BellSouth receives first taste of competition with lighting of local fiber optic network

Traces of the telecommunications Act of 1996 were evidenced last week in Jackson with the "lighting" of that city's first competitive local fiber optic network.

"Today is Independence Day for competitive local telecommunications in Jackson," said Joey Giuffria, American Communications Services Inc. (ACSI) general manager for Jackson, of the July 1 lighting.

ACSI, a Maryland-based competitive local exchange carrier, will provide service to businesses and long distance carriers via a $4.2 million network covering three miles of downtown Jackson. The company has been building the digital fiber optic network since February, and although the downtown ring is finished, construction will be a continual process for ACSI as the company extends first north and possibly to other areas of the city that present opportunity.

"It's really a process that keeps on going," said Giuffria. "We're already expanding. We've got the downtown ring built and, as we speak, are engineering our expansion route. This is the way we see it, as evolving growth."

ACSI has identified the medical community, city and state government as high potential users, and has already taken steps to snare service for the City of Jackson. Part of the company's franchise agreement included interconnecting five buildings for the city, and ACSI is now meeting with Jackson officials to develop a platform for the city's network. Giuffria feels certain state government will follow suit.

In the industry, ACSI is known as a provider of competitive access, or the portion of a long distance call that tranverses local facilities. For local businesses, this means that instead of gaining access to the outside world through one local exchange carrier, BellSouth, there are choices.

Jackson ACSI customers will use a private, or dedicated network, for now, but the company has plans to install switches in most ACSI cities sometime in the future. ACSI recently announced a multi-million dollar contract with Lucent Technologies Inc, the former AT&T equipment group, for eight switches, said Jim Crawford of ACSI corporate communications. With these switches, ACSI can start selling local dial tone, meaning the dial tone heard before dialing a phone number may soon be ACSI's instead of BellSouth.

ACSI's fiber optic network utilizes SONET (synchronous optical network) technology. Basically, a fiber optic network uses the medium of light, which is transported through glass strands. The network's cables are only a half-inch thick, containing the hair-thin strands of glass which carry thousands of voice or data transmissions simultaneously, Crawford said.

Giuffria said he believes there is a pent-up demand for fiber optics, citing the example of one local internet service provider who called to find out what buildings had access to the network so he could move his business there.

Besides the high quality of sound and the self-healing ability a fiber optic network offers, real estate developers will find still another benefit in leasing and selling buildings that have a competitive access provider, said Giuffria. Developers can attract new tenants and keep existing tenants when leases come up for renewal.

"This becomes an intrinsic value of the property itself," he said. "We see it not only as a way to attract tenants to properties and attracting industry into Jackson, but also as a way of retaining the existing high-tech companies that may be located in downtown or surrounding areas."

ACSI opened in 1993 and has since installed 24 local fiber optic networks. Construction of the bulk of these networks, 15 in all, was started between May 1995 and March 1996. ACSI plans to have 30 networks in service or under construction by Sept. 30, 1996, and 50 networks by mid-1998.

ACSI targets South and Southwest cities considered as Tier II or Tier III with populations of between 200,000 and 2 million people.

For now, ACSI's contender or downtown Jackson customers is BellSouth, but both will soon be joined by the St. Louis-based Brooks Fiber Communications.

Brooks Fiber announced in February its intent to build a 21-mile, $10 million fiber optic network in downtown Jackson and outlying areas. The network is 100% complete downtown, and 85% percent complete north and east of downtown Jackson. Brooks Fiber will light the entire network when all 21 miles are finished, possibly sometime in August, said the company's director of corporate communications Wade Sandrell, adding that customers have already signed up to use the service.