AT&T says it is "lighting up businesses at an impressive pace" in the San Francisco metro area, where service crews have installed fiber-optic connections to an additional 450-plus multi-tenant office buildings. The new connections will bring fiber-optic broadband services to more than 16,000 business customer locations.
The effort is part of AT&T's Project Velocity IP, a three-year investment plan to expand and enhance the company's wireless and wireline IP broadband networks, including deploying its fiber-optic network to an additional 1 million business customer locations in its wireline service area by year-end 2015 (see “AT&T announces Project Velocity IP capex plans”).
Under its fiber to the building (FTTB) program, businesses in the AT&T “Fiber-Ready Buildings” have access to an expanded array of security, network, and cloud-based services, all of which ride on the fiber network. In the metro area, these buildings include Two Embarcadero Center and 680 Folsom, both owned by Boston Properties.
Companies in the more than 450 AT&T fiber-ready buildings in San Francisco can more quickly and seamlessly perform tasks such as uploading and downloading large data files and images; sharing large files with employees or customers in other locations; backing up data remotely in the cloud at one or multiple locations; and videoconferencing with suppliers, business partners, and customers. AT&T says these services are especially beneficial to businesses that regularly handle huge files such as medical images, illustrations, videos, engineering designs, and large presentation decks.
AT&T’s Fiber Ready Buildings provide reliable and highly secure access to such business technology offerings as cloud, virtual private network (VPN), and voice over IP (VoIP) services; options for adding equipment to enhance in-building wireless coverage and speeds; high-speed Internet access over Ethernet with upload and download speeds of up to 1 Gbps; and improved efficiency by converging voice and data over the same network.
"By offering blazing-fast upload and download speeds, generally available to only large businesses, AT&T Fiber Ready Buildings can take small and medium businesses to the next level," said Terry Stenzel, AT&T vice president and general manager for Northern California and Northern Nevada. "Fiber-based wired and wireless services bring the world to our business customers, but, just as important, they also help bring these customers to the world."
The program also offers benefits to property owners and managers, says AT&T. Fibered buildings appeal to potential tenants by providing access to the most advanced communications services. Deployment of fiber-based electronic equipment that can serve multiple tenants also streamlines the installation process and minimizes disruption for both landlord and tenants.
The announcement of the San Francisco deployments followed a similar trumpeting of new FTTB connections in Louisiana (see "AT&T connects 54 multi-tenant buildings in Louisiana with fiber").
For more information on FTTx/access systems and suppliers, visit the Lightwave Buyer’s Guide.