FairPoint opens repurposed Manchester, N.H. central office facility as data center

FairPoint Communications has opened its latest data center in Manchester, N.H., at a facility that was a Central Office that was designed to deliver traditional voice service.

Business customers can use the downtown Manchester data center or its Laconia, N.H., facility as primary or secondary data center sites or as part of a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy.

"Manchester is centrally located for many companies, especially those within approximately 60 miles that would find it convenient to use FairPoint's space as a primary or secondary data center," said Tony Tomae, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer for FairPoint, in a release. "Plus, our customers in Maine and Vermont will consider our space for housing disaster recovery servers because we are a safe, yet manageable, distance from their primary data center."

The telco said that the Manchester data center can accommodate a number of different sized businesses, ranging from Fortune 100 multinational corporations to small startups.

In addition to offering a pay-as-you-grow license model, customers can chose from a host of configurations, including half-rack, full-rack and customized cages. Business customers will also have a customer account manager assigned to them that will develop customized plans to address their specific requirements. Another feature is the Remote Hands service, which has the FairPoint Advanced Services Team handling routine equipment maintenance and troubleshooting.

An additional benefit of the Manchester data center is that it will also be able to sell wholesale data center services to other cloud providers. Cloud providers that locate in FairPoint's center is the company is the local telco in northern New England, meaning it can also offer complementary offers like fiber Ethernet and wavelength service to key IXC network-to-network interconnection points.

While Manchester is the latest data center FairPoint has opened, it won't be the last as it looks to diversify its revenue sources.

In a previous interview with FierceTelecom, the telco plans to convert existing central offices into new data centers in both Maine and Vermont, but did not specify when it would open new facilities.

Growing its data center facilities makes sense as it comes at a time when it is looking to offset declines in its legacy voice business.

During the first quarter company revenues declined to $214 million from $231 million with voice services revenue falling mainly on the back of fewer lines in service, lower long-distance minutes of use and seasonality.

FairPoint is hardly alone in converting legacy COs into data centers.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, Verizon had to take out all of its damaged TDM-based equipment, convert and recreate it to IP in New York City, for example. This gave Verizon the opportunity to reduce its network footprint and monetize the building for real estate uses.

For more:
- see the release

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