Fiber Roundup 5-25: DukeNet, Telx, Level 3, Hibernia, XO, and UPN

Quite a news week leading into Memorial Day weekend in the US.  Time for another quick look at a series of interesting items:

Down south, DukeNet has joined the Telx Ethernet Exchange in Atlanta.  DukeNet has been rather quiet publicly since receiving a capital influx from Alinda last year.    However in this PR they revealed that they have been very actively fibering up the Atlanta region, which is a bit beyond their traditional Carolina turf.  They’ve added 100 sites on-net in Metro Atlanta, the I-285 corridor, and out as far as Alpharetta, Marietta, and Athens.  With Telx they are obviously looking for another way to sell access to the sites across their footprint – including the Carolinas too of course.

Level 3 Communications (NYSE:LVLT, news, filings) has brought the South Hill Data Center on-net in response to customer demand.  The 8.6MW high capacity facility is located in Puyallup, near Seattle – always nice to hear more buildings going on-net.  They also announced their intention to sell $500M in senior debt, the proceeds of which will be put into escrow in preparation for refinancing part of Global Crossing’s debt when that deal closes later this year.  I wonder what price they’ll get, seeing as the market’s opinion of the company has, err, evolved rapidly in the weeks since.

Hibernia Atlantic continued its recent news offensive with a deal in the education vertical.  Indiana University has selected their transatlantic services as part of the ‘America Connects to Europe’ project. (Wait, didn’t we manage this in the 19th century? … nevermind)  Hibernia will provide two diverse 10Gbps circuits which will be paired with two more from Geant2 to power connectivity between universities and national laboratories on both continents.

Meanwhile, XO Holdings (news, filings) struck up a partnership with government IT service provider DLT Solutions.  DLT will be able to offer XO’s IP and managed network solutions to federal agencies.  XO has been targeting the government sector, and earlier this year revealed a pretty nice win with the Postal Service.  XO will also be participating in IPv6 Day.   Maybe Icahn will celebrate with a new, higher offer that reflects the company’s true value.  Hah.

And finally, Unite Private Networks added yet another notch to its school district belt.  The midwestern E-Rate specialist won agreements with the school districts in Columbus and Sautoma, Wisconsin, for whom UPN will be providing GigE to all school facilities. The capital infusion from Ridgemont certainly has given them a boost in activity.

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Categories: Datacenter · Ethernet · Metro fiber · Undersea cables