet access and superior phone reception.
You can probably think of many companies that would want that. What modern company does not want to have strong, steady internet and phone service? That allows them to have communication both internally and externally with no issues.
If your company has mainly an OSP setup, and you’ve buried your fiberoptic cables correctly, then there’s not much that can happen to them. You can’t say the same thing about your ISP setup.
Those components have many vulnerabilities with which you must contend. For instance, if there’s some kind of a natural disaster, like a wildfire, hurricane, tornado, etc., then that can easily obliterate your ISP.
In the aftermath, when you’re rebuilding, you won’t have to do much with your OSP, provided you set it up correctly. You can get phone and internet reception back just as quickly as you rebuild the rest of your physical office space.
Many companies want to go with more of an OSP-focused telecommunications model these days, and it’s easy to see why. By doing so, you will have the ability to communicate with your workers and customers at all times. You will give them the appearance of being a reputable business entity as well.
