FirstLight Fiber brings 100G connectivity to its on-net building locations

FirstLight Fiber is responding to customer demand in Tier 2 and Tier 3 metro markets by expanding its network to support 100G connectivity services at any of its on-net building locations in upstate New York and northern New England.

It is conducting this expansion effort with integrator LightRiver Technologies and using Ciena's 6500 Packet-Optical Platform that delivers the optical services to end-customers.

Besides offering the higher speed services, this deployment is also focused on enhancing service turn-up time. The service provider will leverage Ciena's OneControl Unified Management System, which provides simple point-and-click service provisioning.

Over the past two years, FirstLight has built a sizeable footprint of 1,400 on-net lit fiber buildings and added the ability to serve another 10,000 locations located near its fiber network through a series of acquisitions and organic initiatives.

While FirstLight's most popular optical service product today is its 10G offering, it will have a competitive advantage over other players as it can immediately deliver the 100G services whenever existing or new customers dictate the need for such a service.  

"We did not see a lot of demand for 10G last year, but this year we are seeing it become much more popular," said Brian Kurkowski, CTO of FirstLight in an interview with FierceTelecom. "I projected that our Internet bandwidth would double in 2013, but it actually went up four times."

For more:
- see the release

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