RST Global Plans Carolinas Fiber Network

10/02/2012

RST Global Communications of Shelby is building a fiber-to-the-home system that is entirely financed by private money.

The goal is to bring super-fast Internet service to homes, universities and businesses from Greensboro to Clemson, S.C., says Dan Limerick, president of RST.

Bringing service to the N.C. Data Center Corridor first attracted the company to the area west of Charlotte, he says. RST signed up Infocrossing, the Wipro Ltd. data center, as a redundant fiber customer.

Robert Pollock, vice president of Infocrossing, says RST has offered a reliable service to its Kings Mountain data center. “After one year, I can say RST is a true business partner and we’ve had zero problems,” Pollock says.

Now RST is rolling out its fiber services to universities, businesses and homes as customers demand faster Internet speeds.

“People are starting to pay more and more attention to their Internet connections and what their speeds are,” Limerick says. RST offers speeds up to 10-gigabits per second for upload and download. That’s about 100 times faster than most current connections, he says.

The current fiber network, which runs from Mecklenburg County to Shelby, passes 20,000 homes, which the company hopes to serve. Preliminary pricing shows that homes can be served with a 50-megabits-per-second service for less than $60 per month. A faster business service will likely be priced at less than $200 per month.

The system is being built to withstand interruption from major weather problems such as hurricanes, Limerick says. The fiber cables are buried at an average depth of 10 feet, he says.

“We just felt that what the communications infrastructure had to do was withstand weather and isolated events,” Limerick says.