Cbeyond (Nasdaq: CBEY), a competitive cloud service provider, on Wednesday said its Ethernet footprint now reaches over 190,000 multi-tenant units (MTUs) in the United States.
To reach this milestone, Cbeyond has built its Ethernet network through a mix of three methods: building out its own fiber facilities, purchasing fiber from other providers like Zayo and FiberLight, and increasing Ethernet over Copper (EoC) connectivity by renting last mile copper from the large ILECs.
The CLEC said that all of its markets, including Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Seattle, will be able to access a broader Metro Ethernet footprint. Each of these markets can deliver up to 100 Mbps of connectivity for businesses that are transitioning to cloud services.
Offering symmetric upload and download speeds, the Ethernet services can support a mix of analog, digital (CAS or PRI), SIP and hosted PBX phone systems.
Overall, Cbeyond's TotalNetwork Metro Ethernet service reaches 14 cities.
Vince Zappa, vice president, Product Management, Network Services with Cbeyond, said in a release that the Metro Ethernet network expansion "triples our Metro Ethernet footprint, provides a huge boost in coverage and speed, and empowers our entire sales force in all markets with the high-speed symmetrical network bandwidth to sell our TotalCloud and TotalAssist services on a massive scale."
A big piece of the Ethernet expansion effort was to drive more fiber-based connections into the buildings where its current and new customers reside.
This network expansion drive is part of a broader initiative Cbeyond began last fall to complement its entrenched copper-based T1 and Ethernet over Copper (EoC) access platforms with higher speed fiber-based access capabilities.
With a focus on serving SMB customers that have on average between 5-200 employees, the service provider said that the most commonly used speed falls between 10-100 Mbps.
Joe Oesterling, VP, Technology and Operations at Cbeyond, told FierceTelecom in a previous interview that as it increased its effort to bring network and cloud services to SMBs it "needed to increase the number of 10 Mbps connections to our customer base so that we could provide more cloud services, and that's what led us to fiber."
For more:
- see the release
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