Published February 2001

ATG to enter race for phone, fiber customers

By John Wolcott
Herald Business Journal Editor

Across America, in the highly competitive, deregulated world of telecommunications, incumbent telephone companies like Verizon Northwest no longer live as monopolies. That fact is evident in Snohomish County as well, with two new challengers arriving in the marketplace a few months apart.

Last fall, SBC Telecom began offering a variety of telecommunications options, vying for the public’s attention in the shadow of Verizon Northwest’s headquarters in downtown Everett.

Now, there’s another new kid on the block.

Advanced TelCom Group Inc. (ATG), based in Santa Rosa, Calif., is a 2-year-old business that has grown up fast, already claiming national service with centers in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Maryland and Virginia and plans for new offices in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and Colorado within months.

Targeting what its business plan describes as third- and fourth-tier cities, such as Bellingham, Olympia and Tacoma, cities where its service already is in place, ATG locked onto Everett and Snohomish County’s economic and population growth as a prime environment for expansion.

Offering its own brand of local and long-distance telephone service for residents and businesses, plus fiber-optic broadband services and other communications options, ATG is spending $840,000 to remodel the former title company building at Colby Avenue and Wall Street in Everett, preparing for a March opening. Inside the building will be a central office outfitted with $3 million in switching equipment, generators and fiber optics.

Along with a $1 million annual payroll, ATG brings an enthusiastic presence, embracing a commitment to community involvement, not just reaping the benefits of the economy.

“We’re making an investment in the market. We’re not just planning to pick stuff up and leave if the business plan doesn’t go well in the first few months,” said Steve Roth, ATG’s Regional Vice President-Northwest, during a recent visit to Everett from his Olympia office.

“We found Everett … open to new businesses coming in, supportive chambers of commerce and a supportive Economic Development Council. That tells us we have an opportunity to become part of the community. That’s one of our company’s fundamentals, a focus on local service, local people, local hiring and local community involvement,” Roth said.

The company already has helped to produce copies of the EDC’s new five-year plan and is committed to being active in various community organizations and projects.

Ironically, when it comes to competition, ATG, Verizon and other telecommunication providers fight for customers, then become customers of their competitors. Verizon, AT&T and other telecom giants lease and share the global network of copper lines, fiber-optic cables and orbiting satellites to save each from building their own costly, redundant system.

On the local level, ATG will have fiber-optic lines of its own but will need to link to Verizon’s local system to get the job done. So the competitive difference comes down to attracting and keeping customers with service, well-priced bundles of communications options and deep roots in the community.

“We’re not so naive to believe we can capture the entire market, but we can have a very strong business with 30 to 35 percent of the market,” Roth said. “In some markets, we have more than 50 percent of the business customers; in other markets, it may be 20 to 25 percent. We start out slow and ramp up.”

One of the company’s national successes has been taking a leading role in developing and testing new telecommunication technologies. ATG’s new Network Architecture & Interoperability Lab in California was designed to test ATG’s systems before moving them to the field. But the unique lab caught the attention of the industry so fast that ATG has signed agreements with such companies as Lucent Technologies, Cisco Systems, Nokia and others to test their advanced technology systems and hardware at the lab.

“The telecommunications industry has changed so much that there are opportunities now for companies like ours,” Roth said.

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