jane@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu (Jane M. Fraser) (06/12/90)
Can anyone tell me anything about the New York Teleport? I believe it is a communications center in the financial district of New York City. It was (is?) owned by some investment company (Merrill Lynch?) but I heard they recently decided to sell it off. Obviously, any information will be an addition to what I know. Thanks. Jane M. Fraser Associate Director Center for Advanced Study in Telecommunications The Ohio State University jane@hpuxa.ircc.ohio-state.edu
CAPEK%YKTVMT.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Peter G. Capek) (06/15/90)
In issue 432 of the Digest, Jane Fraser asks for information about New York Teleport. New York Teleport is on Staten Island (an island whose presence creates the Arthur Kill, receptor of almost daily oil spills). It is basically a site with multiple satellite antennas and facilities (fiber, I think) for getting data to and from other parts of New York, but primarily the financial district in Manhattan. I believe the major partner is the Port of New York Authority. There are two listings in the Manhattan phone book which seem related: Teleport Communications, 5 Teleport Drive, Staten Island 718 983-2000 Teleport Communications Ny, 2 World Trade Center, NY 718 983-2000 Hope that helps you. If you find out something interesting, let us know in the Digest. Peter Capek IBM Research -- Yorktown Heights, NY 914-784-5027
Donald E. Kimberlin <0004133373@mcimail.com> (06/16/90)
Further to Fraser's inquiry and Capek's reply in issue 434: >In issue 432 of the Digest, Jane Fraser asks for information about New >York Teleport (Capek writes): >New York Teleport is on Staten Island... I believe the major partner >is the Port of New York Authority. The situation has become quite complex at Teleport-NY. It started out as a neat investment in "telecommunications" by Merrill-Lynch, who originally built most of the whole shebang. Then M-L found out that getting access to Manhattan and customers was darned expensive and not of the quality expected. (Staten Island is primarily residential and amazingly "remote" in a telephone network sense from Manhattan, so the phone network wasn't really built for the demands of business and things like lots of rented T-1 span lines.) So, M-L expanded the Teleport charter to renting right-of-way in NYC subway train tunnels for fiber cable of their own, to provide digital facilities of top grade. (I suspect that M-L is one of its own best clients, of course, and got an immediate demand from themselves.) Anyhow, the satellite space segment business is a *hard* place to make a buck, and M-L sold the satellite operating portion to Contel/ASC, but remained the landlord. Real estate is business financial types know how to make a buck from, of course. And, M-L's Teleport found out there were plenty of bucks to be made on the fiber they had planted underground ... not just to get to the Teleport, but around town. That spurred them on to get into the "alternate local carrier" business in about twenty major cities around the nation. So, you'll see Teleport Communications (the M-L subsidiary) emerging in those ciities, offering local fiber in the business area, in competition with Metropolitan Fiber Optics (which had its start in the abandoned railway tunnels of our kind Moderator's toddling home town, Chicago), was acquired by Peter Kiewit & Sons, the contractor that planted many miles of fiber nationwide, and last, but not least, the local Telco of each city. Just to have something to watch, Kiewit's MFO is leading efforts to force local Telcos to interconnect their plant with "Alternative Access Carriers." Watch the news on that. Local Telco monopoly? Not for as long as you might think! Final note: The very *day* that MFO opened up in San Francisco, PacBell cut its local dedicated circuit rates by 40%. Local Telco monopoly, you say? Only for dial tone ... and maybe not for long there, either! In addition to the MFO and Teleport national moves, there are some local Alternate Access Carriers in cities around the country, keeping a low profile, but doing their thing quietly. The Telco response is typically silent, but construction costs in most cities are really so ridiculously low for fiber and rights-of-way are *not* that difficult to find for the knowledgeable that they aren't going away. Local Telco monopoly, you say? Only for dial tone, and maybe not for that long, either!