Youngstown Business incubator gets fiber-optic Net connection

New lines will bring high-tech companies to downtown, a businessman says.
By DON SHILLING
VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR
YOUNGSTOWN -- Time Warner Cable has provided a high-speed Internet connection to the Youngstown Business Incubator and is offering it to other downtown businesses.
The fiber-optic lines should provide incubator companies with a more reliable connection in addition to faster transmission speeds, said Joe Perkins, owner of Perkins Communications.
He said his company, an incubator tenant, needs the improvements because it provides clients with videoconferencing and other video streaming services over the Internet.
The fiber optic lines, which are glass strands that use light to transmit large amounts of data, have six times more transmission capacity than the incubator's previous Internet connection, which was a high-speed copper line known as a T-1.
The fiber, which has been laid in the past few weeks, runs past many downtown buildings, Perkins said.
Attractive to businesses
They should make downtown more attractive to high-tech businesses because hooking up to the Internet with a high-speed connection will be easy, he said. If companies choose an outlying area, they often have to pay to have fiber run a long way.
He said he thinks the downtown system is better than Time Warner's Roadrunner service, which area homeowners can use for high-speed connections. He said that's because Roadrunner uses fiber optics but relies on cable lines to connect to homes, while the downtown service uses all fiber.
Heidi Mock, a spokeswoman for Time Warner, said the fiber has been installed on the west end of downtown because of interest from the incubator. Talks are ongoing with other companies, and Time Warner intends to expand the system to other areas, she said.
Jim Cossler, incubator director, said the fiber helps both downtown and the incubator, which provides free rent and other services to start-up companies.
Downtown will be helped by Time Warner's decision to lay its own lines, rather than just resell services using lines owned by SBC Communications, Cossler said. Having another set of lines downtown should lead to more competition, lower costs and improved quality, he said.
shilling@vindy.com