AT&T offers Sonet link for Capitol Hill

• By William Jackson
• Jun 11, 2003

AT&T Corp.'s government solutions group has a $2 million plan to wire 14 government buildings in the vicinity of Capitol Hill to a local fiber-optic Sonet network.

'This was an area we felt was strategically important to get connected to our network,' said Warren Thrasher, engineering and operations manager in McLean, Va., for AT&T's mid-Atlantic region. The company is competing with Verizon Communications Inc. of New York for Washington's federal business, he said.

Thrasher said AT&T has been talking with congressional officials and the General Services Administration to get permission to make the connections.

'Normally the way you approach something like this is to have a service order, which is the authority to get into the building,' Thrasher said. 'There is a good deal of negotiation that needs to be done.'

AT&T last fall acquired a 100-mile fiber network in the Baltimore-Washington area that includes Capitol Hill.