Ziggurat
The backbone of modern communications and data
infrastructure
Headquarters: Night City
Regional Offices: Most North American Cities
Chief Officer: UR (Pronounced You Are)
Employees: 115,000
History
Ziggurat seemingly appeared from nowhere in 2030 in Night City with a plan to transform the old fiber-optic
Data Term network into a new system and restore cheap and reliable communication across the whole of the
metroplex. With a grant from Night Corp and buy-in from the fractious City Council, the brand-new CitiNet was
up and operational within months. Ziggurat further increased usability by overlaying the CitiNet with the first
Data Pool, an open protocol for displaying and sharing data that anyone could use.
Ziggurat quickly spread out from Night City to other metroplexes in North America, repeating the process.
By 2040, most cities in the New United States, the Pacifica Confed, Canada, and the Free States had CitiNets
and Data Pools courtesy of the company. Ziggurat also helped restore communication between metropolitan
regions by providing simple and inexpensive city-to-city communication via hourly data-packet burst transfers
along a cobbled together patchwork of reclaimed phone lines, free-space optics, and even Nomad couriers. This
long-distance communication only works via text, voice, and video messages. Direct audio and visual contact
still requires a contract with the more expensive WorldSat Comm Network.
Almost immediately after the Night City Data Pool went online, Ziggurat published the first set of apps to make
use of it. This allowed them to not only collect fees from the government for setting up and maintaining CitiNets
and Data Pools but monetized their use by collecting and selling data, selling advertising space, and supplying
users with in-app upgrades.
Among Ziggurat's most popular app offerings are the Ask Alex Anything pseudo-AI data crawler, the
BabelChat chat app, the ZPost electronic mail service, and the Ziggurat Editing Suite for text, audio, video, and
app creation. While there are minor competitors, most content on North American Data Pools is created using
Ziggurat Apps and consumed via the Garden, the company's one-stop platform for sharing content.
Any Garden user can, at no cost, set up their own Garden Patch, a space on the Data Pool made specifically
for sharing their text, audio, virtual, and braindance creations. Patches can be customized using a limited variety
of free overlays or more functional—and thus more expensive—templates. Once setup is completed, users can
populate their Patch with text, still imagery, audio and video, virtual, and braindance creations that other users
can consume and comment on. Ziggurat runs targeted advertisements before, after, and during Garden content,
cutting the creators in for ten percent of revenues.
Most modern PopMedia stars in the Time of the Red get their start on the Garden and most performers and
companies, no matter how big, maintain their own Patch in order to reach the broadest possible audience with
their entertainment, commercials, and products.
In 2043, Ziggurat opened offices in London and Melbourne with the intent of penetrating the European and
Australian markets but has met stiff—and often armed—resistance from local competitors.
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