Metro Bytes: FirstLight, CityFibre, RCN, Zayo, Verizon

Here’s a quick roundup of some news from the metro, with three event contracts, an expansion, and some IoT:

FirstLight Fiber took to the hills this weekend with a deal to power the ski resort Mount Sunapee. The New Hampshire resort used FirstLight’s fiber to boost its overall bandwidth from 20Mbps to 100Mbps, improving the WiFi offered to guests while also consolidating its voice traffic onto the same infrastructure as well. They upgraded in time for next week’s NH Craftsmen’s Fair, one of various events held at the resort in the summer season.

Over in the UK, CityFibre has lit four 1Gbps connections for an event held in Peterborough. The bandwidth will help power the CityLAN e-Gaming event, being held at the ABAX Stadium and Future Business Centre. CityFibre recently completed a 90km fiber expansion in the city, now hooking up 140 local businesses, 70 schools, and another 30 public sites as well.

In Washington DC, RCN Business also has an event this week that it is providing the bandwidth for.  They are the official telecommunications provider for the 2015 City Open Tournament at the Rock Creek Park Tennis Center, an ATP event with the likes of Andy Murray showing up.  RCN is providing everything from hosted voice to wireless internet and live streaming of the matches.

Back on my home turf in New Jersey, Zayo has polished off one of its metro fiber builds. They’ve completed their new dark fiber route between the NYSE facility in Mahwah and Equinix’s NY5 data center in Secaucus. It’s a 37.7km ultra-low-latency route that Zayo says is the fastest available between the two key nodes. It will also cut latency from Mahwah into the major data centers in Manhattan.

And, while it’s not quite ‘metro’, Verizon introduced a new product that could bring meaningful IoT to our doorsteps – or more specifically our energy meters. Their Grid Wide Utility Solutions offer utilities a way to provide energy-as-a-service, turning meters into online sensors. We’ve seen utilities dabble in all sorts of internet infrastructure over the years, but Verizon’s case is that wireless networks have evolved beyond anything utilities can roll on their own.

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Categories: IoT, M2M · Metro fiber