AT&T announced that city officials in Winston-Salem, NC, ratified an agreement that will clear the way for AT&T to offer its 1-Gbps U-verse with GigaPower service via a fiber to the home (FTTH) network.
Winston-Salem is the first of six cities that are part of the North Carolina Next Generation Network (NCNGN) initiative to ratify an agreement for 1-Gbps FTTH with AT&T. The service provider announced an initial agreement with the NCNGN cities this past April (see "AT&T negotiates for 1-Gbps FTTH in North Carolina"). The other five cities are Cary, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham, and Raleigh. City leaders in each of these cities have similar agreements with AT&T under review. (And AT&T announced that Durham officials approved their agreement shortly after this story was posted.) Four universities – Duke University, North Carolina State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Wake Forest University/Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center – are part of the NCNGN as well.
"We're thrilled that Winston-Salem will be in the next round of cities for AT&T's rollout of its U-verse with GigaPower," said Winston-Salem Mayor Allen Joines. "Our City has a well-deserved reputation as a technology and medical leader and a network of this magnitude will help take the work underway in both those areas to new levels of innovation and achievement."
AT&T did not say when the 1-Gbps services would become available. U-verse services with lower data rates are currently available in Winston-Salem, as well as in all of the other NCNGN cities except Durham, home of Duke University.
In addition to the NCNGN cities, the carrier also hopes to extend the 1-Gbps GigaPower service to Greensboro and Charlotte, NC, part of a list of 21 markets that may see 1-Gbps FTTH (see "AT&T releases list of potential new 1-Gbps FTTH markets").
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