Three Gaston County Business Parks Designated as AT&T Fiber Ready

GASTONIA, N.C., May 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of AT&T's continuing efforts to drive economic development and investment in North Carolina, AT&T* and representatives from Gaston County and the Gaston County Economic Development Commission today announced that three business parks in the county have been designated AT&T Fiber Ready.

The developments achieving this designation are Gaston Technology Park in Dallas, Summit Crossing Park in Gastonia and South Ridge Business Park in Bessemer City.

In a global economy, connectivity is vital to new employers and businesses of every type. The AT&T Fiber Ready designation helps economic development leaders more effectively position their communities for site selection by emphasizing the availability of high-speed, fiber-based services.

"With one of the world's largest cotton manufacturers located here, we typically think of 'fiber' as a product for commerce rather than an enabler of commerce," said Tom Keigher, Chairman of the Gaston County Commission. "Equipping all three of the business development sites owned by Gaston County with fiber optic facilities will help us attract the clean, high-paying jobs that support an Information Age economy. This is good news for our county today, but it forecasts even better economic news in the future as businesses use these facilities to create jobs."

The AT&T fiber network provides the bandwidth needed to support data intensive services such as video, collaboration, cloud services and more through products such as Ethernet, Virtual Private Networking, Managed Internet Service, AT&T GigaPower^SM and AT&T Business Fiber. Customers can complement their high-speed Internet with network security options and online backup to help protect and virtualize their business-critical information.

"As we work with businesses considering expansion or relocation, we constantly hear about the need for advanced communications infrastructure for business operations and an exceptional quality of life for attracting top-flight employees," said Donny Hicks, Executive Director of Gaston County EDC. "This AT&T Fiber Ready designation will be a powerful tool in helping us emphasize that our county provides both of those needs."  

In January, AT&T announced that it had added 1 million additional business customer locations – including more than 23,500 in North Carolina – to its fiber network since 2012 when the company began its aggressive fiber expansion program. The expansion helped extend the AT&T U.S. fiber network another 76,000 route miles, bringing the total to nearly 500,000.   AT&T offers business customers high-speed Internet products on its fiber network in every major metro in the company's 21-state footprint.

"We are excited to welcome Gaston Technology Park, Summit Crossing Park and South Ridge Business Park to the list of places across North Carolina where AT&T's fiber infrastructure is in place and ready to help local businesses grow," said Carlos E. Sanchez, director of external affairs for AT&T North Carolina. "Every day, AT&T's employees use our billions of dollars of investment to deliver high-speed Internet for consumers and businesses. Those investments are possible in large part because of the smart, pro-investment policies championed by our state leaders and by local leaders such as Chairman Keiger."

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

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