Optimum Lightpath's dark fiber alternative service eliminates guesswork for business customers

Optimum Lightpath is giving its bandwidth hungry customers that want dark fiber, but don't want to manage that kind of a network, a new Private Fiber Service.

Targeting large enterprises and financial service companies that have high bandwidth requirements, Private Fiber Service provides throughput of up to 390 GB with distance-based and optical flat rate pricing to acquire any additional bandwidth. Out of this 390 GB, Optimum Lightpath reserves one channel for monitoring, while other channels can accommodate either one 10 Gbps or 1 Gbps Ethernet connections.

Rounding out the package, the service provider offers dedicated WDM equipment Ethernet over WDM with necessary network monitoring.

Having this service on hand will give Optimum Lightpath another competitive weapon against telcos such as AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) with their respective Ultravailable Network Service and Integrated Optical Service, which also provide dedicated metro fiber to provide a mix of wavelength options.

While all customers probably won't initially purchase a large pipe right away, Brian Washburn, research director of network services at Current Analysis, believes it's likely that the higher speeds will be a "good initial fit for wholesale applications: interconnecting big wholesale facilities in New York and New Jersey, like telco hotels, connecting really big data centers to each other, and to major telco meet-me facilities."

Washburn added that "other possible audiences are major campus environments (many of which just need to hook together at short distances), like a big university or a healthcare institution," in addition to government agencies and financial institutions/financial services companies.

The new service comes at a time when Optimum Lightpath is aggressively expanding its fiber footprint, which at the end of December 2011 reached 5,000 buildings.

For more:
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