A new dose of fiber
Washington County is increasing its fiber intake.
DQE Communications LLC, provider of fiber optic data networking for businesses, is expanding its footprint – fiber print? – in Washington County. The Pittsburgh company’s high-speed cables have extended to Washington since 2004, and plans call for the network to head southeast to California, then north to the New Eagle area.
“The economic growth of Washington County, and the development of Southpointe, Marcellus Shale and other things have made this a great market for us,” said Ted Zobb, senior vice president of business development for DQE, an unregulated subsidiary of Duquesne Light Holdings. It is based at the SouthSide Works and is a sister firm of Duquesne Light Co.
DQE, established in 1998, owns and operates the fiber-optic cables. Businesses hire the company to link multiple buildings with high-speed Internet/data transfer capabiltiies.
“We are business-focused. There is no residential,” said Lisa Williams, manager of marketing and wholesale services. “We serve all types of businesses you can think of: Fortune 500s, universities, school districts . . .”
Speed is the operative word, as DQE’s network is much faster than standard services – a major factor in the company’s recent rapid growth. Over the past two years, its workforce has expanded more than threefold, from 13 employees to 42, and its cable system has increased from 1,100 route miles to 1,500.
More important, from a corporate standpoint, is that sales are up more than 200 percent over 2012.
Though it faces formidable competition from Comcast Business, one of the largest high-speed hybrid fiber-coaxial networks in the U.S., DQE is proving that a regional company can thrive in this industry.
It is operating under a new president and chief executive officer, James Morozzi, who is buoyed by the firm’s success. In a news release announcing his appointment six weeks ago, Morozzi said: “As our rapid growth in recent years shows, DQE is a highly successful company with a bright future.”
DQE serves all or parts of seven counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania: Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Indiana, Washington and Westmoreland. That reach will likely be extended, in state and to West Virginia and Ohio.
“Our intention is to work west toward Wheeling and south toward Morgantown, and we have plans to go to Youngstown (Ohio),” Zobb said. “We think that will happen over the next couple of years. We have some customers who are helping to drive that.
“We hope to get our expansion plans to our board of directors over the next couple of months. But even after that, it takes about a year to build a network.”
Zobb said specifically that “our intentions are to go into Greene and Fayette counties and northern West Virginia.”
Natural gas and coal extraction, of course, are prominent in Greene County. Companies there have an increasing need for high-speed fiber optics.
Zobb said the imminent expansion from Washington to California, then north to the New Eagle area will give DQE “an opportunity” to form a ring-like network. That would be formed later by extending the system from New Eagle west to Washington, creating an imperfect circle that extended to the county seat in 2004 and would end there some years from now.
DQE is a lord of rings, as a map of Southwestern Pennsylvania shows its entire network consists of a series of rings attached to one another. Expansion to Morgantown, Zobb added, could lead to a future ring linking that city to Uniontown.
This, obviously, has been a boom time for DQE and its clients.
“The timing was right for a tremendous demand for cable,” Zobb said.