Houston may be well-known for barbecue cuisine and NASA’s space center, but now a data center services provider and telecommunications company are helping to bring high-speed Internet access to the I-10 corridor.

Business Ethernet provider tw telecom (News - Alert) has formed a partnership with Houston-based StratITsphere to extend its fiber optic network to StratITsphere’s new Tier-IV-design Alpha Data Center in Katy. The project will result in businesses along the I-10 corridor of West Houston having access to unlimited, highly available bandwidth for data center networking, Internet connectivity or business Ethernet solutions.

According to tw telecom, the new infrastructure will be live in March and reach its full capability in July.

“This new infrastructure offers a level of connectivity that is likely to draw more high-tech companies to this area,” said Stephen Webster, president and CEO of StratITsphere, in a press release. “That degree of speed and connectivity also opens up a host of opportunities to innovate new products and services. In fact, our consulting staff has already come up with a few ideas of their own.”

Webster added that the new infrastructure could also serve as a key role in the region’s economic future. “We would like to see this area become a major hub for technology and telecommunications companies, which would bring with it jobs and economic prosperity,” he said. “This collaboration with tw telecom helps lay the groundwork to make that a reality.”

Meanwhile, this collaboration will deliver added benefits to both current and potential clients at both companies, including faster data speeds and a broad portfolio of Ethernet services for StratITsphere customers, and access to a “top-of-the-line” data center facility for tw telecom’s clients, according to Darin Cook, vice president and general manager of tw telecom.

In addition to business Ethernet as part of its managed services offerings, tw telecom also provides converged and IP VPN services to enterprises and carries throughout the nation and globally. As one of the three top business Ethernet providers in the U.S., tw telecom has successfully connected more commercial buildings to its fiber network than any other communications provider in the market. Thanks to its robust metro fiber networks and ownership of one of the 10 most interconnected IP backbones globally, tw telecom is capable of supporting mission-critical enterprise applications and delivering high-quality customer experiences and improved business productivity.

For existing and potential clients looking to learn more about tw telecom, the company will be hosting a webinar about its Intelligent Networking capabilities – which enable customers to boost bandwidth throughput, control latency and obtain visibility into their network applications -- tomorrow (Feb. 22), at 11 a.m. EST. The webinar, entitled “New World, New Networks, New Tools: Cloud Computing and the Intelligent Network,” will feature Mike Rouleau, senior vice president of Strategy for tw telecom, as well as Nav Chander, research manager, Enterprise Telecom, IDC (News - Alert).

To register, click here!

Tammy Wolf is a TMCnet web editor. She covers a wide range of topics, including IP communications and information technology. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Amanda Ciccatelli