Telecommunications

Local telephone access in Little Rock is provided by Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, with state headquarters in Little Rock. It provides state-of-the-art voice and data communications facilities for more than 200,000 residence and business customers in the Greater Little Rock area. A fiber ring exists in downtown Little Rock providing a majority of businesses with disaster recovery and backup capability. Many companies - including AT&T, Compute-A-Call, LDDS, MCI, Call America, National Telecommunications and U.S. Sprint - provide long distance service in this area.

The Little Rock area telecommunications network is now 100% digital. The entire area will be served by digital central office switching equipment. All switching centers in metropolitan Little Rock are connected via fiber optic cable, providing an efficient and reliable data and voice network. These fiber optic routes can be extended to the major office park locations when needed to serve the varied communications needs of business and industry. Southwestern Bell has been very successful in providing fiber optic capabilites on an as-needed basis as demonstrated by Southwest Airlines' choice of Little Rock for a new reservation center.