Ok, maybe that’s a bit premature but everyone needs goals to shoot for. But as 2010 starts rolling, I think we are starting to see a much more aggressive stance from industry participants overall, and especially from the metro fiber space which seems ready to explode. Alongside the expansive noises Abovenet is making, this week there were interesting announcements by Lightower, Optimum Lightpath, Intellifiber, Orange Business, and 360Networks that hopefully foreshadow more to come:
Lightower has announced its intention to expand its regional and metro fiber network into New Hampshire. They plan to bring dark fiber to Nashua, Manchester, Salem, Merrimack, and other neighboring towns. New Hampshire is not a hotbed of competitive fiber, the only other substantial player in these cities that I know of is RCN Metro via its Neon acquisition. Given Lightower’s expansion in New Jersey late last year, the company is expanding to both the north and the south.
Optimum Lightpath has won a nice contract with Howell Township schools in Monmouth County, New Jersey – the third largest digital school district in the country. That’s 12 schools, 6,800 students, and 1,500 teachers. Amazingly they had until now been on an ATM network based on a bunch of T1 circuits from the ILEC, which will now be replaced with much higher speeds via Optimum Lightpath’s metro Ethernet footprint. I wouldn’t expect Optimum Lightpath to enter new markets, but simply to keep on deepening their penetration in the New York metro area.
Intellifiber has extended its metro reach into the Ashburn campus of DuPont Fabros. Apparently they initially sought last mile connectivity from another provider, but in the face of delays just went and pulled their own fiber into the facility. That seems to foreshadow an active year ahead for the metro fiber space: things to do, and little patience for delays. With its rumored low latency Chicago-New York route, Intellifiber seems to be ready to start making a real dent in the mid-Atlantic marketplace.
And over in Russia, France Telecom’s international arm Orange Business Services has launched a DWDM segment between Moscow and Rostov-on-Don over 1000km to the south. The route hooks up many cities along the way and adds over 3500 route miles to the company’s Russian backbone, for over 8500 total route miles now. In most markets, Orange Business rides on other backbones at the wavelength level. It’s interesting that in Russia they seem to leasing and building at the fiber level.
And finally, 360Networks has expanded its wholesale VoIP offerings throughlut northern California through Eureka to San Francisco and Santa Cruz. 360Networks continues to fly mostly beneath the radar, but they are still sitting on some unique regional fiber assets.
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Categories: Low Latency · Metro fiber · VoIP
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Robert, if I recall correctly, you’re a NJ born and bred citizen. Regarding this Monmouth County fiber expansion, are you sure you have your zeros correct? At first glance, the size doesn’t seem that impressive. At second look, the student to teacher ratio is just 4.54 :1, making for quite the teacher/student relationship and corresponding learning experience. Do you happen to know the cost per student for delivering education to this county? One can only imagine the more fiber in the diets of the US education system in general, the more competitive we may become as a nation, once again, academically speaking. tia
Oops, I left off the word ‘digital’ which changes the size claim substantially. Thanks for keeping me honest.
Also, wikipedia places the teacher ratio much higher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howell_Township_Public_Schools so perhaps they are counting differently.
No, I was not born in NJ, but I did arrive soon after my first tooth.
BTW, I see Howell Township is only a portion of the much larger county, but the ratios are still perplexing.
Don’t worry Rob! As a (3) owner, I have heard some very BOLD CLAIMS over the years! Some on the short side continue calling them TALL TALES; however, every now and than Skibare like retrospective flashes begin appearing in almost real time. Ultimately, it’s the Digital Age which will bring liberty to all men, women and children across the globe. 🙂
FiberLight, too, is expanding its 500,000-fiber mile network. In Baltimore, we are in the engineering phase of addiing 100 miles to extend our network outside the city of Baltimore, while providing diversification in that market and connecting Baltimore to our existing robust fiber networks in DC and Virginia.
Rob – have you misplaced a decimal in the teacher/student ratio as you quote 6800 students vs 1500 teachers = 4.53 students for each teacher = a fairly wealthy school district??
!500 probably represents District Employees Teachers + administrators+Staff