121-year-old New York City dry dock boosts worker efficiency with faster WiFi

“This is a 24/7/365 operation. The waterfront doesn’t stop, maritime doesn’t stop, global trade doesn’t stop. Spectrum Enterprise understands that.” 

Sal Molino, Vice President, Caddell Dry Dock and Repair Co., Inc.

Since 1903, Caddell Dry Dock and Repair Co. Inc. has served vessels travelling to and from the ports of New York Harbor. With seven dry docks and 13 piers set along a half mile stretch of the Staten Island coastline, the repair yard is busy 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A yearly average of 450 boats and ships dock there for service.

High demand taxed existing connectivity and revealed gaps in WiFi coverage. Sal Molino, Vice President, Caddell Dry Dock, decided it was time to boost available bandwidth with fiber connectivity. He called on Spectrum Enterprise to discuss a technology partnership.

“We specifically needed better WiFi for streamlining our internal reporting processes, our daily reports that our supervisors put together, and our ability to produce certified payroll,” he says. “Because we have city contracts, we have certain requirements to fulfill. Managed WiFi gave us the ability to take things from a pen and paper operation and make it more digital.”

To provide robust bandwidth for its WiFi and other core digital services, Molino had Spectrum Enterprise expand its Dedicated Fiber Internet (DFI) presence.

To provide total network oversight, a managed firewall and a camera monitoring system, Spectrum Enterprise installed Managed Network Edge.

“It’s very user friendly,” Molino notes after six months with the platform. “I like the way it’s set up, and that I can see the status of my cameras, switches and access points, what’s up and what’s down. I can set up zones to measure traffic and alerts for certain periods. There are just a lot of things I can do.”