This story was written for our sponsor, the Wake Forest Business & Industry Partnership.

Wake Forest is undergoing a technological renaissance that is spurring on next-generation connectivity and entrepreneurial opportunity. As the community welcomes the presence of TING Internet and begins to construct its own progressive, fiber-optic loop, the town’s fiber infrastructure is about to become a lot more robust and much more accessible.

Wake Forest is set on developing an infrastructure that is conducive to local innovation and enhanced quality of life for its entrepreneurs and residents. The Town boasts an in-the-works. more than 25-mile Town-operated fiber network, several hundreds of miles of private fiber laid by CenturyLink, AT&T and Spectrum, and the emergence of TING fiber.

Wake Forest will soon be one of the best-connected communities in North Carolina.

“TING is a fiber Internet company that offers gigabit Internet — that’s 1,000 megabits that can be uploaded or downloaded per second,” said Todd Rubin, regional manager for TING in Wake Forest. “We don’t piggyback off of any other providers or infrastructure to provide this service to your home and business. We’re pure Internet.”

The arrival of TING in Wake Forest signifies not only that demand for fiber exists, but also the proactive approach to substantially growing the community’s fiber infrastructure as the Town works to strategically manage it’s meteoric growth.

TING first hit the Triangle market in Holly Springs and then Fuquay-Varina. The company decided to expand into Wake Forest and Rolesville, realizing the desire for its services in these towns was substantial. According to Rubin, Wake Forest was a prime location due to its commitment to economic development and growth.

“When we think about expanding into new areas, we do a lot of analysis on whether a municipality meets our criteria for going in,” said Rubin. “We want to know if we’re going to be successful there. A lot of people, even pre-pandemic, work from home in the Triangle and in Wake Forest. It made sense for us to expand here.”

“We did a lot of research and spoke to a lot of residents in Wake Forest, in addition to town leaders,” continued Rubin. “Part of our success is partnering with towns and making sure we’re on the same page — if you’re going to build fiber, you have to go into neighborhoods, consider roads and construction. You need support from the town and we got that from Wake Forest. It’s a great town and very technologically savvy.”

As the world advances more each day, access to affordable and reliable high-speed internet is as essential as water and electricity. And in a time when many of us are homebound — working from home, doing remote schooling, streaming entertainment, and virtually communicating with loved ones near and far — fast and dependable connectivity has never been more important.

“I think the Internet has been an essential service for quite some time at this point, and it’s only getting more important. For me, it’s almost as important as gas and water because everything at my house is run on the Internet,” said Rubin. “I have 38 WiFi devices tied to my router — computers, iPads, smart TVs, you name it.”

Resident and local entrepreneur Gary Shaffer is excited about the expanding fiber infrastructure in Wake Forest and knows all too well the importance of a strong Internet connection for home-based work.

“We’re pretty excited about TING coming to our neighborhood,” said Shaffer. “It’s the speed and reliability that’s appealing. Being in the technology industry myself, not being limited by upload speeds and things like that will help us be able to serve our customers a little better.”

Shaffer founded and leads Cornerstone Technical Solutions, an IT services startup specializing in hybrid-cloud and application solutions, from his home office. Shaffer represents many local home-based entrepreneurs who will profit from Wake Forest’s commitment to fiber as a crucial infrastructural resource.

“Whether it’s for companies or homeowners, having more options means more flexibility and competition,” said Shaffer. “Having one company provide three options when it comes to internet connectivity isn’t the same as having a new company like TING to also choose from.”

TING has already activated its first phase of customers in Wake Forest, which includes residents in the Heritage neighborhood. It will continue to roll out in other areas of town, while simultaneously laying fiber in communities it plans to activate at a later date.

“By the summer of 2021, I anticipate that most of our built-out communities in Wake Forest will be active,” said Rubin.

TING’s arrival in Wake Forest is just one way that town leaders are both serving the needs of the robust community it already has and future-proofing it for the inevitable arrival of more entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and innovators. With a number of Smart City initiatives already in place, Wake Forest is living up to its reputation for technological innovation and opportunity.

“There’s still a need for increased infrastructure. When you start talking about smart cities, you have to start talking about [internet of things] technology. But before you can even do that, you need to implement proper infrastructure and have it in place to support IoT,” said Shaffer. “I think Wake Forest is advancing its infrastructure to start doing those things. We also have places like the Wireless Research Center and companies like ours that can help facilitate those conversations and actually start doing some of that integration.”

Added Rubin, “I’m very happy to be in Wake Forest. We’ve heard great feedback from the residents that we’ve already activated and we expect the same success here that we’ve seen across the Triangle.”

This story was written for our sponsor, the Wake Forest Business & Industry Partnership.