WOW! Business buys conduit to bring fiber to additional 38 Chicago buildings

WOW! Business is enhancing its reach in Chicago's central business district by purchasing fiber conduit located along Wacker Drive.

By acquiring this conduit, WOW! Business will be able to become an alternative to local telco AT&T (NYSE: T) for fiber-based service to business tenants in 38 downtown buildings.

During the second quarter, the service provider plans to fill about a one-mile length of empty fiber conduit with a 432-count fiber-optic cable.

"The expansion we're doing in Chicago puts 38 buildings on-net with laterals, which represents 3,500 additional potential prospects for us to deliver fiber-based services," said Brad Cheedle, senior vice president of WOW! Business, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "For each of those systems, we're putting in high count concentrated fiber."

Chicago has been a key expansion region for WOW! Business. 

Previously, the service provider announced it was adding about 1,200 miles of fiber to provide backhaul for more than 500 cell towers in the Chicago metropolitan area. It also began offering a suite of Ethernet, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, hosted VoIP and high-speed Internet services to local businesses.

Purchasing the fiber conduit in Chicago is part of a broader company-wide expansion effort it began across its markets last year. Today, the company owns and operates more than 40,000 miles of local fiber-optic and coaxial networks in the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest.

For more:
- see the release

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