There's no digging up streets, tearing out walls or downtime toupgrade a building to fiber-optic-quality capacity, according toMike Jones, the firm's technical project manager in Phoenix. ART's"invisible fiber" service provides IP Ethernet connectivity to awide-area network at speeds ranging from 3 to 50 megabits persecond—-3 Mbps is twice as fast as a T1 line--and up 155 Mbps fordata centers and other applications requiring high-capacitybandwidth. Additionally, there's no rewiring involved to increasecapacity when a tenant's bandwidth requirements change, as ART'ssystem can be reconfigured to provide up to 50 Mbps.

Best of all, the company is offering to install its services atno cost to building owners. The cost to users is lower than fiberoptic service, according to Jones, who notes that once a buildingis'lit'(equipment installed), service can be provided within 10days. The $100,000 capital outlay for equipment and installation isborne by ART.

The wireless ring--similar to a sonnet ring--is created byplacing two radios on a building rooftop, which provides what Jonescalls path redundancy. "Using ring architecture—-two radios on eachbuilding—-prevents any single point of failure on the system. Ifanything goes down, the customer has a second signal path," heexplains, noting that until now, this feature, which provides99.999% reliability, was only available with fiber-optictechnology.