Richmond County Industrial Park Designated As AT&T Fiber Ready

Designation Reflects Presence of Fiber-Based, High-Speed Internet

Rockingham, NC /PRNewswire/ - As part of AT&T's continuing efforts to drive economic development and investment in North Carolina, AT&T^* and representatives from Richmond County today announced that Richmond County Industrial Park has been designated AT&T Fiber Ready, the first business park in the county to receive this designation.

In a global economy, connectivity is vital to new employers and businesses of every type. The AT&T Fiber Ready designation helps economic development leaders more effectively position their communities for site selection by emphasizing the availability of high-speed, fiber-based services.

"We are in direct competition with large cities and metro regions across this country for the technology-driven jobs of the future," said County Commission Chairman Ken Robinette. "Economic growth today depends on the availability of advanced technology and fiber-optic-based communications. This certification sends a strong message that our region is ready to help businesses grow and succeed, while delivering an outstanding quality of life for employees and their families."

The AT&T fiber network provides the bandwidth needed to support data intensive services such as video, collaboration, cloud services and more through products such as Ethernet, Virtual Private Networking, Managed Internet Service and AT&T Business Fiber. Customers can complement their high-speed Internet with network security options and online backup to help protect and virtualize their business-critical information.

In January, AT&T announced that it had added 1 million additional business customer locations – including more than 23,500 in North Carolina – to its fiber network since 2012 when the company began its aggressive fiber expansion program. The expansion helped extend the AT&T U.S. fiber network another 76,000 route miles, bringing the total to nearly 500,000. AT&T offers business customers high-speed Internet products on its fiber network in every major metro in the company's 21-state footprint.

"We are excited to welcome the Richmond County Industrial Park to the list of places across North Carolina where AT&T's fiber infrastructure is in place and ready to help local businesses grow," said John Lyon, regional director of external affairs for AT&T North Carolina. "Every day, AT&T's employees use our billions of dollars of investment to deliver high-speed Internet for consumers and businesses. Those investments are possible in large part because of the smart, pro-investment policies championed by our state leaders and by local leaders such as Chairman Robinette."

^*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading entertainment, mobile, high-speed Internet and voice services. We're the world's largest provider of pay TV. We have TV customers in the U.S. and 11 Latin American countries. And we help businesses worldwide serve their customers better with our mobility and highly secure cloud solutions.

Additional information about AT&T products and services is available at http://about.att.com. Follow our news on Twitter at @ATT, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/att and YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/att.

© 2016 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the Globe logo and other marks are trademarks and service marks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.