FirstLight Fiber is extending its reach into the lucrative New York City carrier and enterprise market segment by creating a point of presence (PoP) at the 325 Hudson carrier hotel and meet me room.
This agreement is all about reach. By establishing a presence at 325 Hudson, the service provider can immediately address customers in both its upstate New York and northern New England markets that need access into New York City as well as those in the city that need access into its existing network.
"A big part of our network is in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets and the one thing we have learned working in these markets in the Northeast for over a decade very little traffic originates in a Tier 3 market and terminates in a Tier 3 so having the Tier 1 markets to transport that traffic to is critical for us," said James Capuano, Chief of Network Operations for FirstLight Fiber, in an interview with FierceTelecom. "325 Hudson gives us the ability to control our own destiny in New York City by placing our own DWDM platform to support everything from 1G to 100G is an obvious necessity for us to continue to grow the business."
Capuano said a big advantage of this connection is that FirstLight is using its own fiber to connect into 325 Hudson, meaning it can control the service experience it provides to its customer base.
"We already had Montreal and Boston so New York City was the next evolutionary step for us," Capuano said. "We had leased capacity into New York, but quite honestly it's not cost effective for a service provider like us to continue to use that on a leased basis."
While he did not name any new data center locations where it would be building to this year, Capuano said they will continue expand its network presence its existing markets with new fiber miles and new on-net buildings.
"The reality for us as we continue to grow the network it's about extending into our existing footprint," Capuano said. "This means building out to light more buildings and maybe do some geographic expansion that's contiguous with our existing network is an obvious next step for us." aggregation point…to as customer need grow strategically and add fiber network carrier and hotel needs…
In New York City, FirstLight build a fiber ring that connects to three key meet me room facilities including 111 Eighth Avenue, 325 Hudson and 32 Avenue A.
What could make FirstLight an attractive source for businesses and carriers located in New York City is that they could get access to the service provider's growing base of 1,600 on-net buildings and 10,000 near-net locations to its metro fiber network.
One of the other potential differentiators is that FirstLight has connections in gateway cities like New York City, Boston and Montreal to enable business and carrier customers to get access to locations in Tier 2-4 markets but with the same level of access in a Tier 1 city.
Case in point is the northern New England region. FirstLight has established a partnership with Maine Fiber Company (MFC) , a purveyor of dark fiber via the Three Ring Binder network, to serve Maine business while acquiring New Hampshire-based G4 Communications.
For more:
- see the release
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This article was updated on Jan. 15 with additional information from FirstLight Fiber.