WOW! Business has purchased fiber conduit in Chicago to better serve 38 downtown buildings.
The fiber conduit runs along Wacker Drive in the downtown Chicago central business district and will enable WOW! to offer its triple play and cloud computing services in the area. Comcast Business also serves business customers in the Chicago area.
WOW! Business said it had purchased an approximately one-mile length of empty fiber conduit that it plans to fill with a 432-count fiber-optic cable during the second quarter of this year. Due to an NDA in WOW!’s purchase agreement, the company wasn’t able to say who the seller of the fiber-optic conduit was, according to a spokeswoman.
The purchase of the fiber conduit added a new asset to the WOW! Business network footprint in Chicago as the company continues an expansion strategy it started last year. WOW! Business is also adding about 1,200 miles of fiber to provide fiber backhaul for more than 500 cell towers in the Chicago metropolitan area and rolled-out Ethernet, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, hosted VoIP and high-speed Internet services to local businesses.
“We’re excited about the growth opportunities for us in Chicago and remain committed to providing competitively priced, flexible communications and network services to SMB, enterprise and wholesale customers,” said Brad Cheedle, senior vice president of WOW! Business. “The addition of fiber conduit along Wacker Drive significantly enhances our metropolitan network infrastructure and will provide thousands of downtown Chicago businesses with a new choice when it comes to selecting the communications services they need to be successful.”
Serving the Chicago area since 1999, WOW! Business provides IP-based network, data, voice and cloud services for small and mid-sized business, enterprise, government and wholesale customers.
The company owns and operates more than 40,000 miles of local fiber-optic and coaxial networks in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest which, along with its data centers, provide customers with scalable, low-latency access to national carrier backbones.
“Interest in our SMB, enterprise and wholesale services in Chicago and the surrounding areas continues to be very strong,” said Greg Argetsinger, vice president and general manager for WOW! in Chicago. “Once our new 432-count fiber-optic cable is installed more downtown business tenants will have the option of choosing WOW! Business over legacy providers for more reliable, higher quality Internet, voice, data, and cloud computing services backed by what we believe is the best customer service in the industry.”
Earlier this month, WOW! Business announced the availability of its 110 Mbps downstream/15 Mbps upstream broadband tier in Detroit and Evansville, Ind.
