Ting, a Sprint mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), has named Westminster, Md., as the next stop on its 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) drive.
Westminster's city councilors voted during a meeting this week to award Ting a contract to act as the city's private sector service provider partner to deliver services.
Feeling unsatisfied with the local cable and telephone company incumbent service providers, the city began the buildout of its open access fiber project in October, which is set to reach 9,000 homes and 500 businesses.
One of the benefits of this rollout it is Ting can use the existing dark fiber network infrastructure that the city has started to build versus having to deploy all of its own fiber network from scratch.
"Like many other cities around the United States, the folks in Westminster, led by a superstar city councilman, pediatrician and published novelist named Robert Wack, decided they didn't want to wait for any cable or telephone company to bring them fiber-to-the-premises," wrote Michael Goldstein, VP of marketing at Ting, in a blog post. "They believed that super-fast Internet could bring and grow businesses, create jobs, increase property values and improve the quality of life for all residents. They also realized that infrastructure that is crucial to the city, and likely will be for the next hundred years, should rightly be owned by the city."
Westminster is just one of several cities where Ting plans to offer its 1 Gbps service.
In December, the service provider announced that it would build a similar 1 Gbps fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network by purchasing Charlottesville, Va.-based Blue Ridge InternetWorks (BRI). The service provider plans to provide 1 Gbps service for about $100 a month, and expects to hook up around 12,000 homes in Charlottesville beginning in the first quarter of next year.
For more:
- see this blog post
Editor's Corner: Sprint's MVNO Ting makes 1 Gig move, but how big will its impact be?
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