Electric Lightwave serves up dark fiber alternative service for business, content provider customers

Electric Lightwave, Integra's wholesale and large business services arm, is serving up a new 100G managed optical Spectrum service that it says will serve as an alternative to a wholly-owned dark fiber solution.

Targeting a mix of data center, content provider, government and enterprise customers located throughout the western United States, Electric Lightwave said that it can take over the burden of managing high-speed optical bandwidth services for its customers.  

Leveraging Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform, customers that purchase the Spectrum service can employ a fully owned-and-operated optical network that allows them to virtually own a private network.

Another key element of the service is flexibility. Customers can choose how fast their network can be based on their own needs, but at prices Electric Lightwave says are much lower than using a dark fiber or traditional wavelength offering.

Despite the growing momentum and interest in dark fiber, Electric Lightwave is tapping into what could be a new trend for business and wholesale customers that want more control over their network experience but don't want to pay for a dark fiber solution.

Electric Lightwave is hardly alone in offering such a solution. Rival EarthLink is seeing a similar interest in dark fiber solutions. Like Electric Lightwave, EarthLink also offers a similar managed transport service that allows customers to build and manage customer networks in increments of 500 Gbps, with the ability to scale up to multiple Terabits as demand dictates.

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