New York State has among the finest telecommunications infrastructures in the world. Many businesses in New York are already benefiting from this vigorous marketplace and now have considerable choice. Intermodal forms of competition are quickly gaining acceptance and are creating substantial facilities-based competition. Traditional cable providers are offering digital services while wireless services are being used as basic telephone service by an increasing number of New Yorkers. In addition, advanced broadband is widely available in New York State and emerging applications, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also provide telecommunications services to both residences and business users.

This electronic communications network consists of a "digital backbone" of eight extremely high-capacity fiber optic cables with network access points in all regions of the state. NYS government currently employs only four of these fibers for the NYeNet, with the others held in reserve for future growth. The current backbone configuration operates at a speed of OC-48, or approximately 2.5 billion bits per second ¹. At that speed, one could transmit the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from Buffalo to New York City over the NYeNet in about one second. As a fixed asset of New York State, the speed and capacity of the backbone fiber is limited only by the capabilities of its equipment. New York Telephone has more than 57,600 miles of fiber optic cable in service throughout the state including Albany. Syracuse, and Buffalo.²