Fast-growing Windstream Corp. plans to spend more than US$1billion this year as it moves from being a landline phone company to a broadband and data services provider. The Little Rock-based company has been rapidly setting up data centres that provide computing power and storage for businesses around the country and using its phone network as a vehicle for linking business customers to the data centres.

The company was formed in 2006 when it was spun off from Alltel Corp., as Alltel stripped down to a wireless-only company before its acquisition by Verizon Wireless. Windstream still has the greater part of its business in phone lines and residential bundles of phone, Internet and satellite TV services, which reach customers in mainly rural areas in more than two dozen states. But it’s targeting the data end of the market in urban and rural areas as large and small businesses turn to cloud computing and other data outsourcing.  Windstream recently opened a data canter in Little Rock and has two set to open soon in Houston and McLean, Va., giving it 21 in all, up from seven less than two years ago.

Source: Courier News