Certification Reflects Presence of Fiber-Based, High-Speed Internet
WINONA, Miss., August 16, 2016 – As part of AT&T’s continuing efforts to drive economic development and investment in Mississippi, AT&T, the Enterprise of Mississippi, Montgomery County and City of Winona announced today the Crossroads Industrial Park has been certified as AT&T Fiber Ready.
“AT&T continues to invest in high-speed internet in urban and rural areas all across Mississippi using the latest wired and wireless technologies, and, today, we are proud to highlight the Crossroads Industrial Park among the numerous places in Mississippi where AT&T’s fiber infrastructure is in place and ready to help community leaders drive job creation,” stated Mayo Flynt, president of AT&T Mississippi. “Each and every day, our more than 3,100 employees are turning AT&T’s billions of dollars in financial investment into high-speed internet for consumers and businesses across Mississippi. Those investments are possible in large part because of the positive, pro-business policies championed by our elected officials at the local and state levels.”
In today’s world, connectivity is important 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.
“Winona is sending a clear message that our area is connected. We have and continue to deploy leading edge technology to provide market advantages to area businesses,” said Senator Lydia Chassaniol. “The AT&T Fiber Ready certification allows us to confidently tell companies looking to locate or expand in Winona that they can check the important high-speed connectivity box.”
“Our resources in Mississippi are extensive, but if potential investors aren’t aware of the tech infrastructure in place, then we face the potential of missing opportunities. The AT&T Fiber Ready certification helps us tout the existence of our fiber infrastructure and eliminate those missed opportunities,” stated Representative Karl Oliver. “The AT&T Fiber Ready designation is a great economic development tool for us to have.”
“We are excited to partner with AT&T in designating the Crossroads Industrial Park as AT&T Fiber Ready,” said Lara Bowman, Executive Director for the Enterprise of Mississippi. “The availability of fiber-optic facilities with high-speed communications capabilities is one of the checkpoints when a business is considering a site for relocation or expansion. AT&T’s Fiber Ready designation is a valuable tool and will help ensure our continued success in bringing more jobs to Mississippi.”
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 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.
AT&T has invested more than $875 million in its Mississippi wireless and wired networks during 2013 -2015. In January, AT&T announced that it had added 1 million additional business customer locations – including more than 10,500 in the state of Mississippi – to its fiber network since 2012 when the company began an 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.