Beneficiaries include the Flatiron District, Brooklyn Navy Yard, Brooklyn Tech Triangle, and Long Island City.
(Photo: Wikimedia)
Today Time Warner Cable announced that the company expects to invest $25 million to expand its fiber optic network in both “established and emerging” business sectors around New York City. Many of the areas highlighted in today’s announcement happen to coincide with burgeoning tech hubs.
In a press release to Betabeat, Time Warner said it would extend its broadband capabilities in “the World Trade Center, the Flatiron District, all areas of Midtown and throughout the Financial District,” in Manhattan. In addition to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Time Warner is also upgrading fiber in the “Brooklyn Tech Triangle, the Brooklyn Army Terminal and Industry City.” Long Island City in Queens, the future home to Shapeways 3D-printing factory, will also benefit from the effort.
The investment is part of a deal with the city that was still being hammered out in June when Mayor Bloomberg announced his big plan to improve broadband. At the time, Time Warner was named in the ConnectNYC facet of the mayor’s plan, which focused on wiring previously underserved areas and improving connectivity in commercial and industrial buildings.
Today’s announcement, for example, was made at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, home to Carnegie Mellon’s tech campus initiative, where Time Warner is finishing up “a multi-million dollar investment to provide fiber-based solutions to tenants of the 300-acre business complex.”
But Time Warner isn’t the only company the city has partnered with, as the Wall Street Journal reports, especially when it comes to residential initiatives.
The city also has tech agreements with Verizon Communications Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp. and ATT Inc. Companies are laying fiber, providing wireless hot spots in parks and opening learning labs that give residents access to computers.
Time Warner itself is opening a “state-of-the-art” Learning Lab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, “located inside the massive complex and accessible to the public.” Good news for the long-neglected residents of the three neighboring housing projects, we hope.
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