Plugged in FTTP makes or breaks today’s offices – Dave Drazen
by Janet Kendall, Contributing Writer (Dave Drazen)
Imagine working in an Atlanta office building on a July afternoon without air conditioning.
For the next generation of the city’s workforce, the thought of working in a space without the absolute latest in technological infrastructure is just as unthinkable and uncomfortable. For the city’s commercial landlords, that means fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology is, or at least should be, the way of the future.
“FTTP is almost the air conditioning of today’s buildings,” said Ken Ashley, executive director at Cushman & Wakefield. “Without it, you’re simply not going to be able to lease space to a large portion of the tenant …
Imagine working in an Atlanta office building on a July afternoon without air conditioning.
For the next generation of the city’s workforce, the thought of working in a space without the absolute latest in technological infrastructure is just as unthinkable and uncomfortable. For the city’s commercial landlords, that means fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) technology is, or at least should be, the way of the future.
“FTTP is almost the air conditioning of today’s buildings,” said Ken Ashley, executive director at Cushman & Wakefield. “Without it, you’re simply not going to be able to lease space to a large portion of the tenant prospects in the future. Email is the mule of the information age and doesn’t require a lot of bandwidth necessarily, but our use of data will only continue to escalate in a dramatic fashion in years to come.”
FTTP will make that possible at speeds that allow businesses to compete at the highest level. The service, which runs a fiber optic cable directly from the Internet service provider to an individual building, creates much faster Internet speeds than most coaxial cable connections and, more importantly, is currently considered “future proof” because there are no current or foreseeable devices that use more bandwidth than an FTTP connection can provide.
Knowledge of FTTP “has been mostly in the realm of folks in IT, but increasingly it’s on the front burner of the commercial real estate team as well, as we evaluate buildings in a side-by-side fashion,” Ashley said.
The presence of an FTTP connection increases the value of each square foot of a building, said Dave Drazen, the CEO and chairman of GeoTel Communications LLC, a company that provides telecommunications infrastructure data in a geographic information system (GIS) and Internet-based spatial technologies.
“Having fiber in a commercial structure absolutely can be a difference-maker – the more carriers that have a fiber presence in a building not only increase the bandwidth capacity but create choices for the consumer, which in turn forces competition, drives prices lower,” Drazen said. “A company looking to relocate that needs a lot of bandwidth will only look at the buildings that have the necessary fiber infrastructure for their business needs.”
Being the home of BellSouth and having leftover infrastructure from the 1996 Olympics has been a boost for Atlanta’s FTTP capabilities, Ashley said.
“Anything from the Central Business District to Atlanta all the way north to Alpharetta is on the digital superhighway,” he said. “I don’t hear about too many blackout spots in metro Atlanta in terms of fiber access. The issue is sometimes a last-mile issue of getting the fiber into the building. In the past that’s been an issue of economics: Did they want to spend the money to get the fiber to the building? I guarantee you there will be no major new building in the works from this point forward that isn’t connected.”
That FTTP connectivity is critical for attracting the type of high-end tech businesses that Atlanta needs, said Brian McGowan, Metro Atlanta Chamber’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “Developing these types of networks will strength Atlanta’s growing reputation as a global hub for innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Cousins Properties Inc. is in regular communication with fiber providers about increasing the number of its commercial properties that have FTTP, said Cousins’ chief technology officer, Dan Arnold.
“We’ve arranged partnerships with AT&T as well as other carriers to make sure we provide high-speed fiber into all of our buildings,” Arnold said. “What that’s positioning us to do is to be able to offer high-speed Internet, gigabit Internet for our customers, with little or no additional setup on their parts by having the fiber pre-run into the buildings.”
The metro area’s FTTP connectivity may be about to get better as AT&T Inc. and Google Inc. are exploring several cities within the region to add fiber connectivity and those decisions could be made by the end of this year, McGowan said.
“I think it would underscore an already good reputation as a digitally advanced marketplace,” Ashley said.
In the world of fiber connectivity, it seems, more is better. Ashley tries to think about the fact that every space he signs to a 15-year deal today could be the workplace of his now eighth-grader before that lease agreement expires, he said. Who can imagine what today’s eighth-graders will need from their workspace? So why not be as prepared as possible now, Ashley said.
“I’ve been representing tenants for nearly 20 years now and critical to my clients’ success is winning the war for talent, and in order to win the war for talent, one has to have an industry-leading workplace,” he said.
Learn more about Dave Drazen and GeoTel Communications here.
