Fiber Friday 5-20: Optimum Lightpath, SURFnet, Pacific Fibre

Time to catch up on a few deals:

Optimum Lightpath continued its offensive in the education vertical by adding yet another New Jersey school district.  The 1,615 middle and high school students and 142 faculty of the River Dell Regional School District now have a 100Mbps Ethernet connection to the internet, replacing a paltry 3Mbps connection.  And by paltry, I mean really…  River Dell is located in affluent Bergen County along the Hackensack river in a stretch where the median household income is six figures.  NFL coaches Bill Parcells and Vince Lombardi used to live there.  And they were running the entire district off of two T-1’s?  Sheesh.  Anyhow, all fixed now.

The Netherlands’ research network SURFnet is taking the coherent 100Gbps plunge.  After all, that’s what research networks are supposed to do, right?  SURFnet will be upgrading with Ciena’s ActiveFlex and ActiveSpan gear.  That’s no big surprise either, as Ciena already powers the 10G/40G backbone they are currently using.  Ciena’s 100G equipment has been doing quite well in the research network space, including the Internet2 deal recently.

And New Zealand’s undersea fiber protagonist, Pacific Fibre, has won its first client for that new transpacific cable they are planning.  Of course, this one’s a bit of a gimme from the academic and government sectors, but you have to start somewhere.  The Research and Education Advanced Network New Zealand, or REANNZ will be an anchor tenant, investing some of its existing operational funding as well as NZ$15M from the government into an intial 40Gbps, with expansion later to 160Gbps.  REANNZ handles the bandwidth for the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network.  Maybe this cable will get built after all.

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Categories: Metro fiber · Telecom Equipment · Undersea cables